• Fire sale.

    Scenes comic, earnest and serious. All must go. All are welcome to inspect the goods for damage. Trivial disorder in auditory and visual input; diminished organization of verbal material; inconsequential disturbance in language comprehension; negligible personality deficits and affected behavior. This midnight disease the point of origin; composition to combustion a semantic rather than seismic… Continue Reading

  • Goodbye overlooked middle child.

    So this boy is off to college this Saturday. To Oakland University. On scholarship. I am not a parent that advertises my kids’ accomplishments on my car bumper. Besides, it’s hard to find a bumper stick that reads, My son may not be an honor student but at least he hasn’t gotten anyone pregnant.  In general I… Continue Reading

  • Brother, can you spare a dime? Nope.

    So I have three boys. Sorry, three men.  Men who watch SpongeBob in their underwear while eating Frosted Flakes out of mixing bowls, but men nonetheless.  At 16 and almost 18 and 20, they are quickly receding from boyhood. I can attest that they all came from the same place.  Well, roughly speaking – one was… Continue Reading

  • Gerljean.

    My sister is my memory. Don’t you remember? She says. And I do.   June bugs tied to a string. Asphalt iridescent with summer heat. A slick copperhead in the creek bed, interrupted midfeast. The thick smell of honeysuckle.   When the men have lined up in their pajamas, we will climb back into our… Continue Reading

  • The middle-aged selfie…a photo essay.

    Otherwise known as how to be the center of my own lazy-eyed, big-nosed, double-chinned universe.  John Singer Sargent, a renowned portrait artist who died in 1925, famously said that every time he painted a portrait he lost a friend. Maybe that’s why self-portraits are so popular. But if having total control over our own image… Continue Reading

  • Doe, Jane.

    Google Maps shows the street view of where you lay, shallow in the weeds, listening to the night sounds.  The muted drone of planes overhead,  your body in the flight path of travelers headed up and away. The backfire of the car’s engine.                        … Continue Reading

  • Ruin porn.

    The upper arms softly undulate. A lip of flesh slips over the Cesarean section scar. A constellation of cellulite on the backs of the thighs. The breasts at repose against the ribcage. Some people travel to the streets of Detroit’s west side to rubberneck at the burned out remains of a once flourishing landscape. I… Continue Reading

  • Shame on us.

    I overheard a conversation between two women at the grocery store yesterday.  These women were not friends.  Just two women who got in line behind each other on a Sunday morning, both finding an appropriate topic of discussion to be the overweight woman checking out in the next aisle – her fashion and food choices… Continue Reading

  • Jinkies, its the cops.

    A suburban girl’s second brush with the law. The first is a tale for another time. Author’s note:  When A) your ride to work fails to show up because they are the worse for substances, and B) you are late for work in a job with an employee retention policy modeled on Upton Sinclair’s The… Continue Reading