by Adam S. Kibbe, guest blogger ìSee, eyeglasses werenÃt unbreakable back then, so they wouldnÃt let Charlie enlist for combat.î The name delivered in a high-register version of that Nu-Yahwk drawl, to me usually fingernails on a chalkboard, but dismissable for the conversation we were having. ìBut he was determined, so he went into the […]
I didnÃt do it intentionally. I mean It was intentional, but it wasnÃt intentionally done for Thanksgiving. Matt and I went food shopping (How is that for being absorbed into the culture? Soon, IÃll be asking for bags.) last Tuesday night, and when we cruised through the frozen section, I bought, as I always do, […]
Adam Kibbe From a roughed-out clearing in the scumbled chaos whose colors are of mud and rage, a small, ominous crow lurks inertly. A scrap of aged newsprint bearing headlines of the occupation of Palestine looms up through the same thick, foreboding colors, its words tantalizingly obscured. Even the headline is incomplete, the publication’s dates […]
At the dinner table: Diane : ” Matt…..whatz up?” Matt, after a pregnant pause, “Don’t ever do that again.” After I changed the battery in my remote starter (the key ring end of things)at about 10:30 last night, just as I was falling in Neverland, Matt walks into the bedroom and announces that my truck […]
Dear shinydome, This bench is about a hundred and twenty feet beyond what one would be able to walk, had the land owners not created, and then steadfastly maintained for the last twenty years, a bridge of sticks and leaves. The purpose? A better view? More photos.
ìMichael, I need to show you something.î I was cutting through the yard of my elderly neighbor, Dolly, on my way to the protected wetlands project, and listening to her slapping her hands together, shouting, ìPumpkin, Pumpkin, here Pumpkin.î The neighborhood chuckles when it hears her calling her cat, but Dolly swears Pumpkin comes. Diane […]
Update on both recent stories. Turn the Page (nee Dust Jacket), the instructor wrote: ìWith only a few revisions, this would be an absolutely first-class piece.î She wanted the point, that it was a weekend and therefore without well-trained staff, made more clearly, and a bit more information about JohnÃs duties. Otherwise, she got the […]
Jim O’Brien offered to help paint his son Francis’s house. As they walked together, brushes in hand, wide-brimmed hats shielding their eyes from the morning sun, a phantom bear stepped on Jim’s chest, squeezing the breath out of him. “Dad, you look awful, what’s up?” “Don’t know, but I feel like I’m breathing through a […]
Update on Adam’s injury by Adam: As many have asked……. After getting lost and arriving a half an hour late to the surgeon, I sat in the front waiting room for another half an hour, then 45 minutes in the exam room (all supplied with interesting magazines). Finally the surgeon breezed in. He said he […]
IÃm writing my next assignment and IÃd be done by now if it werenÃt for my editor. She took the first version I handed to her, folded it twice to form more or less a square, tore it in two, then she handed it back. That was Monday. Monday night I began the second iteration […]
Many years ago, I was paid to build a tree house. This job, a bench supported by a small platform surrounded by marsh grasses and water,has a similar, serendipitous feeling. Except the tree house was on private property, not smack dab in the middle of the most highly protected land in the state. View larger […]
Rea Killeen When I am nine, we pray all the time because Sister Patricia Anne says somewhere on the other side of the earth ìour boys are dying in the jungles.î St. Pius X Church is my familyÃs new church after we move into a fancy neighborhood away from downtown Albany. ItÃs shaped like a […]