The Grammar of Staying
Midwinter, 1980–81 The cold had a grammar then. It conjugated the body into ache and wait, into not-yet. Doorways learned my outline. Cardboard kept the minutes from breaking apart.
Proof That the Meek Endure
There is nothing mightier than the meek. - The Twilight Zone, The Night of the Meek An Hour Where Goodness Won I learned wonder in a small bedroom on Lincoln Street, where the light from the television was brighter than the streetlamp outside and the world made sense for half an hour at a time.
Quarter Nights & Greyhound Dreams - 1986
1986 was a year of rust - and prayer. I worked two jobs, three jobs, six days, seven if the Lord looked the other way. Didn’t rest, didn’t dream, just kept on like a broke-down Buick with a cough in its soul. That old '63 LeSabre - Blue as my mood, fading like hope - her grandma gave it, God bless her - and we rode it on fumes, on faith, on three dollars of gas at a time. Three bucks. You hear me? That’s a couple gallons and some change, back when gas still showed mercy. We rolled slow, so the needle stayed up, and the money didn’t run out…
The Part They Skip
The years teach you this: success isn’t earned at the finish, but in the days no one remembers. No one told me success would move like winter... so slow you notice the thaw only when your breath no longer clouds the glass.
At the Berkshire Garden
Morning opened in Albany - the city stretching itself awake, lights blinking off along the Hudson, a heron lifting from the shallows. Coffee steamed the car’s small interior as we turned east,
The Usher and My Father - 2022
On Lincoln Street I sat... book open, heart open, summer sun leaning through the window, time thick as molasses in a jar.
The Lady of Woodlawn
By the crypt-mist’s breath and candle’s sigh — in the style of Poe Set in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery, this poem listens for the echoes that linger between art and afterlife. The Lady becomes both muse and mirror - a figure through whom memory, creation, and mourning converge.
West on I-88
A Vigil for My Father We keep watch so love has company in the dark. West on I-88 I. Westbound West on I-88, the hills lean close, fog stitched along their backs like something unfinished.
The Wolfman on Lincoln Street
I was eleven, and the house was so quiet it felt like it had stopped breathing. Downstairs, my family was watching some dumb show - Dad in his easy chair, Skipper curled on his lap, my mother probably knitting, my brother and sister laughing at canned jokes from the set.
The Mystery on the Driveway
The motorcycles rounded a bend in the road and before the boys lay a wide stretch of open highway, descending in a gradual slope. To their right lay Barmet Bay, sparkling in the afternoon sun. At the bottom of the slope was a grassy expanse that opened out on the beach, the road at this point being only a few feet above the sea level. The little meadow was a favorite parking place for motorists, as their cars could regain the road easily. - Hardy Boys, The Shore Road Mystery
Warm Vents and an Angry God
I remember the house breathing through long metal lungs, forced hot air hissing through the vents like some practical American dragon, its warm breath sweeping the floorboards, finding my ankles, scattering dust motes into constellations.
