The Haul

I guess I wasn’t paying attention because on July 4th, I embarked on a trip that was much longer than I expected. I ended up taking off four full days from work. I have the time; I just didn’t know that was the plan. I’m guilty of that, a lot…

for Robert Penn Warren It’s the details, the laying out of the specifics that calls me some twenty-four hours later to read this poem again. Something about it troubles me, as if the words were the flame and gasoline that you flicked onto anonymous rattlesnakes. Now this flame incinerates me, …

Maybe I am not the demographic that Honky Tonk Row is designed for? But upon getting the email, a friend from work and I opted to travel to Nashville, in June, and spend two days learning about a software program that only kind of worked for us. Work paid for…

You change the font size on your default Word document to 18 because you might actually have to read this out loud. You know that when the Cubs won the World Series and the subsequent parade (the 7th largest public gathering in history) it represented the true high point of…

It’d been years, eighteen to be exact, but we all reacted with collective shock when the text message, among the few us still in contact, informed us that he had contracted Covid-19 and died within a matter of days. …

for Allen Ginsberg Part II. What beast of remote control fingers and plastic destruction toppled the recycling bin and dumped its contents onto the street? Moloch! Desperation! Litter! Monstrousness! Recycling bins and windy spring days! Cups flattened by cars! T-shirts soaking up gutter water! Old boxes marked by tire tracks! …

I wasn’t really drawn to it when it first came out in theaters, but Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel had been sitting on “My List” since I activated my HBO-Max subscription. During free time, I would look at it and then dutifully pick something else. But last night, I finally…

I was the featured poet at the Green Mill in Chicago. The Green Mill is a storied venue in poetry slam, and Marc Smith (so what!) is largely considered the creator of the poetry slam, so my getting to feature there was a big deal. …

A friend posted a meme that says, “follow the science,” and then goes off into a comment about how there is science that is skeptical of the public health orders and vaccine, and that anyone who bucks the prevailing wisdom around the pandemic is shunned when many of them are…