Ed Valfre is a photographer / musician living in Los Angeles. He has published two children’s books, Backseat Buckaroo and Vacationers...

The Other Side The news these days, full of celebrity suicides, puts me in mind of the view from my long-ago ninth floor window where a...

She Sang to Him, I Imagine her pain ringing on a hot wild wind, grief-bent mother of this child, oldest human burial in Africa, a boy,...

Wile E. Coyote Checks his Mood As He Falls Toward the Desert Floor I am already thinking past the pain this rapid change of altitude has...

Death of a Marine Your dreams were taking place in the Officer’s Club— dress khaki and gin martinis attended by all your men from...

Seaward When submerged in the sea, look both ways. Rip tides carry your endurance out into the time of your nothing. You have to outlast...

Solitaire You don’t see well any more. You sometimes forget names of the four suits. You compiled your deck from loose ends at a thrift...

Outside of Providence My heart is a regional train yard Sleepy, open to the elements and simmering Train yard where I saw my first...

Bully He bullied his wife, walking through and never around her, slamming the screen doors—the metal netting torn at the corners. He...

Never Can Tell Every day offers an opportunity to explore your personal style, so yesterday I painted open eyes on my sleep mask. You,...

Booster We don’t know how we’ve watched two episodes of this cop show with subtitles more terrible than the actors, our mal di testa from...

Hope Walks on Thin Ice I pick a dandelion its yellow life gone. Scrunch up my eyes take a deep breath, blow wisps of hope into the air. I...

Bogie, Par, Bogie, Par, Sand Trap Sonnet If you are caught in a storm and are afraid of lightning hold up a 1 iron. Even God can’t hit a...

Upon Waking Some spirited particles take wing won’t come back can’t no matter how we sing out cry Others try to make up the...

58.Different What if you had been someone else? What if I had never met you Because you were someone else And I walked right by you My...

Studies in the Dark Lately Wislawa Szymborksa has been meeting me in secret, after the streets have withdrawn and this room has been dark...

Jeff You were my parents’ friend, you wanted to have sex with me, you told me so the day you found me in the library, alone. You...

A Month in the Country That’s what it means to be crazy./Those I loved best died from it—/the fool’s disease. ­– Anne Sexton I’ll tell...

Descriptions of Heaven Got your note from the canyon— glad to know you’re there again. & why go so often now? Old as I am, I’ve never...

West is everywhere when your breath itself is all that carries you anywhere but here When you carry a sack of used bandages from your...