Last Bender

4.2
I drank a glass of water and ran downstairs, startling Luis, the super’s cousin, who was about six-foot-four and weighed less than two hundred pounds. The angularity of his body reminded me of my father’s. He was smoking a joint with a guy and watching the crap game on the stoop next door. Luis was [...]

4.1
Saturdays are slow unless it rains, and there are different regulars. A lot of weekend warriors of course. Fathers dragging their teenaged children down the Negro streets at dawn. A guy with grey hair and a look of pained happiness came in with two daughters, young teens, or, more execrably, tweens. As they adjusted to [...]

3.3

For days after that I languished in the most divine state of love-stricken wasture, waiting for her call. Nothing else mattered. All there was in the world vanished before the image of her hand.
Simon had decided not to quit work after all and was in a horrible mood. He and Leonard glared at each other [...]

 
 
Frail mosaics
of wooded hillsides
crumbling tiles
 
Autumnal clowns
in precarious quilts
 
Like shivering coins
of copper and vermilion

This the chapter excerpt I was going to read on Sunday but was persuaded not to.
Elma stared out the window of the car. Irmela got in back and pouted.
“I don’t have time to drive around, so I’m dropping you at David’s. You don’t like it there, get in the car and drive somewhere else. I [...]

3.2
We got pizza on Ninth Avenue and walked to our usual stoop. They were selling Christmas trees on the street and the air smelled of pine and kerosene from the heaters where the men warmed their fingers. The sky was overcast and a thin, chilly breeze blew in off the river. Down the block, on [...]

I’m reading on Sunday, November 11th, 4pm at Buffalo Street Books, in Ithaca, from Gaha: Babes of the Abyss. Please come if you can, it should be a great event, and I don’t read often anymore. Actually, I don’t read at all anymore! But Gaha got me excited, way back in August, when I signed [...]