“Don’t be afraid to put your heart in the palm of your hands and shake the hands of your fellow human beings.” –Daniel Holland

Perched on the end of faded green roughened seesaw.
Roughened by sand poured over the board.
I went up and down, then suddenly stopped.
Stopped in midflight by a girl child turned woman.
She said, “Here I am!” with her eyes.
She made the sand feel solid.

Through the enchanted forest of postcards
I project frames
to each picture of time and space.
I can control what I do with time:
most of the time.
But what about an afternoon
of road construction delays?
Or, I’m waiting in line at the grocery store
and the cashier says, “Price check!”
Or, I’m waiting in line at the bank
and someone starts telling their
life […]

Freckles, why did you have sex with the poodle next door? Poor puppies have beagle faces and poodle hairstyles.
After the love affair of the poodle, your girlfriend was that St. Bernard. When the St. Bernard jumped on the gray, roughened, falling-down fence, it shook like an earthquake. Freckles came running on all four paws to […]

Here’s Daniel Holland’s fanciful description of his writing process.–JGR

I’m good at getting the hooks and baiting the hooks. I’m frustrated though, once my line is in the water. I don’t yet know how to play the line so I can get the bites and catch the fish.
There’s my line in the water, dangling, with no […]

Hey Man, this weird thing happened yesterday down at the vegetable stand I own. When they fertilized the field in back of my stand, the field flooded. The water rushed into a hole in back of the cabbage bin. Man, was I bummed out when I saw that!
I didn’t want to throw away the cabbages, […]

A few summers ago Daniel and I went swimming in Clear Lake together…on the swimming beach at the Clear Lake State Park. I’m a strong swimmer and he’s more a dog paddler. When he ran into some water plants, he panicked and it felt as if he were having a heart attack. I swam towards […]

VACUUM SUCKS
You know those little things in the carpet that try to hide? When you vacuum “hide and seek” becomes “hide and suck.”
If you have a cheap vacuum, vacuuming becomes a hockey game. The goalie is under the mat. The cheaper the vacuum, the bigger the mat. As a kid I used to shoot marbles. […]

LEARNING TO CRAWL — When I was little, I liked crawling and was able to crawl really fast. All the big people towering over me kept trying to get me to walk and stand up. The only time I would stand up is when no one was around. Crawling was my favorite way to get […]

I was in my boxers enjoying my box turtle while eating my box lunch before the big boxing match on TV. But there was this old TV show “Let’s Make a Deal” and I wanted to know what was in box number 1.
Imagine somebody took away the computers, pens and pencils. The only writing […]