There’s a fat bumblebee swerving between the buttercups in the shaggy patch of grass below my porch. She delicately mounts a yellow petal and investigates its inner regions, then sails to the next, a shaggy head of white clover. I know I should mow the lawn. The dandelions are reaching their long necks up to…
“What do you think, gals?” Dave calls out to me and Hannah, since we’ve already taken a position standing two feet behind him and off to the side. “Two sardines, two squid?”
I think it’s going to take a lot more than that to bait the hundreds of crab pots Dave says he has waiting offshore, but I don’t say it. It’s obviously a question that we’re meant to answer affirmatively, to keep up the charade that we know what we’re doing. There’s an awkward pause. Obviously, Hannah isn’t interested in playing.
Writers on an oaky hill
Wind sweeps birdsong by
Tiny spider reads the page
The men in this town do not jog. They sprint. The one going by now does it evenly, naked from the waist up including his bald head, cheeks puffed out below wire-rimmed glasses. He runs on the street, too quick for the narrow sidewalks, with the moms and their strollers all parading underneath lamp-post banners that read “Eat. Shop. Drink. Think.” Which is nice, putting thinking down as something one could do for fun. Purchase a bold new scarf at the Chicos, allow the coding solution you needed to materialize before your very eyes.
Lots of things make me happy. Words. Funny little drawings. Getting mail. Do you love these things too? I hope so, because for a long time I’ve wanted to take my blog beyond the digital realm and into the real world. The postcard campaign is the closest I’ve come to making that dream come true.…
Two men and one woman walk up to a building that appears to be a restaurant. They enter the glass doors and approach the Hostess’ podium.
Hostess: Welcome to Decor. Will you be having your dining experience in the Hipster Lounge or the Stuffy Dining Room today?
Guest A: The Lounge, please.
Hostess: Wonderful. May I start you off with a table? Today our specials are hand-hewn wood slab or retro formica.
The Spring 2018 issue of the Timberline Review is now available for purchase on their website! www.timberlinereview.com. My essay, “What to Wear on Windy Days” appears in this issue. Although an earlier version of this work appeared on this blog last July, it underwent some major changes after I took my month-long bicycle sojourn across the…
“Line up all the cars,” my nephew instructs, as only a four-year-old can. I dutifully place each metallic replica on the colorful plastic racetrack, bumpers touching. Spencer separates them each by a millimeter.
“Good,” he says, sitting back on his haunches. He loves cars, and he loves things to be ordered. My brother walks by, eating pasta.
“Too many cars on the road,” he observes. “How are they going to get anywhere?” We ignore him. The track is a loop, anyway. The cars are on it, and they’re exactly where they’re supposed to be.
![By Jessie Eastland (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://tuula11.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/big_ears_sitting.jpg?w=220&h=126&crop=1)
Looking for long-eared lopers in the hedgerows and wild-rosehip spreckled hillsides around this brown puddle backup to a backup reservoir — well maybe I’ll just admit now, everything easier to see clearly when soon abandoned — that it really is just water for the motorhomes motorboats and motormouths who spend the summers droning while the dog, my sister and I investigate the hardened pathways that lead both away and toward the parking lots.
This winter I got lost in a fantasy world through the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin. That woman knew magic. Not the Harry Potter type of magic — all that shouting and running about — but earth magic.
It’s a simple theory, explained in the first book of the Earthsea series, which she penned in 1968: In the true names of things is where power of magic can be found.
I
You hear the creak of the metal gate behind you, the echoing clang as it closes, but you don’t look back. The Things have caught up to us, left us drawing erratic breath under a stormy sky, standing at the edge of somewhere we don’t quite recognize.
The dunes. The distinctive smell hits us first, its sharpness invoking the spiky dune grass. We walk between clumps, each point penetrating our jeans, the skin on the back of our hands, demanding attention.
1) During the 2011 International Coastal Cleanup, volunteers collected 120,450 pounds of plastic bags off of beaches in the United States.
I just need some lentils. Well, and also some oats. I peer around the slow-moving bodies, hopeful for a stack of paper bags tucked between the rice and granola bins. A skinny kid in an apron is checking the steel jugs of vinegar, oil and syrup.
