Longing

I go home to Pune, filled with wistful anticipation tinged with dread. As we hold hands and walk down the streets we once loved, the changes are all around us.

The Killer Who Sang for the Kids

Imagine, if you can, a record producer coming to his boss with an idea for a new album; a collection of children’s songs by a black man who has been imprisoned several times, once for killing a relative in a fight over a woman, a second time for attempted murder of a white man.

The swiftness with which such a proposal and its author would be dispatched today would set a land speed record for rejection of cockamamie ideas.

Tullamore

For centuries a whiskey town Distilling Molloy's firewater And a Phoenix town Risen from the flames Of accidental destruction Caused by a hot air balloon; The first ever aviation disaster Here in Ireland.

The Backlands

Sonny, face deadpan, flings his ballpoint across the reflective marble of the conference table. It flies with unintended precision, hitting his older sister Maya in the center of her chest like a dart. A tentative smile twitches across her face, because he’s fifty-six and he’s never been good at anger, never had reason to be. The pen was the best he could manage.