On Hiatus

When cartoonists take a break, the newspaper recycles some of their old comic strips. In some cases, a reader feels as if he or she has slipped in time, and what’s happened has unhappened. Appropriate for a hiatus, I suppose. What a break it’d be to undo recent history and to revisit what you thought [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Reading Autobiography

A book bobs in kelp, spine arched, face invisible, a drowned raft of pulp. A trick of aging— memory swells like something half underwater. What author is what he says? What ocean bulges in fading moonlight? What trunk, lined with lies and resolutions, opens willingly, so wide, to swallow more than it holds? Waves touch [...]

My Daily Diffusion Experiment

I knew I was sick when I found myself mourning the disappearance of “feed stats” on my WordPress dashboard. I tell myself, if I want to be read, writing something worthwhile should be my only concern. Do that, and the statistics can take care of themselves. Still, I watch. Perhaps I shouldn’t say so. I [...]

Haiku Sonnet: 3 Years of 1 Haiku a Day

I crowd the landscape with what haiku lit and left burning, accidents that, like shipwrecks, won’t move. They settle. They don’t wait for discovery or another fate— they mark a map so filled with notation, it can no longer be read. The blackbird leaves something to taste night. By the door a bloom withers, its [...]

A Foolish Hobgoblin

The most interesting words cast multiple shadows. Recently, I wanted to praise someone for having strong convictions and explored the web to find the implications of that word “conviction.” I wondered if I would be expressing approval by using it. I discovered two things: 1. I’m not sure I have convictions. 2. I’m not sure [...]

Haiku Sonnet: 17 Year Cicadas

Every seventeen summers, cicada study the world like winged eyes and then mate. Does one task rest on the other—life to see if life will still be possible? Or does our light fill them up— make them so heavy with love—flying seems wasted time? They couple near shells of former selves, wary of darkness, certain [...]

Iraqi War Fiction

One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do. But I think the Vietnam War freed me and other writers, because it made our leadership and our motives seem so scruffy and essentially stupid. [...]

On Being Dad

Before my son was born, a former colleague told me parenting was an education in body fluids, and for the first few years, he seemed prescient. You forget there’s so much in a person that can come out. My response to these emissions was quick and solicitous. When I’m an old man maybe I’ll get [...]

Haiku Sonnet: A Boy’s Discovery

He found the beetle’s empty torso in the grass and thought the brittle bottle might hold new inhabitants, lost patrols from ant colonies now home asleep, families of tired fleas sick of jumping, or maybe a precious liquid that’d rouse the world, the one drop needed to make hearts strong and bring smiles around him.

Going Home

Yesterday, as we drove our rented car over a farm road just outside Wilmington, Delaware, my son said, “I can’t see any buildings. It’s freaking me out.” Though my newly urban offspring have not yet lived in Chicago two years, they’re anxious to return to beehives lit against blue dusk, to mingled scents of coffee [...]