Closing Weekend

by | Oct 26, 2011 | poetry

So many people I know and love right now are experiencing heartbreak, relationships ending and changing. It is impossible to see one’s way out of the pain when trapped in its midst.  One friend says the key is to keep the blood flowing, keep breathing, keep...

Drunk Drivers

by | Oct 20, 2011 | Community, Essays, Polemics, Politics | 5 comments

Drunk Drivers I’m standing in the pediatric ICU at UC Med Center.  I’m holding the hand of my ten year old nephew.  His hand is lifeless, the nurse tells me, because they gave him a paralyzing drug to keep him still.  Common practice with a brain injury, she says. ...

Seventh Grade Dance

by | Sep 26, 2011 | Essays | 1 comment

an essay from the archives…. It’s 1975, a hot spring day in my seventh grade classroom.  Freddy is circulating down the rows of desks in the moments after recess, before class convenes.  His name isn’t spelled with a “P-H”, but it should be.  That Friday night...

After the Game

by | Sep 12, 2011 | poetry

Football season always reminds me of this poem I wrote more than twenty years ago now.  Many years younger than my jock brothers, I grew up watching the younger play football, basketball, and baseball.  I spent hours upon hours commuting to games with my dad, his...