BLACKCACKLE

Ronald Reagan Was an Idiot (and other observations about my birth year) I was born late. I could give any number of reasons I wanted to stay put. Every birth…

THE NIGHTLIGHT ANNUNCIATION Last night I dreamed that my front lawn was littered with the bodies of elementary school principals. My instincts tell me this speaks to either the death…

Small things I admit to after 44 years of finding dirty dishes in the dish drain     I’ve decided to stop complaining and put them away dirty   when it’s time…

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE I am the invisible bridge the bear tiptoes across (Oh, you thought, maybe, he was jumping into the stream?) Wrong! I am the invisible bridge the bear…

New Patient Intake Form Instructions: Please answer the questions, then return this form to the woman at the desk. Name: My Japanese great-grandmother immigrated to California. She shed her birth…

If this is heaven it’s very disappointing, I’ve the exact same painting and clock. Another not dead day, this one sunny. That’s something. I hear pottering and smell soup. Mary…

While waiting for my therapist, I flip through the DSM-V and learn that I do not meet the criteria for the following diagnoses: Boanthropy: a condition in which the subject…

“The shoes are cursed,” I mutter, as the number that’s always floating in front of my eyes drops from fifty years to seven seconds. I hastily pull away my hands…

I used to wait in my car for him to call. I’d sit in my parking spot outside my parents’ building where I was staying and look at the moon,…

As an older millennial, I find it impossible to date anyone who isn’t named Thad. It’s become so dire that I assign them nicknames: Trucker Hat Thad, Clown Thad, and,…

EVEN PLUTO’S ORBIT SOMETIMES CROSSES WITHIN Giselle’s funeral was awkward enough, but things got even tougher after the neighbor kid claimed that the two of them had switched. “Our luggage…

VIAGRA Three weeks after her ex-husband’s suicide attempt and somehow Helen was still taking care of him. He’d installed himself in the attic bedroom like some sort of manically depressed…

WHY I STOPPED WORKING OUT The snow is uncritically beautiful. It paints the slow steeples of alley way garages and abandoned minivans with cheerful postcard radiance. The cat gives me…

The interview, which had already been going unfavorably, took a turn for the irreparable when the glob of phlegm that had been lodged in Dave’s throat all morning fired abruptly…