Caballo in my fridge

Caballo in my fridge

There’s a caballo in my fridge. I tired to get away from it.  I wasn’t even going to admit it to anyone, but it’s all I can hear, in the game, on the TV.  Real Madrid is playing Girona.  And the word is like a hammer on glass, a dripping faucet in the...
A Wave I Now Miss

A Wave I Now Miss

There is a fist of reef that grips the island’s shore that I have come to know. It sits between two rivers that spill their silt and centuries to the sea, their channels that cut like bookends around a library of words. It sits like a crown of coral and stone, sweeps...
Churches and Museums

Churches and Museums

My kids make fun of me every chance they get. Not that there is anything unique to that claim. Kids have been making fun of their parents for 1.8 millions years, when the first Homo erectus pre-teen grunted mockingly at his dad’s failures. Is that pile of sticks...
Fireflies and Dreams

Fireflies and Dreams

These memories are not mine. Yet they define who I am. I cannot tell one from the next, what’s real from these dreams. They are all gilded in the same gold, their insides all scripted in the same looping scrawl.   And all I can do is stare at this jar, guess at the...
Bairro Ribeira, Porto – 23 August, 2018

Bairro Ribeira, Porto – 23 August, 2018

Nothing represents Porto if not the seagulls and men of the streets, a grubby lot cast from a mold distinct from those that form other men. They are skinny and weathered, with narrow features that at times have the quality of clay being squeezed too hard between two...