Just finished an essay that I thought I would publish here. Then I thought, wait a minute, I should submit this for publication. So the search is on for a journal, any journal, that will publish a piece called "Lake Shitty Way".
Since submitting my essay means I had better not drop it here (yet), I guess I might as well share with you this piece, which was published in Ruckus about a year ago:
The Japanese Garden
This is the hardest I've seen
my grandmother laugh:
a frog with a rock on its back.
Was it the strange reversal
of nature, usually the frog
sits on the rock, or the fact
that the frog, unstartled,
stared back at her after
she tossed a stone at it?
My grandmother is a hard read.
The licked tooth, the scrupulously
clean kitchen. Direct subtext.
She gives marvelous responses
to poetry. Explained "number one"
instead of "I have to pee."
When grandfather exclaimed
"My son. I have a son!"
She said "Yes. Sometimes you
just forget,” her delicate hands
clasped around his waxy fingertips.
But anyway, she thought
that frog was hysterical.
Those peals of laughter
sent ripples across the pond.
