At the Museum

  The exhibit before the exhibits looks like a bowl but is a funnel— Drop a penny into a track along the rim, the coin rolls in, circles the bowl, and, like a roller derby star, skates around the wall and sometimes—maybe it’s my imagination—parades higher before its circles shrink, the penny rattles its last [...]

Famous on Radio

A friend once asked me whether I’d ever want to be famous, and I answered as most people would, “Famous for what?” Famous for being famous, like Nicole Ritchie? No, decidedly no. Famous for doing something important, like discovering a clean and renewable energy source to power automobiles? Maybe, but I wouldn’t want the fame [...]

Haiku Sonnet: A Chicago Parrot

A green feather drops onto a gardener’s spade from a boy’s window. The bird who lost it cries its color—a new leaf of the banana. The boy loves the bird, but imagines rainbows of feathers beneath wings— an accordion of fruited notes when the wind ruffles the jungle, goads the bird to fly, and tugs [...]

Gliese 581c and Odysseus

I felt odd hope when I learned yesterday that Swiss astronomers believe a planet outside our solar system might be ripe for life. Growing up, I drew controls on the undersides of every table in the house. My G. I. Joe wore fatigues I’d painted silver, and he orbited the living room in a converted [...]

Haiku Sonnet: The Old Couple

I started to say he sees her wholly, the way, in orbit, mountains river, the way land, borderless and uncut, seems shaped to please the eye. But truth is always different—here on earth we can’t see how beaches shift. The white sand borne and abandoned by wind lays down today’s new profile. And they’ve read [...]

All Dressed Up and No One to See

I’ve been trying to come up with a rationalization for why it’s so important to me to check my blog stats, and it comes down to this—chops. Not being a jazz musician, I’m not exactly sure what chops are. However, from context, I know you have to get them and keep them to play well [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Nature in Chicago

The sky is all one white rose petal. A young girl says, “Look.” A rabbit runs from her block into trees lining the park. His brown is bark’s brown. Today a quiet stills his ears and, together, girl, rabbit, city rest in one mind. All will be gone in a moment, but look— the trees [...]

Spring Bees

Bees dance to enliven dull hives of heat and stillness. Their lives at the antipodes: here and every far point, birth and not returning. We want their strut to be practical—the compressed maps of roads to heavier flowers, a flight path described as a tangle. But they follow deep patterns aligned in growth. They move [...]

Haiku Sonnet: The Scene Just After

Abandoned objects on benches, shelves, floors as if things walked off and fled their owners, not the other way around. Do our possessions want the world so much they try to stay behind, or do they remain just to remind us? Loss is never simple—loved ones will soon cradle these objects hoping to feel their [...]

Fear and (Self) Loathing

It’s difficult to express the contempt I sometimes feel for myself. Difficult because: A. I’m well-aware I’m supposed to like myself B. I’m also aware that telling myself I stink is unlikely to make me stink less C. Saying what I dislike about myself sometimes invites others to agree D. Anyone who doesn’t fit under [...]