I go back to walk on privileged streets to find the poem that I lost. I see pillars here and ivy there and potholes in between. There are stacks of places, people spaces. I think I’d go crazy up there. There are towers and gables and shingles at odd angles all doll-houses blown up to life-size. And the people like husks float around in the dusk with all their life sucked out. They go to little places and work in little sp...

My parents split when I was two, and neither are wealthy. I was raised by my mom and her family. Both sides of my family tend to fall into talking about inheritances when I’m around. Maybe it’s because I never asked much of them, and they want to say that they will give me something someday, I don’t know. I’m not looking for anything from them, life was enough. As far as keepsakes and heirlooms go, there are a few odds an...

I want, very much, for God and Science to reconcile. What I mean by this is that I want God to come off His holy highness and exist in a way that is congruent with the reality around us mortals. I want Science to quit being so dogmatic and narrow minded, and become conscious. Like many other people, I’ve been through the religious meat-grinder that force feeds the one book, the One Truth, the One Way, and excretes mindles...

Hired for the dirty job of cleaning the dirty life Out of the corners of a house long lived in By a man recently dead. An eccentric intellectual hippie of a fellow Whom I had never met before he died But knew with an intimacy many missed Boxes of papers stood in the corner I pulled a random parchment from one His PhD from UCLA, signed by Governor Reagan. What is a doctorate without a man? All the work that went into this...

Two friends were smoking, enjoying the hour: An old dog wheezed, even creaked, at their feet “Soon so soon, the dog-god she’ll go to meet, Pain she’s in makes her shake and cower, When she goes I’ll plant her in the bower.” "Like the cookies? They’re made from real good sheet The strained off leaves are in a pile out back." Ol’ dog staggered out, no great show of power She ate the cast off and laid still as death Stoners...

When a new McDonalds opened up in Ronan, they put “HIRING” up on their sign, and were flooded with hundreds of applications within hours. This is probably why a factory that assembles any kind of cordless electric drill you could buy opened up in this small reservation town, simply because there were a lot of people who were eager to work for minimum wage. Eloise was one of them. She blended in seamlessly with the crowd o...

I cried as I wrote an eight page love letter. It was well after midnight, and I had to be up at four to go to work in the morning. My soul was storming because he was gone. Big drops fell on the notebook paper and blurred the lines. I never got a chance to talk to him, and he was gone. He was supposed to become my husband someday. I was secure in that, but I waited too long, and he was gone. This is not how the story was...

Joe Butler was a wildlife biologist who worked for the tribe. He was from back east somewhere. Joe was a bearded bachelor who lived at the end of Gunzler lane, where he built a unique house. The only side of his house that wasn’t buried within a range-land hill was the east side. Plate glass windows, shaded by a gable, looked out upon the sun rising behind the Mission Mountains every morning. The dry range grasses and sag...

BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP!!! “Ugh . . . It’s your turn. I just went.” Missy said as she pushed her husband, Leonard, out of bed. His body was hot. He groaned but got up. She snuggled down into the warm spot he left behind. Leonard went to the porch and put on a tan pair of Carhearts and went out to the big green Ford. His dark eyes were bleary, it didn’t seem like his turn. His breath and body heat fogged the windows in...

With all the demonstrations last month that protested police brutality, the topic has come up quite a bit. I’ve found myself remembering a horrible experience I had when I was about fourteen. It was payday, and our regular payday splurge was a six-pack of Coke and a box of greasy fried chicken and jo-joes. Mom and I were leaving Pache, the Native American HUD housing project where we lived, about to turn onto the road tha...

I have several secrets for growing large pumpkins. The basic essentials are good, like water, cultivated soil, manure or other nutrients in the dirt. Luck has a bit to do with it, no late freezes, no unkind weather. I don't let more than one pumpkin grow on each vine. Most people know this kind of stuff, but my super secret is birth control pills. I plant lots of birth control pills around the root of the pumpkin. Well, I...

When I was small: My mom looked out the kitchen window at the Mission Mountains. “They are so large today. The Sheep’s Head is so amazing. Pumpkin, come here.” She lifted me to the window. I saw snow. She pointed. “Do you see the Sheep’s Head?” she said. I saw some sticks that looked a little like antlers. “It’s over there, the horns curl, see,” she said. “I can’t see any sheep,” I said. “It’s there,” she was so emphatic...

Last night was so dark I opened and closed my eyes And there was no difference And within my soul I was a follower Of Allah and the prophet Mohamad Convinced within my mind that I had to find Mecca A burden of prayer To escape the darkness But which way to turn I felt through the darkness with my mind And a metallic weight in my brain pointed north But this feeling for north that I have Sometimes points due south So I kne...

I don’t like chickens, actually that isn’t the truth, I’m scared of them. There, I said it, and I said it first, so it can’t be used against me. I’ve had several traumatic memories from childhood that make me feel jittery and slightly nauseous around chickens, or more specifically roosters. There was the time I was visiting my Aunt, and the neighbor came over, and he had big bloody holes in his jeans. It looked like a dog...

Laurence Cullen had icy blue eyes, thick black hair, and a wild temper that was encouraged by his Russian mother’s doting and his Irish father’s genes. “I rebuilt it, you didn’t pay for it, it’s mine and you can’t have it back until you pay me for it, but I think I’ll throw it in that truck over there, and once it’s in, I’m not takin’ it back out for you,” the mechanic said. “Bullshit,” Laurence said as he walked into the...