sweetheart redux

  When I was in sixth grade I was still trying to listen to pop music to fit in, but one day my dead mom let me wear her Doors shirt, a bleach stained black t-shirt with Jim Morrison’s mug shot from Dade County Florida on it, and underneath that the words “charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, indecent exposure, profanity, and drunkenness.”  I could have shown up to school that day in a disingenuous outfit of Body Glove gear, but instead I chose to celebrate a moment in history when a sexy rockstar got drunk and whipped his dick out.  I’d arrived. Within a few months the Guns N’ Roses albums Use Your Illusions I and II hit the shelves of Tower Records and the Wherehouse Music Store and my mom, who was born with the anarchistic aplomb, the witty or sometimes just brutal anger and the frantic creativity with which an outsider (punks, goths, metalheads,  angel-headed hipsters ) learns to deal with mainstream society, was right there with me, choosing...

  I am at a mental hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I had never been to this city before. My room is right next to  the bay of telephones. I feel sad hearing so many patients start conversations with their friends or family and then so soon say,  "Oh, you have to go? Well...goodbye."

      Mikayla knew that Diana tried to listen for actual words among the riotous din that drifted over from the elementary school whenever the kids were on the playground. More than once, she’d say something like, “I know they’re having conversations, but with all of them talking at once, it just sounds like they're all yelling at the top of their lungs at the same time.”    Diana liked being able to faintly hear the morning announcements, but she didn’t like young children, and their playful noises sounded like seagulls aggressively squawking for the same pizza crust. Their family home growing up had been close to the beach, and they were currently sharing an apartment in a valley that was always hot and smoggy, with a sprawling building of U-Haul storage spaces, and the school of course, replacing the ocean as their view; hearing seabird noises out here felt like a taunt.     No matter how many knots even a casual glance from Mom or ...

Published in the January 5-11, 2026 online issue of Poetry Superhighway   Next Time Lie What to say when the doctor tells me he can’t help with my knee pain because I’ve told him I drink? My dad was rich and sane and drank. My mom was poor and crazy and drank. My first husband was a functioning alcoholic, but if you tell him that to his face, he’ll reply, “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re wayward and you’re bipolar!” At least that’s what it sounds like to me. My second husband was a barely functioning alcoholic, but a sweetheart. One time I saw him standing at a street light, waiting for the signal to change. He was so skinny. With his unruly bush of long dirty brown hair, escaping from the same-colored beanie he wore, and trying so hard to stay upright, I felt bad for this man who looked like a scarecrow, eventually recognizing him as my own. Yes, I drink sometimes, but my knees are killing me.

  Nostalgia Haiku Pee Wee’s Playhouse song Her smell returns and her laugh We’d watched since show one