That night, I was on curfew patrol alone. It was in the dead early hours around 4:00 a.m., a hot and hazy night. I was thinking about two things: my son, drunk on freedom, overcome with dreams in another land; and Jesus on the cross saying, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

First published November 15, 2024 in Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, Issue 12

My new neighbor is making a violin from a cigar box. He got the cigar box from a guard. The guard, presumably, got it from outside the Fence.

First published May 2024 in Abandon Journal, Issue 5.

My mother used to say that to dream is to live.

She was wrong.

Dreams are a luxury of safer times.

First published fall 2023 in the print edition of Relief: A Journal of Faith and Art, p. 92-102.

Midnight shakes the memory as magnetic bombs once shook the quaking walls of houses. Rebels quivered in their army boots while federal planes blasted neighborhoods to bits. Ceasefire! Ceasefire! We were better off before.

First published December 2015 in The Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, p. 24-30.