We wanted less geometry. Less corn. We wanted the chaotic remnants of ancient flooding. Carved gorges and mountains and rivers that ran through breweries. We wanted burgers with layers of poached eggs and truffles and smoked tomato coulis and cocktails with hibiscus and four different types of ginger. They could keep their Packers and tater tot casseroles. We wanted bookstores that took up city blocks. Burgeoning IT companies and well-maintained bridges and bike lanes and busses that ran on time.

Reading my writing aloud—and I write primarily fiction and personal essays—has always been part of the drill for me. It’s the penultimate or even ultimate stage in my obligatory revision/rewriting sequence: from the initial handwritten drafts; through revisions on screen, with their multiple font and type-size permutations; to several printed versions at the end.I once read somewhere about a writer who hung his manuscripts up on a clothes line, like drying laundry, and then reviewed the pages sequentially through a pair of binoculars. I’ve never gone quite that far to gain distance, but I have been known to print out my hard copies in different colors—red, green, purple—to view each with a fresh eye.

To explain, to chart, to graph
what has lasted this long and what hasn’t.

Each afternoon heavy clouds form in the north,
and each evening when I take the dogs out, it snows.

She’s meeting a friend for a walk through the museum of fine arts and lunch –errands to run on the way…

Toward sunset it bleeds orange, plums,
and wine. The father always at table
with his mug in hand.

I could give
my horizon,

the one I see
on cheekbones…

And what of the pines
branching over the lake? Am I to take them
as a sign,
these few drops of rain as mercy?

Let there be woman deranged made of words:
gardeners and snow-ghosts, moving lips
and butterfly-knots. Let there be.

I knew a girl who closed her eyes
every time she heard a car horn…

Mid-morning. LIGHTS UP on EDGAR and MAE. MAE stands at a kitchen sink washing and drying morning dishes. EDGAR sits at a kitchen table, reading a newspaper.
EDGAR Good breakfast, Mae.
(MAE turns to him.)
MAE Thank you, Edgar.

SETTING: A one-room house: a bed, a table, a fireplace. A red neon sign flashes “Granny’s” from a distance, its reflection appearing as if through a wet window. At rise. The sounds of rain and vultures. In the bed: GRANNY lies snoring. On the table: a book of matches and a mason jar. The sound of a door slamming shut. GRANNY sits up as RED enters, dripping wet. RED holds an empty basket.