Author: barlow

I reserved my disdain
for you.
At the pickup counter
all they had left was a subcompact.

Making a home is very different than building a home.
And then you have to keep it.
“A home, if you can keep it,” Deborah Franklin explained, when
Ben gestured to a bit of embroidery
hanging in the parlor.

Moments
in time
“points”

Collections
of at least two
moments in time
“lines”

Points “rest” on
“timelines”
and “between”
other points

Spaces
between two
points in time
“windows”

“Door”
for window?
No, because we are
all shut-ins here.

I have windows
when I could stop up the chimney
after the swallows leave and
before they return next spring
to eat our mosquitoes.

But gentlemen-farmers
never harvest
fields to the edges.

Thanks Mississippi

for the pressure in my head.

It takes a doctor’s note

to buy Sudafed.

What responsibility do the literate bear to articulate words clearly so that the illiterate will at least learn to speak correctly? How many people say “I seen” simply because someone literate mumbled “I’ve seen?”

We frequently reserve the greatest disdain for those who openly own the sins we privately commit.

Making a constant practice of criticizing oneself teaches one to be critical of others. Most flaws are common among men and in learning always to see your own imperfections you learn to see them in others. And then you are likely to add pride to this if the flaw you see in another is one you have found a technique to solve.

Saying that Lacroix sparkling water contains “roach poison” because it contains linalool, is like saying tonic water contains “malaria poison” because it contains quinine.

In his review essay of Brian Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage, David Foster Wallace describes a particular critic as having a “styptic wit.” This is a wonderful expression describing what must be a wit that is capable of drying up any sanguinity in the hearer or target.

Just a heads up that I deactivated my Twitter account; I didn’t block you. Why? Pretty much the same reason I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago- it makes loving people harder. It’s my fault, not Twitter’s fault.