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The Word

On the weekends she stayed with him, the first sound she heard in the morning was the meowing of his cat. The people in the apartment next door also had a cat, only theirs was put out overnight; his was strictly an indoor cat, black and nearly a dozen years old and just beginning to turn fat. The next-door cat always came to its owner’s front porch and yowled to be let in. His crouched in the bedroom window, peering down, and the two cats carried on a conversation until the next-door cat went inside.

May 2001

I’m here in the early-morning darkness, a congregation of one. I’m here, just one more man who thinks he deserves God’s ear, as if God had time for everyone who reached out. I’m here, reaching.

Sunbeams

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls, and they say, “Because it’s such a beautiful animal.” There you go. Well, I think my mother’s attractive, but I have photographs of her.

Ellen DeGeneres

The Year In Geese

I reached again, beyond the orange bill, behind the round eyes, and slid my hand lightly down his delicate downy neck. He stood absolutely still. I could almost feel a sigh in him, and I passed my hand again and again down this fragile stem of life, then out onto the fan of feathers across his back, the narrow spiny ridges and silken expanse.

Help Me With This

It’s been almost two years since I shot and killed a ten-year-old boy. It was an overcast day in early December, and I was hunting from the deer stand I’d built where my property meets the woods.

Sibling Rivalry

Unmailed postcards, phantom siblings, buried Barbie dolls

Dead Letter #4

Ganymede’s out on the hood of the truck, / keeping warm, hoping I’ll relent and let / him in, or more probably thinking nothing, / or perhaps only warm, if there is such a word / in the language of cats.

Reptile Man

I’ve read that it’s common to be repelled by someone you later find attractive. My attraction to Reptile Man was like that. He hung out at Red Emma’s Deli, arriving at ten every morning like clockwork. He always read a newspaper someone else had left behind and spaced out three coffees over a period of about two hours.