Category: Reflections

A student spoke of writing a sonnet, and I mentioned that I’d written some once, once upon a time. She sounded like she didn’t believe me, like this wasn’t something that she’d expect a math teacher to do. I said I’d written some villanelles, once, too. But I couldn’t tell her if I still had…

I woke, but the dream retained its tendrils in my heart. I had dreamed of a white house with no windows; I was standing outside of it, looking for the door. The sidewalk was cracked, and had heaved from the pressures of the frost and the roots of the tree that stood over my head….

On my car stereo this morning was Rob Jungklas’s “John Doe“, one of the best songs you’ve never heard of. And I have the thought that there’s a small cadre of people that listen to Jungklas and are impressed with him, and they’re his audience. This evening, I’m thinking about how frustrating it is that…

I used to go by a different name. It’s been so long that I’d nearly forgotten. The other day, I was out somewhere when someone said the name. I turned because it seemed like someone was speaking to me, and they were.   I didn’t recognize it at first. It took my mind a few…

A writer writes: That’s what writers do If you’re writing something, then you’re a writer too Whether it’s a fiction, biography, or poem Or just a love note meant for a partner back at home Sometimes we overthink things, and sink inside our gloom That to be a proper writer, we’re locked inside a room…

I was in seventh grade, or maybe eighth, when the girl in the fuzzy sweater told me I was cute. I still don’t know why she decided that I was going to be her boyfriend. I was awkward and out of place. I don’t remember ever fitting in, and certainly not with the girl in…

Today, I am a hero to a gull. And probably a sparrow. Coming out of the Target on John R, I saw a gull attacking a heavily greased brown paper bag. He wasn’t getting very far, and was clearly frustrated. As I walked over to look in the bag, the gull flew off to a…

On one of my routes home, there’s a signpost to which has been affixed a stuffed animal and a plastic figurine of an angel with the head of a little black girl. It’s bleached now from the sun, and the stuffed animal has gotten raggedy from the weather, and the desolation of it gives me…

“There’s a shadow in the mirror with a glimmer of the one that was.” My creative juices are like a gas-powered lawn mower that’s been kept a few too many seasons. I pull the cord and the engine kicks over a few times and I think that it’s the time that things will engage, but…

You were the Buddha. That’s what you’d told us when you’d gone to China and the children had gathered around you, this towering behemoth of a man with a round belly and an expansive smile. When you were lying there, flat, stomach distended from post mortem gasses, I tried to be sad at your loss….