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Graffiti

A tag on a dumpster, poetry in an outhouse, Viking runes in an underground tomb

The Cat Who Woke Me Up

The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

Reincarnation

Maybe they would come back as cats and lie on sunny windowsills, not touching but close enough to hear each other breathing, to recognize the shift in cadence marking the slip into sleep. Maybe he’d lick his paws while she slept—though maybe he wouldn’t be a he and she wouldn’t be a she, and it wouldn’t matter.

Sunbeams

I knew a pair of Persian cats once; the black one always reclined on a white cushion on the couch, and the white one on the black cushion next to it. It wasn’t just that they wanted to leave cat hair where it showed up best, though cats are always thoughtful about that. They knew where they looked best.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Conversations With A Banana Spider

The smell of wild honeysuckle was everywhere, and the mango trees sagged with the weight of their fruit. I’d often hear the ripe ones fall to the street with a heavy, wet thud, or else bang off the metal roofs of outbuildings where homeless wanderers sometimes slept. This abundance of fruit made Loreto seem like an impossible place to starve, yet I saw a few souls who looked like they were trying their best to do just that. Was it legal, I wondered, to simply reach up and pull a ripe mango from someone else’s tree? Being a foreigner with money, I didn’t need to find out.

Like Love Is A Heart

I hate it / when they do that. Like I’m easy / to love. Like love is a heart / he can sit behind / the wheel of, drive / through town, windows / down, dog and girl along / for the ride, as if he’ll never / ever change his mind.

Classroom Hatch

I try to feed the chicks mealworms from my hands, / crouching there sometimes for hours. // I can’t remember how / to make them believe in kindness.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

To the Arresting Officer

You patted me down roughly, went through my pockets and pulled out three crumpled twenties, some guitar picks, my stepfather’s pocketknife. “You got drugs, son?”