Mistaking your dad for somebody else.

This could be a bad thing for you

but it's a good thing for me. See,

I woke up every morning as a kid

with a picture of Ryne Sandberg over my bed.

The bleachers are blurry.

Fan's faces like oil spots and sauce stains.

Bur Ryne Sandberg's face is clear.

He's rubbings his hands across the bill

of his helmet to get pine tar on

his batting gloves.

He holds his bat like an axe,

chops balls in half

and their pieces fall into right field

at George Hendrick's feet.

His face looks like somebody's dad's face.

Cheeks covered in lines and dirt

with a two-day-old beard.

Not the type of dad's face

that would kiss your forhead,

but the type of dad

who spits on his hands before he digs in the yard

and throws handfuls of seeds onto

the lawn's dead patches.

Kidney story. Thoughts. Muncie. Poem.

I started on a story that's told from the perspective of a kidney. It's in a cooler awaiting to be transplanted into a new body. Exciting.

Sometimes I tell myself that thinking is more important than writing. But that's only sometimes. Right now, I think that thought is total bull shit.

I'll be in Muncie tomorrow evening after I'm done working to visit a friend that's getting ready to move to Germany. I'll miss her.

Here's a poem:

There is a ghost from November

burnt into tan grass.

Like the outline of a lake

seen from an airplane, 

its shores are naked 

from tide.

Overturned row boat, fish scales

bugs and boot prints filled with water.

It's a ghost from November

that's a ghost because of

what's there.

How a relationship grows.

Pavement is on.

Pavement is usually on after 10

on work nights.

I'm shirtless, the fan 

on setting 1.

My nipple hair is pointing north.

Talking about 

We're asking questions

and getting answers.

Her left arm is across my stomach,

and 'Kennel District' comes on.

She leans her head onto my shoulder

and says, "I'm glad we talked."

My laptop screen is a white

void in her iris, pupils big

like a beaten dog limping,

then coming to rest on tree roots.

I don't think I said anything

and Steve Malkmus says,

"Why didn't I ask?"

Applying for a job

Fit your entire life into a word document.
Don't mention faith or anything like that.
There are rules, you know.
Print it on embossed cardstock
and place your life into a mailbox.

Forget about your life.
Climb onto a pile of dirt.
Drink lemonade through a straw
and stare up at the clouds
tracing them with your finger.
Cough when seeds get stuck
halfway up.
Don't cough when the wind picks up
and churns dust from a gravel driveway.

When you're done,
go inside and mop the linoleum
until you can see the shape of lightbulbs
in each tile. Scrub the sink with a
ball of steel wool, pick the filth
and soggy corn from its ends.
Drop them into the garbage disposal.
Oops, you turned on the switch
and didn't hear the phone ring.

There are some things you learn to deal with

Some days it'll rain,
and you don't plan for rain.
You'll leave your sunroof open,
ignoring the bull rush of grey clouds
rolling over your house.
Wind will gust like an ocelating fan
and cause leaves to stick against the windows,
making autumn decals.

You'll think, "My car is safe under the carport.
Jessica's Saturn is safe under the carport."
Then remember the hole caused by roofers
dropping a box of shingles through its roof.
You imagine the interior of your car turning
into the center of a universe,
sucking the beading water, acorns
and pollen into the console.

The vinyl seats that you tell everyone
are really leater are spongy and bloated
with sky. Seeds rest between the grey stitches,
attempting to burrow and sprout into trees.
You look outside at your car.
Through the hole in the carport,
open sunroof.
Maybe a seed will turn into a cluster of roots
then into a tree
which will fill the open sunroof
and hole in the carport.

God's dog and garbage

The sky looks dirty today,
as if God opened a vacuum bag
and shook all the dust and dirt into the sky.
Dog hair and paper clips and strings from socks
spread out across blue into Tennessee,
Georgia and Montana.
Light turns a dull toxic orange.

People are excited to see God's dirt
and know he has a dog.
Children rip limbs from trees
take the pointy end
and sketch out God's
labrador. His paws are wide,
occasionally clumsy around stairs.
He has bad hips, decaying gums.

After God takes his labrador to the park,
God walks into his kitchen,
makes himself a chicken salad sandwich
and turns on his a copy
of Van Halen's 1984 on vinyl
just loud enough so the speakers won't hiss.
He chews the crust off first and taps
his foot when "Hot for Teacher" comes on.

When it rains, God's lab rolls around
on the ground and licks his paws.
That's the thunder. God watches
his TV in the dark and that's lightning.

Remember when I said "Nude With Boots" was 2008's best album?

Oops. Very, very good. 

Lots of good music's come out so far this summer. Please go out and enjoy it. Open your wallets for good music!

Burning down a Pizza Hut.

Trust me, it's easy.
Disregard the squirrell
chewing on his thigh.
There's a five-gallon jug of kerosene
in the trunk of my Buick.
Walk around the perimeter of the Pizza hut,
the nozel turned downard with gas splashing
onto brown tweed slip-on shoes.
Make sure to get some in the lava rock
that surrounds the bushes, too.
And the windowsill.

Don't light the match until someone's
at the drive-thru window. The exhaust fumes
will give the flame a redish hue.
This means the fire will mix in with the
world-famous Pizza Hut slanted roof.

Look! It's a Taurus. Flick the flint downward
and drop it in between the crack in the sidewalk.
That'll give you enough time to walk away.
MMMMM...I love the smell of sparked flint.

Spending all day outside in the present, past and future.

Neal flings his sunburned legs to the end of his bed. His calves and feet hang over the folded jersey-knit sheets. Pink sunspots pulse like a dog's tongue hanging out of its jowels, lapping up mouthfuls of water. Sweat on his forehead beads and rolls into his eyes. The sensation stings and reminds him of the doctor.


Sounds of hammers pinged against dented robin's egg blue siding. Kids pumped their squirt guns and ran circles around the base of his ladder. The soles of their shoes made tracks in the spots of the lawn where the August drought turned grass brown. Neal hoped a piece of siding would come off and fall to the ground, slowly swinging around in a fat circle like one of those tree seed helicopters that dogs chase after.

Kids annoy Neal. He does handy work in his town on the weekends to make up for what he doesn't get paid at the garage. A few weeks ago, Neal fixed the leaky spigot at his boss's lakeside cabin and regrouted the faux-granite tile in the enterance way. He always marveled at how straight he could get the odd-shaped pieces to fit that were cut at uneven angles. It was his favorite thing to do. Setting pieces stacks of squares onto the wet stone cutting saw, spraying cloudy water onto his safety goggles.

One boy tugged on the leg of Neal's shorts,"I can tell you're not wearing sunscreen. You might get cancer." He dug his index finger into his left nostril, "doesn't that bother you?"

Neal placed his hammer into the loop on the side of his shorts. "Not as much as kids."

Later in the afternoon, Neal will be headed to Bordeaux Lane where he'll fix a rotting wooden floor filled with holes in a woman's kitchen. The water-soaked panels will bow under his sneakers and hiss like a snake. The women will pat Neal on the shoulder and say "Good job, good job," over and over again.

She'll pay in lemonade and stories about her husband. "He was deputy sheriff for over twenty years when we lived on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. He was hit by stray fire during a bank robbery in 1983."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It'll be one-hundred twenty-five dollars for the floor." Neal will pick at the nailbed on his left pinkey. He will hope the woman to pay him for his work in something other than lemonade.

"Or maybe it was 1984, I'm not entirely sure."

Chapbook Cover

Here's a sneek at my chapbook cover. If it's a bit hazy, I apologize. It's handdrawn and tweaked in Photoshop. Both done by me. Trust me, it looks much better on the hi-def screens at work. I'm starting the page layout and everything tomorrow. My end-of-August release date is still looking like a go.

Horray for humans.