One Here we are in the garden of my vanity, across the lawn we go, the grass is high, has not been cut since I do not know when, and down the hole we go with the whole of human history, anonymous me I can say with impunity . . . . I write essays … Continue reading Alice Buconiglio; or, Under the Hedge [a Novella]

Afterwards; or, an Afterword [a short story]   This is not an ordinary tale told by an idiot, but by a person who imagines his readers charitably. Should this stand instead for a good repast; should this tale be told by one who seeks to keep his readers sane, that is sanitized to the condition of … Continue reading When the Tale is Told by an Idiot; or, How You Imagine Fiction Gets Said

Prefatory Remarks by an Anonymous Author If what is an author, is a question, then what is an expositor, is another . . . and this then amounts to what, here, now? Is this yet another fictional exploration of the role of expositor in an essay, and what the expositor becomes when the essay is … Continue reading In Formation [a short-short story]

VIII I am approaching the idea of Gay Marriage from more than the position of civil rights, which is how it wound up in the Supreme Court, which is a very good thing to have had happen. We must understand, though, that it is not the Court that gives Gay Couples the right to marry. … Continue reading Gay Marriage VIII

How much more do we need to know about Ms. Finestra? What esle should I say, or allow her to say--I do not feel that I am impeding her from saying anything that could be said about her, or in her defense, or in aside. Whatever she would need to say would be said. Whatever … Continue reading Before the Law, or, From the Notebook of Chiara Finestra, April, 1995 [a Short Story]

A man on the Alewife-bound Redline to Harvard Square from Park Street Station at Boston Commons down the hill from the gold-domed Statehouse Building and right next to Park Street Church whose graveyard has the grave of Paul Revere is reading Lowell's Notebook 1967-68. He is on his way to Harvard Square to meet a friend for … Continue reading Having Forgotten the Cork Screw [prose poem]

A man in a bistro on a chair at a table across from a woman sitting on the banquet in the far corner diagonally opposite the entrance on the right as you walk in is talking as they have been talking about this or that or some other thing, now another, then yet another, whether … Continue reading A Man in a Bistro Talks of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” [flash fiction]

A Specimen from an Anatomy of Melancholy Sun in the train through the window, shadows cast--a woman plays with her braid, sitting. There, a face of a man asleep, across from me on this train, Manhattan-bound, to meet her after theater class, to go for a drink. I had a slice before I left. Margarita. A … Continue reading How to Read the Face of the Man Across from You on the Train

The sun this morning yellow through the curtains of the living room windows looking east; this morning looking out the window with her gone, my coffee is bitter and lukewarm in the cup on the saucer on the sill, no spoon, as I take my coffee black, no sugar, espresso from the espresso machine that … Continue reading A Matter Of [Flash Fiction]

"Sunsets from the Brooklyn Bridge," she says, "are the most beautiful. You have to go up there and see, she said," saying said, said saying . . . words, words and more words would only be subtraction. Years later, I still only imagine she is right.

. . . a polemical piece written in the form of a letter to a friend by Jose Detras and presented here in its entirety. I came across the text in hard copy, the original, from the hand of a friend of mine from Madrid, who hand inherited the papers of Jose Detras's friend Federico, … Continue reading Hysterical Historical [A Short Story]

Part VIII, next week, Tuesday, March 29th, 2016.   VII All of the former points made in previously published parts notwithstanding, we still see attacks on abortion clinics and a savage opposition to the availability and distribution of birth control, both of which run parallel to the sometimes savage and even violent reactions to the … Continue reading Gay Marriage VII

  Pre-prefatory Remarks Diatribe. A forceful and bitter attack against someone or something, ideas, maybe; unwanted presence, perhaps? Tirade. Invective. A long, angry speech of criticism or accusation, probably both. Polemic. A strong verbal or written attack on someone or something. Preface Hallucinating Van Gogh crows on a canvas I dreamed, I think I dreamed, I remember it … Continue reading A Fictional Essay by a Fictional Essayist in a Fictional America [A Short Story]

  I continue to draw myself into arguments with myself over how I am going to accomplish the tasks I continue to avoid. I avoid; I a void. What am I next?  

My friend, Jay, has just emailed me. (I am sipping my coffee, just brewed, and I am cutting and pasting his email in my blog): Soon to see my book ready. The final proof being reviewed. A minor correction before I agree to setting it for publication. It is his poetry manuscript entitled Land's End. It is … Continue reading The Book is Ready? [Flash Fiction]

I am  a poet, an editor, a teacher, a thinker, a human-being. I am what I like to call a lover of literature. I sometimes say that you have to love literature too much to love it enough--I like to say her for literature. Diatribes and tirades are my forte, a strength I acquired as one of … Continue reading To Essay; a prose poem

I There were no ice flows in the Seine the February we were there, crazy in Paris in the winter. Who goes to Paris in the winter--many it seemed from our wanderings, but it was cold--yet there were no ice flows. We walked the water's edge and feared falling in and drowning, as she said, … Continue reading D’Arc that Brings Light [a Short Story]

Brendan the Navigator was the proposed title for the following piece, differing from the one given to it here in the text, within which the following was contained: A Brief Note on the Voyages of Saint Brendan the Navigator, Irish Monk, Seaman and Saint, as a Preface to a Minor Salute to Saint Patrick, and without any … Continue reading Brendan the Navigator[Flash Fiction]

I am a New Trinitarian. God is He, She and It. There is a way of using traditional trinitarian theology in understanding this idea. After establishing the basic X, Y and Z of the trinitarian theology, we would only need to develop the argument metaphysically in order to appropriately handle the pronomial references for God … Continue reading A Heretical Trinitarian Speaks of the Trinity [Flash Fiction]

Today is the Ides of March. I am planning to re-read Julius Caesar in commemoration.  I remember that this play was the first of Shakespeare's plays I had ever seen on stage. I was in 9th grade . . . I had never before seen a Shakespeare play on stage. Is that true? Perhaps . . . … Continue reading Memory

  In traditional marriage, throughout all the English speaking world, a woman becomes a wife; a man, a husband. In English, these titles, if you will, reveal something intrinsic in the traditional mentality concerning marriage. 'Wife' comes from the Anglo-saxon word for female, not woman or spouse. In this context, female is equal to breeder, … Continue reading Gay Marriage VI

  My book is ready, or so I have assumed, perhaps out of impatience--I do not think so. I am still waiting for the final proof to arrive--how long should that take. I do not get what the publisher is saying or not saying--the not saying having more to do with what I do not … Continue reading Tangental [Flash Fiction]

  Anonymopusly speaking, Ginny, Ginny, come out of your dark room, deny your doctors and refuse that glass of milk. What if, Anonymous said, if this were an untitled manuscript by an anonymous author found on the D Train in the New York City Subway one afternoon? What if I were that person who found this … Continue reading Anonymously Speaking [a short story]

What is it that any man can say about what gets said from him in the guise of others he is not aware of, or not completely in control of when he does at least have an inkling that there is another voice speaking the words he says or writes or thinks, sometimes thinking taking … Continue reading Form Beauty Truth; an Aesthetics of In/Formation [a short story]

Every time I am anywhere there are a number of birds in clusters of flocks or groups if we cannot call such a small numerical congregation of any like birds a flock, I cannot help but imagine what I would do near any of these birds if I were destitute and living on the street, … Continue reading Noble Boozers [Flash Fiction]

I took my students into the middle of traffic on 86th street and generated what they already knew of English warnings and exclamatory clauses. I made sure that before we entered the middle of traffic during rush hour that they only use English. Running, screaming, and panting heavily are universal human responses to on-coming traffic, … Continue reading A Fictional Report on an ESOL Lesson that Might Have Never Taken Place [Flash Fiction]

Prologue What do I remember from my days in university--yes, what do I remember? I am not asking you, nor am I asking me in the way you might assume of you were someone from our contemporaneity who believed what they might say they believed having been formed by any one of the many academic … Continue reading Considerations on Being from Under the Banana Tree

for the Prophet Jeremiah A revised republication of a former blog entry by a man who writes a political blog that he publishes alone and with all the madness inherent from doing the likes in this society of vision through the ass and where doubt has become the highest wisdom. The anus is our third … Continue reading Trump Trumps All Reason [Flash Fiction]

Part VI next week, Tuesday March 15th, 2016. V Homosexual unions in and of themselves do not produce children, and as such, do not qualify as rightful marriage in the mind of many objectors. I mean, if marriage is to be restricted to heterosexual couples, then the presumption is that marriage must have something to … Continue reading Gay Marriage V

I looked to the clouds gathering on the horizon . . . Thomas Sarebbononnato To tell a story of woe; to write down what has been suffered; to see what is afoot; to see where we are going, maybe where we have been; to understand what has been; these and more are what we are … Continue reading Wire Hangers, Curtain Rods, Queers and Guns; a Short Story

". . . [A] duty brought me here to the house of Hades. I had to consult the soul of Teiresias the Theban." Odysseus to his Mother in the house of Hades The Odyssey, Book XI Translated by Robert Fitzgerald I I have to re-imagine space, how I look at objects in place, what I … Continue reading Blind Prophet; two chapbooks of poetry

For Constantin Stanislavski I hear the pot in the kitchen, the sound it makes when the coffee is almost ready, a pot for to make espresso on the stove, a pot from Italy, brewing espresso on the same principle as volcano's erupt. My little Vesuvius, I call it, and I'm only discussing the coffee pot and … Continue reading Espresso Pot; a Short Story

Hot Dogs at Ditch Plains? The distance between places in a city like New York is easy to determine. I count streets, I count avenues, or both, and I know approximately how far one place is from another by counting the number of blocks I have walked. Numbered streets in Manhattan and Brooklyn, for instances, … Continue reading Ditch Plains Dogs; a Short Story

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