One of the most memorable nights of my life with my cousin Gary involved a urinal at a now defunct bar in Charlottesville.
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The Seizure
A grand mal seizure reveals something more dire: anaplastic oligodendroglioma.
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The First Phone Call
My phone rang. A familiar voice spoke with a sense of urgency. “Jeremiah is in the hospital.”
Stephen King terrorized my childhood in the 1980s. I’m pretty sure he (and It) terrorized your childhood too.
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The New Kid
At first, I didn’t like the new kid. I resented him actually. That would all change in time as Jeremiah grew to be one of the best friends I would ever have.
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The Music Stops
No one ever said this would happen. That it could happen.
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The Gilliam Shed
Or, how I got that really cool scar on my left elbow
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Creature from the Black Lagoon
A prehistoric creature lurks in the waters. A creature from the black lagoon.
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Robbie, Junior
Robbie is my second cousin, a little more than a year and a half older than me. His grandmother, Elner, my Papa Hamlett’s sister and my great aunt. Though our blood was inextricably linked through kin, there is more to it than that.
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The Court
Blue jeans and flannel shirts and ratty white Reeboks adorned bodies that twisted in mid-air for a lay-up or a rebound ricocheted off the rim. Young women in short shorts and sundresses laid on the hillside and watched their boyfriends.
“They’ll bite off your toes,” Robbie’s mom Joanne told us of the hogs. “Especially the babies.”
There used to be a sign as you entered town that read in a big bold font, “Welcome to Phenix, Virginia: A Nice Place to Live.” When I was in high school, this sign hung above my headboard in my bedroom until one night, around 3 a.m., it came crashing down on me as I slept.
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The Ghosts of Childhood
The thin, lanky figure stepped to a chink in the gray-black pavement that opened like the veins of a broken waterway, spilling horizontally across the basketball court. He bent his knees. His eyes searched for a direct line to the back of the rusted hoop, and he released a jump shot. The flick of his wrist made a popping sound as his fingers pointed straight ahead. Textbook release.
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My Dad Died, But He Is Not Dead
Something kids of dead parents know is this: it gets better, but only when you accept the pain and look the suffering in the eye and ask, “What do you want me to know? What is it you want me…
A runner comes face to face with an ill-tempered Canadian goose in a story of man vs. bird.
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Writing about running
To write about running or not to write about running: that is the question.
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The snake and the vine
Do your eyes and ears deceive you? Has the shade of your perception been primed by wrong speech and wrong view?
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The frog and the fish
A zen poem.
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Before it is lost
You can continue to be the person you have always been, and no one will bat an eye; You can be the person you are becoming, and few souls will think twice; Or you can be the person you are…
What were you expecting, weirdo? “Vacuum.” Drawing by Jeffrey Pillow. Nothing turns my wife on more than when I’m holding one of these in my hand. Upstairs, downstairs . . . doesn’t matter.
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The birds are still asleep
A free verse poem about the early morning songs of backyard birds.
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Lovesick for you
To quote Leon Phelps, “What is love? What is this longing in our hearts for togetherness? Is it not the sweetest flower?”
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No, I wasn’t hacked
(aka my bad for sending you a sample template by email)
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I saved a chickadee’s life
I helped save a chickadee’s life on Saturday. Here’s a photo of the little fella in the palm of my hand. Meet Chick Norris This little chickadee stayed in my hand for about 10 minutes until he flew away. I…
I smell the charred pan fried edges of a bologna burger and the burnt rubber tires of an amateur race car driver spinning out in Turn 3 and the body stench and beer sweat pouring out of a race fan…
The thing about running is that it’s damn near impossible to be stuck in your own head while you’re out there putting one foot in front of the other. You can start a run in your own head. Maybe you’re…
The blinds are drawn, my desk lamp dimmed as I sit down to write at 7 a.m. A small speaker sits on the window sill playing a song I haven’t heard in years as the sadness finds its way back in. I’ve…
Sleep when the birds sleep Close your eyes when the birds do Wake when the birds wake. Below is an audio recording of the birds in my backyard at 5 AM. Every morning when I wake, I open the kitchen window…
We were teenagers: 13, 14, 15 when the random thought came to us. I’m not sure who had the idea. I think it was Jeremiah, but it may have been Robbie. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t me. Let’s go running.…
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Stowaway On a Cloud
A short poem about grieving the loss of my dad in my life and the crow that helps me alleviate this pain
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Ants Like Cattle at a Trough
It’s been a dry spring. The grass as crunchy as corn flakes without milk. The last rain I can barely remember now. The ants seem to appreciate the saucer of water I left out back for the birds on the picnic…
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The Catbird
The kitten mews a hungry cry Just outside my window bay Then flutters away into the sky.
If I abruptly go silent while on a conference call, The most likely reason is that a bell hornet the size of a Goodyear blimp Has flown into my office window which I keep open while I work Due in…
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Tin Whistle
There is a small bird whom I cannot see, hidden amongst the limbs blowing a tin whistle.
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A Curious Wind
A curious wind enough to tip a vessel the morning you left.