Katie took it upon herself to plan their seventh anniversary, hoping it might help elevate her out of the funk she’d been experiencing. She suspected that her husband Robert, a prime catch from every traditional matrimonial metric, couldn’t comprehend the desires that had recently overcome her. While she embraced their upscale suburban life, she craved … Continue reading The Pass List

       Catterly never pictured himself going out this way; standing in some god-forsaken heat sink, clad in the official old man’s uniform of big-butt cargo shorts and a Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt, guzzling white wine—probably Pinot Grigio, for Christ’s sake—and surrounded by a bunch of other wrinkled codgers; an entire community playing footsie with the gravedigger.        No, his retirement … Continue reading Made Men

I had this sort of slight condition, let’s call it. I mean, anytime it ever came up, Rebecca, my girl, put it all to rest of course. I was just shy was all.  That’s what she’d say.  “Besides,” she’d say, “you know it wasn’t your gift of the gab I fell in love with.  If … Continue reading As Good as Your Last

            In retrospect, I never should have put that snake in Annemarie Kitsap’s mailbox. It wasn’t like it was a rattler or cottonmouth. Nothing that would jump out and fang you. Just a big bull. Ferocious-looking, but harmless. Prized in these parts for their propensity to devour rodents and truly dangerous reptiles.            In my defense, … Continue reading A Hillbilly Love Story

I want you to know One thing. You know how this is:If I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashof the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists,aromas, light, metals,were little boats that sailtoward those isles … Continue reading If You Forget Me