I’ve offered bushels of wheat, walked barefoot on hot roads, waded through savage waters and have found little to show for it all. Reggie says this as …
One summer night we went down to the clover field near the big barn. Reggie’s cat was buried there and he was sure he had buried …
I hardly remember anything about that trip except for the busted lip. Reggie stumbling on the tile and banging his lip wide open just outside the …
I’m past the point of caring. Are they yours or not? He asked me over dinner; we ate leftovers, sour day old shrimp paired with …
I left Reggie at the burger joint; sour-eyed, lips quivering, hands wandering under the table looking for bare legs. He wanted me to move back …
They were my grandmother’s sisters and I think they were from Scarsdale. She wasn’t included in the photo, she was younger, played on the studio …
Eyeing at me from the bed, tempting me over. What’s it about those films? Every time you make me watch one, I have bad dreams. He’s smoking in …
We found them under the garage, plump and aware. They were willful creatures and tore into most food we offered. One of them preferred tuna and the …
Din dudie, din din. Reggie’s dragging his shoes through the tall grass looking for turtles. He finds the mouse and swoons. Look here, we got a …
Reggie built the shrine in the bedroom. He lay before it most evenings, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the smoke rolling over red polester and golden …
Saving Memories
Saving Memories
Whether it’s a memory of a past partner or a fantastic vacation, one of the best ways to keep memories alive is to create a …
Reggie brought me the turtle on Sunday. Left it in the yard as a surprise. I woke that morning, hung over from Pepsi and some …
Reggie sweeps out back and I pour wine. The neighbors come by and sweet talk us into dinner. We meander on over, Reggie swings a …
You’re probably wondering what Reggie looks like. Is he clean cut, wholesome, walks his mother to the mail room everyday, greats the sisters who run …
I have a diorama in my soul, don’t you see it? It’s filled with buffalo and foam rocks. There’s a story there; I see the …
I broke up with Reggie behind the bear cages at the carnival. There was a brown bear with a rubber chain collar around his neck …
Reggie drives me down to glamor town or at least that’s what he used to call it. We eat dinner – chop suey and subgum …
Athena was a childhood friend. We’d skirt the grass together, wrestle it down with our bare feet, wearing little. I don’t remember a time when …
I had cancer once when I was 14. It mottled my appearance and turned areas of my skin a wan, lifeless brown, the color of …
Mom and the dog. Reggie can’t remember his name but he was his favorite. He was a show dog but a wiry little fuck, always …
I think this is Reggie’s father. There’s something scrawled on the back of the photo, I can only make out 1937. Dick. The rest is …
Yeah, it was the same old vending machine. I met Reggie standing next to this aqua delight. It had been there for years, I was …
Can I offer you a glass of something? It’d be swell if we could remember one another. Build it up, cradle, caul one another until …
There’s a stance one takes – you know? What stance? I’m not sure what you mean? The sort of stance where one is sure of things. Where …
If there’s a window to the world it’s not this world we’re seeking. Reggie says this in his sleep. Crackerjack philosophy. Organic molecules are misunderstood. …
What you got for me, E? I ask him who E is but he never tells me. It’s an offering, see he’s saying I give …
Riding down down a path strewn with debris, ivy and dry leaves. I took the old bike out, it was rusted through and through and …
The marital bed. The marital bed 1620. Lice and eggs and eggnog. Scurvy and tack and happy stances. Can you imagine it? asks Reggie, it’s …
Lost on the path, we only had that way to go. But it was towards Duffy’s house, the house with the holes in the wall, …
Nicked on the rusted jungle gym. Blood on the knee. Ripped up and tossed out. Swaying on the lawn. Drunk on the tennis courts. Beer …
The sluice to the netherworld. Beaming under bread bins and sitting in dirty restrooms. There’s this window in the laundry-mat. It’s above the row of high capacity dryers. A …
It’s Timmy Time, he’d shout and run after me, naked and drunk, his hair slicked back in a pompadour. It started last summer when he bought …
We went swimming at the dock. It was late but the water was clear, high tide, seaweed drifting past us in clumps. I put some …
There’s my girl, Reggie pointed out to me as we walked to the corner store. It was late, past midnight, a gang of girls stood outside …
Quick lime and summer swims. Whole afternoons gutted. We went to the Lizzie Borden’s house. Snapped photos of the couch where she slaughtered her father. …
So the horses, so he let the horses out, or not, I can’t be sure but they were roaming the fields by the ha ha …
The telephone is ringing, is that my mother on the phone? he always sang that song when he was angry. Wearing a black turtleneck and …
Time goes mighty slow around here, says Reggie then gives me a big sigh. He buries his head under the pillow but the rest of …
He’s above water, a slight creature, a furry creature, weightless, bounding towards me, double speed with no thought/thoughts, transgressions, salutary reminders, death threats? The …
Reggie liked submissive strangers. I thought I’d tell him he shouldn’t warrant those folks; low fields full of soft people, the graspers and hanger ons, …
The world’s roasting on a slow flame. Roasted above the quakes; the marshes and fens, the slow moving rivers and vacant lots. Many times, I’ve …
A wall of crutches, for the world to use. That’s what I said when I saw them hanging there. It was warm, unseasonably warm, dry …
When he cries, he covers his eyes and the world might go away, astray, bury itself in its selfish hole. When we marry, we marry …
I found the two books in the attic when we were visting his mother in Utah. I wasn’t used to wide, open spaces and felt …
One of the last fights we had was at the arcade. Reggie was shooting cowboy boots and bottles of whiskey at one of those “Old …
That bastard Old Salty! It was Reggie, he was playing with the plastic salt and pepper shakers at the roadside seafood joint. Cap’n Pepper …
What’s the one sport, you’ve ever loved? Reggie asked me. We were in the soccer field at midnight; the grass was dewy and it reminded …
Reggie wanted to write a book called “Fire”. I advised him not to. Leads to high expectations, I said. And what will it really be …
Pick your poison. Your music, your romance, your changes and that’s where it ends. Seven ugly months, rolling down hills, jumping on mattresses, lolling on …
Parties on the back porch and god knows who’s in the chicken coop now. I see now that it’s Reggie, he locked himself in again, …
I’m not so sure I should have followed him. Through the fields of snow, through the back yards, collecting lawn ornaments: concrete gnomes, glass globes …
When I first met Reggie he told me he did a stint at Harvard. “Bones and groans,” he’d say, “a waste of my precious time. The …
He started a beer can collection one Fall. Inspired by us going to this dingy, dark bar in the Everglades where one shelf was lined …
Reggie and the bikes, Reggie and the cars, Reggie playing Mille Bornes with his parent on that camping trip in Utah. The more the merrier, …
Gorrilliz and cold tuna. Listened to them all night and ate from cans of cold tuna. Reggie kept them in the fridge, next to the …
Greed is good, he says and puts the bookmark in his novel. I’m surprised you read those anymore, I say, they’re full of traps. Give …
Before I met Reggie, he collected ashtrays. It started when he was a boy. His mother would ask him to get her one from the …
Reggie and I thought about going to India together. He was an expert on countries he had never been to. “We’ll just fly to Europe and …