John Long

Other people’s lives sink and swell around you, lapping at your shifting rim, leaving their debris. Billowing on every side, they rush and then recede. They wash across your beaches. You feel a slow erosion. Shoring up your sea walls, you study the morning sky. You listen to ...

The old ones, the old ones are coming, keep coming, by cane and wheelchair, their teeth in glasses, their thinning hair, their seizures and strokes, their stained underwear, hard now of hearing (their ears full of hair), complaining of pains, medicaid, medicare. They are coming, ...