He’s here. On his birthday. Miles Davis plays, Just listen. You’ll hear. Like honey golden brass poetry. Trumpeting tones beyond the spectrum of human possibility. Caressing the night with his horn. Today green leaves of summer heat settled into Chicago. Neighborhood streets blissfully empty and still. Festivals and baseball games melting on into the night. […]
When Noel died Monday, in Wales, the sun splashed orange, red and green tulips lining Michigan Avenue here in Chicago seemed to droop, lose their brilliance and cower back from the sun. And if you were to have even the smallest dollop of faith, you could smell the red roses, planted by Noel, alongside the […]
David Milch, my friend Bill tells the story, would make everybody in the class at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop stone cold crazy. Everybody else would sweat their hearts out in the reams of fiction they’d bring to class taught by the Vonneguts, the Algrens, the John Irvings or whoever the professor was that […]
You’re in an elevator in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. The doors gliding open and with a smile as authentic and bright as the sun, Chris Kennedy gets on and says, ‘Hello!’ The resemblance to his father, shot and killed when Chris was five, is so strong that you’re momentarily disoriented by the thought, “Why is Bobby […]
One Something big and unnamable is coming. Like a train through a dark snowy night letting loose with a whistle that shakes the foundations of the whole forest. You don’t know what it is, but it’s coming. You don’t know where you are. You do not remember where you live. Your feet crunch the snow. […]
Remembering the Haitian Earthquake/
Those cornerstone people of your life. Do they ever really pass? Today is a sparkling. sunny cold Saturday afternoon. Stepping inside the Women and Children First Bookstore in Chicago and the presence of my Aunt Jean, who passed this past year comes filling the room with her own smiling sounds of delight. You can hear […]
Danny Ray Suitcase perched on the balls of his feet. 3rd bench on the left in Millennium Park off Michigan Avenue in Chicago just before sunrise on a coming cold morning. All the benches empty except for Danny Ray, his 5 battered suitcases and whoever it is he’s speaking to that the rest of us […]
The bicycle mangled into a pretzel splayed out across Southport Avenue just in front of the Jewel Foods Store. The rider on his back on the ground. Tucked into an emergency blanket trying to raise his head from the concrete. Young guy. Dizzy. The sirens wailing in the distance. Cars slowing down from both directions. […]
I could do Thanksgiving alone. Lots of people do that. Hanging up the phone, I could barely remember why she cancelled. Something about “needing space.” But I was already getting ready to be a frozen turkey dinner tough guy. Remembering, from experience, that a shirttail doesn’t work when you pull the hot tin tray from […]