Rico Suave


The tween ladies adored him, 
and the teachers gave out extra 
credit to him for being so handsome. 
He was a pillar of the sixth grade 
community, sweeping every awards 
assembly and holding doors open 
for the special needs kids. He was 
the only guy in our class who had 
a mustache, a sign of his advanced 
maturity. He also sat next to me,
and he liked to whisper "you're nothing 
but white trash" over and over again 
into my ear before spitting directly 
into my face. I made feeble attempts 
to defend myself, but he always 
blinded me with his palm and said
"talk to the hand," the teacher diffusing 
the situation by blaming it all on me. 
He complained to her that I forgot 
to wear deodorant, and the entire 
class burst into a kind of mocking 
laughter I never got used to, from 
the time he sucker punched me in 
the school cafeteria to the time he 
ruined my favorite polo shirt during 
a class pizza party after he smeared 
pink cupcake icing bedazzled by 
multicolored sprinkles against my 
chest, and their laughing faces poked 
voo doo doll holes that stung. Our 
teacher yelled at me yet again; the 
detention she gave me spelled out 
my ongoing social condemnation in 
blackboard chalk that was chipping 
away slowly into pulverized dust.

Originally Appeared in Nerve Cowboy



The Ice Men Cometh


my last surviving grandmother passed
away; I will never forget the time she took me
to the church she worked for, a congregation
populated by attractive television stars
chanting hallelujah and amen
for a huge spectacle involving
muscular men throwing their unprotected
skulls into massive blocks of ice
their heads unscathed as they
announced that Jesus had given
them the power to crush the blocks of 
ice with their heads while at the same
time protecting them from Satan's evil,
but probably not severe brain damage
I think of the manic glee on my
grandmother's face as another
head split a block in two
and she whispered "praise the Lord"
I really hope she's 
in the Heaven she had so much
faith in, a faith I don't share
not just because of my 
faith in science and the dangers of
brain damage
but because I never could in my
heart and mind feel the power
that seemed to gently blind her
with joy through the final decades of
her time on this strange
earth and it's degrees 
of suffering
with more peace
of mind in the face of the
unanswered questions
we all have as stardust
in the tangled web of this
universe; 

but most of all
I regret not calling my
grandmother all of these
years, my hand now extends
toward the empty sky to
her and the rest of 
my grandmothers
in the Great Beyond where 
ice is probably plentiful
and easily crushed by
the skulls of angels

Originally Appeared in East Jasmine Review



What Grandpa Left Behind


the backyard was all
split shards of concrete
and twisted metal
surrounding a battered
swing set I sat upon
an old stove with ashes
from a ten-year old
fire and a locked wooden
shack stood decorated
with black widow
spider webs across
all of his old tools--
he was long dead,
and he left the 
ruins of his 
ancient toys
to no one.

Originally Appeared in Trailer Park Quarterly



My Mother's 1970 High School Yearbook


I would always pull it off of the 
bookshelf and get lost in its
floods of mini skirts in mostly 
black and white with the occasional
color shots that made them all look
like they were on an old episode
of Love American Style: 
beautiful young women in curled hair
teasing my loins thirty years in advance.

they made me want to jump into the pages 
of their yellow spine worn volume of other 
people’s hazy memories and disrupt the 
space time continuum by
coming face to mirrored face with my
mother's two foot high beehive and
scalp tickets for the Flying Burrito Brothers
to girls who keep calling me "man" in 
the dying restroom smoke
of drowned cigarettes in flushing toilets
before they ask me if I have any whites 
or reds and its these kinds of things
that help me to stop daydreaming and 
deal with the weirdness of my own time, 
and hopefully meet a girl along the way
who likes miniskirts.  

Originally appeared in The Mas Tequila Review 



Garage King


my grandfather converted
it into a pool hall in the 1960s
and it's signature yellow shag
carpeting survived into the new
millennium.  I returned to stay
temporarily but have lingered
a year or two longer than we
expected, T-Bone Walker's
bent strings howling out of
a stereo speaker while I pace
around the ancient billiards 
table in my underwear, reading
a tabloid from 1973 that was 
recently found in the attic, it's 
pages crinkling into pieces of 
nostalgic dust that I inhale while 
it's ghosts pray for the moment 
I put on my pants and never return, 
leaving them to their after lives in
a museum of the past I don't 
need to guard anymore.

Originally Appeared in Illya’s Honey