The Rooster crows at the Moonpouring light down the mountaininto fog and over frosted fields made luminoustouching shadows spun behind trees and between barns, bushes, and bramble.But I am blind to all of itlaying in the lap of nightbreathing low and slowin stillness as soft as silt.Caught in inner constellationsof tangled...
AMHERST The line outside Craig’s Place at 434 North Pleasant St in Amherst, the only homeless shelter in Amherst, starts to form around 9:00 p.m.. Waiting in queue, the group of mostly men talk and smoke cigarettes as they wait, more people arrive in ones and twos, emerging out of the darkness to be painted by floodlights. The...
NORTHAMPTON On a busy afternoon at Haymarket Cafe in the heart of downtown Northampton Tricia McDonough, 26 from Easthampton MA and a barista makes the call to the Northampton Police Department because someone has locked themselves in a bathroom and seems to be unresponsive. The problem first surfaced when several customers asked...
Waking next to you
Is as sweet as that first Spring rain, Gently tapping on the window sill.
“Let’s go see what’s up here,” she said, motioning up a dirt path. My friend Laura and I are out taking photos of the land I have just moved to, 100 acres of mixed wood forest in rural Massachusetts. Autumn is full bloom all around us. Gold and red carpet the ground and cling to the tops of branches as if to set...
He cried out for his mom, pleading to air and asphalt for the long deadcrushing the country into another momentary island of waking. A man casually took the life of another,In front of everyoneand if you fall for the distraction of the uniformyou may miss the message of its privilege: convenient castration. The world...
The first time I met Paul I was not quite sure what I had gotten myself into. He was a friend of a friend who was interested in missions, that’s what we called Urban Exploration events in 1998, before we knew it was a named and widespread hobby. He was quiet but passionate. As I came to know him Paul seemed like a good friend who...
22.April.2019 I am sitting on a woman’s chest. We call this Mount position. I am trying my best to choke her with both hands. My right hand grasps the back of her collar so that the boney side of my wrist naturally impinges on her carotid artery as well as the trachea when my other hand closes on the other side of her neck...
Skies slung so lowTree kaleidoscope dreams floatWet and shimmering with half rememberingsOf the season unlacing.
Life isnaming new ways to say itthese rags of all I ammay only spill in so many wayson wings of dreamsin song of prayer or spell of sleepslip to skin, like years and whisper by candlelightI love you, I love you, I love you.
My friend Misty Catherine Bassi was killed riding her bike in 2009. She was the most gentle person I have met, and it took me a long time to register that Misty was gone.We met at the UMass pagan group where we were often the only people over 20 to attend meetings. She would always insist on grounding cerebral concepts by...
I stepped off the back of the boat and into the sea, then swam along side to the front or bow of the Tropical Serenity, where a rope called the wreck line was fixed. I tried to use the rope to pull myself down to 25’ as I had yesterday but could only hover at 10’. I was still having real trouble equalizing sinus pressure. It feels...
We set out aboard the Tropical Serenity sometime after dawn with 38 divers, arriving at Molasses Reef, Early Ray Alley about 30 minutes later. The boat slowed and stopped. What 5 foot waves really means is that the ship and everyone on it seemed as if on rollercoaster while standing perfectly still. A wave would pick us up, the...
Aboard the Tropical Serenity,
Key Largo, FL.
In attempting to get my crampons on my fingers froze almost immediately.
Dim coals are coaxed to flame with fuel and a little patience.
The only shelter in Amherst houses 28 guests. The Exit sign shines constant in the wide basement of the Baptist Church, fixed like a false, red moon above a door that no one enters. Its light spills across the linoleum, parting the cots on either side, 20 in all, filled with men anchoring to unmoor. Some twisting, some turning...
It was like a kettle set on a stove, I didn’t notice the arguing at first. It seemed like some commotion between squirrels or songbirds (not really, I’m just making it prettier so you won’t be so depressed as to turn away) had broken out on this clear, cool late April morning. When I heard my dad yelling, I mean...
Shadows trick the eyes, letting the cave feel deeper than it is. The air is cool and pregnant with humidity, touching the skin with a delicate but sudden embrace. The cave is relatively small for what I imagine the mouth of a quarry to be and appears to be shaped like an ‘L.’ The length hugs the Gallery, its short leg abuts the...
6:34 We talked work as we made our way up. The trail had tire ruts, but I didn’t notice tracks any newer than last season. Dark Mud sat where streams often crossed the path. New greening, last season’s brown and stone walls here and there. We came to an impressive ruin of the foundation of a large structure, perhaps a house, at...
cold coffee and French toast from last night’s baguettes splash of bad wine just to finish the bottle sunglasses shield souls worn open simmering with scents of leaves first fallen stirred in soup thick fog pouring through that hair of yours threading Berkshires to Taconic ridge in the midst of your raising and the heart of your...
tell me the places your heart has been
so I might know my own
Rain does not touch you, fearing it could never stop.
A child’s eyes waiting for mom, who will never come home, abandoned to cotton and Crow at 3 months old, just beneath blooming breathing inferno, flash to fury in an atomic second. Dim apartment is a breathless skeleton, the brick and beam will manage to contain the unsayable for a time.
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