A Dragon’s Tale

I met a dragon. It’s one of the dragons who live in our neighborhood. I heard him the other morning breathing out by the curb. I mistook the sound for a neighbor shoveling snow, you know, the rhythmic rasping a shovel makes on pavement. “How are you doing?” I asked. “Not bad,” he replied. “Yourself?” He looked roughly fifteen feet long from our tree to the corner, covered with green metallic scales and a tail that ended in a flared point like the ace of spades in a deck of cards. When he blinked a play of electricity flashed around his eyes like Christmas lights in the daytime. “Mind if I rest here?” he asked. “Go ahead,” I said. “I can see you’re draggin’.” He ignored the remark. Dragons get all kinds. “Want your walk cleared?” he asked. “I can handle it,” I said. I pantomimed shoveling snow. Like I […]

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SHAME

To the Pathetic Members of the Extraordinary Session of the Wisconsin Legislature There are desperate people in this State. People who can’t get out of bed in the morning because they’re so sick or afraid or depressed or impoverished or hooked on some filthy drug they took because they were in pain or sick or afraid or depressed or impoverished.   Now you come with your titles and your personal fortunes and your letterhead with matching envelopes at taxpayer expense and your benefits and the best medical insurance money can buy and your reserved parking spots and club memberships and you argue in the sacred halls and chambers built before any of you were born by people who spit more eloquently than you speak and you dare to bicker before the people because you don’t like the very rules you were elected and sworn to uphold.   You call each other […]

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