Creative
Dayshift
Dayshift: we hear spy planes circle low over the bay and see their shadows climb across the tops of the three metal bridges. Dayshift is where limbs turn to pins and needles and eyes nod no. A wet scream from a mouth with no tongue. The spy planes fly through the napes of our necks and emerge through our open
When we drink
I embarked on my first bender because I got dumped. Even when you know it’s coming, when you’re nineteen—and maybe, when you’re not—it sucks. After pleading and crying and empty threats, I called some friends, went to the Greyhound station, got hit-on by a dude on his way to a Job Corps forestry program, and tearfully rode the bus to
Stinson
This beach is where you can fill a bag full of white, brittle sand dollars, the star emblazoned on the center. There is always smoky green sea glass half-buried under sand and driftwood, and dried husks of kelp and sea cucumbers, which once danced to the waves at the bottom of the Pacific. Sometimes the driftwood is big enough to
Bay Leaves
The creek is where all the kids went to smoke bay leaves. They’d pick them off the low branches of the bay trees that draped their crooked arms over the damp and rocky creek bed, and roll them together loosely into short cylinders that never stayed lit for longer than one drag. Somehow this had become a neighborhood rite of