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Piling Bodies on the Wagon - Dan Navarro House Party vs. a place that once was mine

By débora Ewing
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Come on and take a ride across the border to a place that once was mine
Out of focus, out of order, pictures from another time Nobody who was present will forget that perfectly-timed crack of thunder as Dan Navarro wove oral history into the opening bars of We Belong.

One of the kids said it out loud: "We belong to the thunder!"  And we laughed; and we did belong, crowded under the patio roof for what became a sing-along. Lowen & Navarro's beloved hit segued into (and I'm not sure why) Steve Miller Band's The Joker, and then something I can't remember because I was overwhelmed by the night and had to pull back into the misty rain. Afterward, I found our hostess Alexandra and thanked her for creating a space where I was comfortable to be what I am, to draw pictures instead of staring at the musician, dance in dark corners. She'll email me, she said, when they have another happening.
On the outside turning lighter, so much darker in my eyes
Gas or water on…
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Wonder - Flash Fiction

By débora Ewing
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He was in the park, laughing and throwing seed to birds. Pigeons swaggered awkwardly around him like old men hanging out on corners. Two stroller-pushers - mothers or nannies - swerved wide with mild alarm, as if the inappropriate happiness of this old man on the bench might harm their babies. 
"Bread swells in their craws," he said, looking up at me,"and will kill them. Rice, too. That's why people throw bird-seed at weddings." Willard held up the small paper sack to me, but I declined. He pulled more seed from it and broadcast wide; pigeons ambled forward, pecking and deliberating.
He had endless obscure facts, and I wanted to sit and listen to all of them. This time, though, the little man in his practical suit who sat in the park every day had little to say. He just smiled with childlike wonder, admiring the birds as if they were a committee he was orchestrating or an orchestra he was conducting. He'd look up at me from time to time, knowing I would share…
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Guilt (before-coffee edit)

By débora Ewing
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I think we're going to win a third season of Netflix's MindHunter. I hope I'm right; I hope enough other people appreciate that not-quite-resolved ending. I don't mean the convenient cliffhanger. I mean the part where our society is mirrored and resolution doesn't mean resolution for everyone. 

And that deep-80s soundtrack that hearkens back to my basement days. "I feel Guilt, though I know I done no wrong I feel guilt" - Marianne Faithfull This song sums up my mood at the moment. 
Ghostly emotions tend to creep on the weekends. I wonder if this feeling of guilt was instilled in me by Catholicism, or if Catholicism was invented to address it? Does it have anything to do with my absent-while-present father? Some sin for which I've been forgiven? 
That nagging feeling that I've missed something crucial and thus failed in my efforts? 
Why doesn't matter.
Guilt is a powerful tool that's often used against us. Anyone brash enough to take it by the ha…
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What is Love? One Rule You Should Know

By débora Ewing
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This year has been all about trying to be OK with the other person not hearing my thoughts about our falling outs - Blue She's right, so right. The year before was all about me learning to speak my mind, to give my words to the other party, to gift them the choice of how to handle my message. Relationships fall apart because of words not said, so goes the saw.
People pass awayleave us die, so you're supposed to tell them things they might have wanted to know.

Only they don't, do they? They don't want to know. And that is the choice meant to be offered in the traditional wisdom. If you love somebody, tell them. Only don't, because they aren't prepared to accept the sentiment without having an approved box in which to store it. They aren't ready to let it wander free.
Trust means I must
give you permissiontosay no.
So I've receded. Again. I dislike this very much.

Tell people you love them in the same way you point out that it's a mourning-dove there on…
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Case Files - the Ghori Wife (working title)

By débora Ewing
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My love is like sand that clings to my feet when I walk on the beach: it's cold, yet giving, conforming to my shape and then falling away, leaving irritating particles that must be brushed aside when dry.

Beginnings of a thousand novels, like case files of long-forgotten crimes never to be solved, clutter my shelves and our computer. I keep them buried, but at hand; perhaps one day something will spark and all will become clear.

I call the shelves mine, because my husband has no use for them. They hold things waiting for me, not us. I tell him how important it is to always have a "me" in my culture.

Mine, not his - his, not mine. What is his? Where is ours?

The cats are ours. He tells me his mother doesn't think we should live with cats.

"I think she wants to be the woman of this house," he says, his eyes twinkling while his face remains placid. He looks at me from an angle, waiting for response.

"Of course she does," I reply. You let her think s…
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The Colander Canon vs. I Don't Know What Everyone Else Did This Weekend

By débora Ewing
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So. Let me start by saying I find a certain sexiness in the art of colanders - the word itself, too. I no longer have the aluminum colander permeated with star patterns, inherited from my grandma and dented from years of love; the one on my wall is more modern with clean lines, marring only visible from discreet angles. That's not why we're here, but it matters to the narrative.

We're here because I've found myself entangled with a Gordian knot of poets on Twitter. Nothing edifies my strangled artistic octopus-heart more than volleying word-games. NOTHING. The weekend took a circuitous route through winter synaesthesia, poetry readings, and book-shelfies, and ended up with two things very important to me:


1) Pablo Picasso published a book of poems, written while he was on hiatus from art. The surprise is not that he did it, but that I didn't know about it.

2) Colanderesque as a word is in use, mostly outside the United States.

Somewhere in the middle of the knot was…
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