New Poem and Story

New poem, "My Grandmother Becomes a Young Widow," at Sliver of Stone, a great new journal, and a story, "Smoke," at Conteonline.

Tesla and Love

"Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. When she was ill I knew, and understood; she came to my room and I stayed beside her for days. I nursed her back to health. That pigeon was the joy of my life. If she needed me, nothing else mattered. As long as I had her, there was a purpose in my life." Nikola Tesla

It's a familiar story, of how Tesla loved a pigeon who settled outside his window. When I first read that quote while researching a book I laughed and shook my head. But that was a few years ago. Then, for a few years after, it made me sad. Now it makes me smile and admire him a little more. Do you think such a capacity for love was connected in some way to his genius? I can't decide.

(The image is said to be the very pigeon he loved.)

New Flash and Two Poems

I've got a new flash piece up at "The Dead Mule Journal of Southern Literature" and two poems at The Meadowland Review

Bliss is Possible

I've been trying to get on a plane for a short flight to D.C. since 5:30 this morning. Now it's 8:30 p.m. and I'm at my dining room table writing this and checking in occasionally to watch my next scheduled flight be postponed, and postponed again. It's probably dead but doesn't know it yet and I'll have to start over again tomorrow.

)ver the last fourteen hours I've gone through frustration, anger, regret, anxiety, at least two loooong transits through self-pity, more anger--but now I'm floating over the room. I'm lighter than a baby's hand. I can barely reach the keyboard and when I do my fingers blur on impact. I am no longer a corporeal being! My senses are deranged and I'm full of bliss.

Thank you, United Airlines, thank you!

The Picture Above

It's not the ears, too big, like the nose. The hair is boyish and well-trimmed—his father was a barber—but a little too Kennedy, perhaps? Doesn't it have a practiced air? Partly it's the collar, the vest, and the old suit coat. They say "Poverty, but I don't care." And the bottom lip that is, forgive me father for saying so, almost too soft for manliness, while the upper lip is almost not there, as though the bottom one got more than its share.

Most of all I admire the eyes with their sweet snap of "I've got you." He was sixteen in the photo, or so I've been told, and already burdened with lying jester's eyes, too skilled by then at pushing the truth away. And, though I can't escape the truth in his eyes, I cling to the note of innocence you see in the youngster slump, the touch of arrogant twentieth-century America. But what I love most is the crease across the top.