El Viajero

Alone, the traveler walked the streets of Havana Viejo – Old Havana. The winter night was dry but warm and the sea breathed a gentle breeze.      He wandered along the cobbled roads, weaving between tourists and locals alike. Aimless amongst the crowd, he observed this foreign world. Buildings were lined in colorful and colonial…

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A Chance

She was born into a family of cursed women. It couldn’t be seen from far away. Up close, it was there. The curse. You could see it in their eyes.   It was like a fever. A hot, painful glare deep in their amber eyes. The collective memory of their mothers mothers, perhaps, tainted them…

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The Fate of the Land

  The Burtons meant business. No hobby farming for them. They felled trees, cleared many acres, restored the early nineteenth century farm house. They fixed up the barn, fenced the fields, stocked up with cows, pigs, geese and chickens. The family mutt was told he was now a working dog. The father swotted up on…

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I Was the Family Dog

Golden fur, soft coat, chestnut eyes, winning yelp – I had it all going for me. A boy, a girl – what more could a dog ask? Plenty of belly rubs, fetch in the yard with the man, a walk every morning with the woman. The kids, they’d ride me like a horse! One would…

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The Drift

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/240794156″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]   I’ll explain it again: For a while when I got into trouble my father would make me sit in the little chair I kept next to my closet and count off all the wooden tiles that composed the floor of my bedroom and was told I couldn’t…

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Falling Sand

Sand beneath my feet.  It’s warm, and I can feel the sun on my skin.  The glass is smooth, featureless, but cloudy, the outside world obscured.  I walk the small space allotted me, bare feet leaving a circle of impressions.  My hourly circuit, always the same and never-ending.  When I tire of the monotony, I…

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Life

 I wait. I look up. I notice the upper right corner of the room, where the former green paint colour peeks through. The painter must have missed that spot when he was whitewashing this room. I wonder who formerly owned this room and what it was used for. I hope it was once a happier…

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The Year of the Hedonist

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/252061628″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] It’s the Year of the Hedonist and though my expat friends tell me that the “lost generation” phenomenon is an American one, it looks to me like the whole world is filled with volcanoes and people dance on them everyplace. Out here there are more scotches than sheep…

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