Is everyone should have at least one, at all times. The other thing is: It’s up to you to pick them, not the other way around. When I was in the corporate world I had dozens and dozens of mentors, all unassigned, except by me, for me. My first was a woman named Carol who […]
The Thing About Friendships
Is meaningful ones can be hard to come by, and they take work if they are to remain meaningful for any extended period of time. Me, I live in the boondocks. On a lake. There are eagles and beavers. Lots of trees. Deer. It’s beautiful here, but it’s also very rural and, for the most […]
The Thing About Birthdays
It’s my birthday, but the clouds are offended again because of something I’ve said or thought. Their bellies are full of dark-sick, gauzy vomit, pushing away the sky which doesn’t remember I’m nine today. People are talking about the moon, how there are men on it for the first time, but people have told me […]
Glass Boys
I’m an old man now, but I was a boy once, and I saw things—adults with backward rollercoaster eyes, muddy backhoe faces, steel wool fingers, javelin forearms that could tack anything they wanted to a wall, a floorboard, a bed board, or a rusty bedspring creaking for rescue. I was a glass boy then, blown […]
The Thing About Clowns
A long time ago, I had an imaginary friend who was a clown. Then he shape-shifted into a ghost, then into my parents, then into a gaggle of coiled cobras that happened to look and act a lot like my parents. But first he was a clown. His makeup ran and his tongue tended to […]
