Archive for 2015
Slab Man
My husband left me last night not for another woman but because he just found out I loved his best friend but that shouldn’t have mattered much since that guy’d dumped me a couple of weeks earlier. I sure was feeling bad this afternoon and told my boss I had a fever and needed to…
Read MoreHungry Candidates
This story is from the rousing campaign book “King Donald”
Read MoreGuy Rose Paints a Peasant
“Pardon me, Madame,” I say in French to a lady framed in the Crocker Art Museum. “May I ask you a few questions?” “You can see I’m busy, I reckon.” “Yes, but you’ve been at this task a long time and I thought you could take a little break.” “I’ll keep working, go ahead and…
Read MoreNeighborhood
street signs claim gun and drug free zone
Read MoreMadam
drop your cloak and veil
Read MoreHill of Shame
you ask why with blankets and refreshments we like tourists go to parash hill overlooking gaza and i confess i need angry orange flames and plumes of smoke black white and gray and to see buildings collapse and afterward study crimson photos of corpses wrapped white in sheets like those covering my children when they…
Read MoreTrust
This story is from the rousing campaign book “King Donald”
Read MoreSenior Scams
Don’t think thieves have no conscience. Some of us feel quite guilty, even before capture. Thankfully, I think I’ve outgrown my unacceptable tendencies; serving two stints in prison and turning seventy make a man mellow and empathetic. Today I’m just one of about fifty aging residents of Paradise Homes who’ve gathered in the community center…
Read MoreProfiling
essential profile three quarters shooters right wing whites
Read MoreShooters
buy more guns to shoot the shooters
Read MoreWhere did Hitler Die?
I spent twenty years researching and writing a biographical novel called Hitler Here and hoped, after some post-publication interviews, I’d never have to answer any more related questions, which tended to be either of the “Did Elvis really serenade Hitler on Mars?” or “We sure need another guy like him, don’t we?” variety. Most such…
Read MoreKobe Decides
This story is in the collection “Basketball and Football”
Read MoreTurkey to ISIS
miles of isis tanker trucks back and forth syria to turkey
Read MoreDeadly Numbers
I was an Iraqi professor of statistics until the United States and later ISIS destroyed my classroom and much of the university. I suppose I should thank each group for attacking when school wasn’t in session, but I believe that may have been coincidental. At any rate, like civilized people everywhere, I commiserate with the…
Read MoreRonda Rousey Returns to Earth
I haven’t been a regular fan of boxing or mixed martial arts for a long time. As a kid and young adult and even into early middle age I used to growl and cheer like millions of other bloodthirsty souls who enjoyed watching people destroy each other. Disappointingly, I don’t recall questioning this behavior. At…
Read MoreDeli Delight
I was hungry and the manager of the gallery showing wild faces said the deli across the street’s world famous go on over and get something. Okay I said and pressed the steel arrow to red-light busy Melrose Ave. and allow me to cross. Inside the deli large glass cases featured food I began studying…
Read MoreFreud and Wife Visit Picasso
In Paris Lucian and I again socialize with other glamorous and creative people, and most mornings he paints while I write, imagining myself a female Fitzgerald thirty years after Scott brought exotic but doomed Zelda to this marvelous city. Several Parisiennes tell me Lucian and I might be an even more dazzling couple. Within a…
Read MoreWhat Happened to Camilo Cienfuegos?
Please remember that on October twenty-sixth, 1959, at a massive rally outside the presidential palace in Havana, thousands of Cubans cheered the leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro, who launched another interminable speech. At a point when rational listeners began to tire, Camilo Cienfuegos, commander of the rebel army, arrived and stepped onto the stage…
Read MoreParking Lot Painter
No one buys my oil paintings on canvas. No one buys my acrylics. No one buys my watercolors. No one hires me to paint murals. They’re all fools. I have great work crying to be seen, and I prove it every weekend at street painting festivals all over. We don’t actually paint. We draw, usually…
Read MoreChe Lives
For months the Bolivian army, guided by the CIA, hunts Che Guevara before wounding and capturing the worn and emaciated revolutionary. He’s taken to a small, dirt-walled schoolhouse in a mountain village and his hands and feet are separately bound. That night, as asthmatic Che wheezes and writhes on the filthy floor, Bolivian officers and…
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