Walking into the smell of old wounds, something about my grandmother’s bedroom always kept me from there—the perfume once animal golden now rancid & dark as whiskey. Lace- medallioned, doilies marking time turned to loss
Picture if you will Tony Hoagland and me, he in his Donkey Gospel hat and me wearing my Hustle ring, in his car patched with silver duct tape and sagging passenger mirrors discussing vehicles as metaphors
There is, in a nearby field, a retired show horse living out whatever days it can win, a white horse speckled with brown flecks. Its limp mane welcomes your hand. On its face,
I’m fourteen and the smell of singed hair circles me like the halo of a pre-Renaissance Madonna. Loss already on my face. A summer crush holds out his fingers
It was actually a good year, the year before the downfall, a surprisingly good year in our little town. It was a year of bread on the table, a year with a new IPA in our glasses, a year with friends who visited with great frequency.