one hundred word story #16


It's the impeccability of spring that wakes you up, shakes you from your knees to your fingertips. It's the green greenness of new lawn, the deep-throated ribbits of the pond frogs, the surprise frost on a shining morn. Before you thought the world was just one way or another. Now you see it as rainbow before the sun hits it: unrealized, crisp but not clear. That’s what makes you love: the imprecision, the halt stop halt between words. Without the unpredictability of spring there would be no stories, no characters, no conflict. Shed those layers, will you, and go outside.

one hundred word story #10


The fog is oppressive. Jill and Jack decide to hike up above it. As they climb, they feel the yellowness of sunlight touching first their special hats, then their shoulders, then their lower backs. Spring is close. By the time they make it to the ridge, everything they know about the world has changed. They see lives moving to and fro from above, dismiss the fog as it snarls beneath. And when the wind threatens to knock them loose, they hold tight to each other and their crowns. No one tumbles. Instead, the sky gives in and offers the sun.

Read-a-Roni



Before I wax poetic on Passover and Easter (and pre-Passover breakfast, which at my house consisted of bacon and French toast, how very kosher), I have two quick plugs to make. Tomorrow, Monday April 5, I'll be reading at the Gestalt bar in San Francisco, along with a great group of Bay Area poets and writers, including novelist Shanti Sekaran and fellow SFSU grad students. Come check it out if you're local -- cheap beer and expensive words!

Also - on April 22, I'll be sharing some work at a reading hosted by the amazing fantastic and cutting edge literary journal Flatmancrooked, which is publishing it's First Annual Poetry Anthology this fall. Rockstar poet / SFSU grad student / my neighbor Shideh Etaat will be hopping a ride up to Davis' John Natsoulas Gallery. Loverly.

And here's one image of an amazing Passover seder--intentionally blurry, you see, to reflect the four glasses of wine we are expected to consume during the dinner.

On Spring



This meadow is a childhood deja-vous.

This is the kind of place where an old person would sit down at the end of his or her long life, maybe lie back and look up at that spot where the leaves of neighboring trees crisscrossed, making darker, greener shadows, and slip into reverie. This is a place where the quality of light is different, where the air is still and quiet, where there are more banana slugs than people.

We discovered this meadow last weekend while hiking near Point Reyes, an hour northwest of San Francisco. This little bench was nestled in amongst a thicket of berry bushes and a small rushing creek.



We splayed our lunch across the little bridge and laid with our heads to the treetops. I remembered what it felt like to be tuned-out, turned-off, plugged off and out of reach--and I liked it.