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Booking, 29 June 2026

June 19, 2026
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Booking, 19 June 2026

Every so often a book title joke floats by…

The Crack in the Sidewalk by Ava Neiss-Tripp (illustrated by C. U. Nicks-Fall)

But now this fastidious brain demands a plot, so let’s cook one up.

Joe dragged his feet, or anyway didn’t lift them enough. He was inventive enough to imagine a device that would help him avoid sidewalk cracks, and before he knew it he had had shoes made with toe cameras and imminent-crack-detection AI, and so he heard an alarm-sound when a crack candidate was two steps away. At the same time, in the same city, an equally inventive Molly Siefer Coddle, similarly crack-trip-prone, solved the problem with compressed-air footlifting-assist tech, and a geneticist named Noh Pronouns published a paper describing a modification to the human genome that would make humanity more graceful. Then a materials engineer perfected “the sidewalk of the future,” which had self-healing cracks. Two months later there was an extinction event, so there was no one around to trip over sidewalk cracks, which evolved sentience, and the wise cracks lived happily ever after, cracking each other up with stupid-human jokes.

Next time you stroll on a sidewalk, remember: if you step on them, you won’t trip on them.

shave

June 15, 2026
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shave

disposable razor at the ready/gushing water warming/the old man blearily splashes his face/and fills his hand with gooey gel/and rubs his hands together/and rubs the goo al over his face

the foliage has spread down to his throat/and up to his upper cheekbones/and it is more bristly/more slice-resistant/yet still hasn’t filled in/still makes him loirsok like a candidate/for the drunk tank/if he lets it abide for three days or more

he rinses the slather off his hands/starts at the sideburn wannabe on the left/slaloms down the dizzy-gillespied cheek to the knot at the clenched jaw/and beyond

zambonis his left neck up to the jawline/cenerslices from larynx to chin/zambonis the right neck/then up the face over the puffed right cheek/to the other quasimodo sideburn/and then skates around right cheek and left/feeling with his non-razor hand/for random rogue hairs

now the under chin/with its special jowl-sector problems/requiring taut stretching of the sagflesh/and several special swipes

the chin has a tricky grain requiring up down&sideways/and the underlip is a mutant jungle/needing micro-machetes

now it is time for mustache removal/with the worst hairs catching and snagging the blade/and inflicting little wounds over the lip

the mouthcorners/pushed from within by the tongue/ seem so often to have ONE recalcitrant hair/that refuses to release its follicular grip

at long last the faceflesh is smooth

he likes to wipe the remaining foam off his face with his vanity towel/it looks so cool in the movies when the rugged hero does it/but it yields a gummy soap-residue towel/so he splashes and splashes it off

then the towel and the bits of toilet paper to stanch the tiny wounds

“see you tomorrow” he says to his reflection

The Farewell Tour Continues

June 13, 2026
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A few weeks ago superstar Valley poet Bill Campana, knowing that I was leaving Phoenix at the end of June, gave me three sizable U-Haul boxes that he had used during his own recent move. And on Memorial Day he and I had breakfast at the Ranch House Grille. I had this strawberry crepe there.

Then some days later my friends the Plaskos and I had a delicious meal at Dos Los Molinos. I wrote about that at some length in my post “Phoenix Memories.” Here’s a member of the delightful trio of ectoplasmic scamps known as The Deeminz–a Plasko creation.

On the first Friday in June, at the open-mic poetry event at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, I began my performance by announcing my imminent move to Toledo, Ohio and made a light-hearted reference to my appearance at CHB as being part of my “Farewell Tour.”

My friend of many years, former Arizona State Poetry Society president Christy White, saw the reference to my Farewell Tour and, to my delight, let me know that she wanted to get in on the Farewell Tour too. At her suggestion we went to the Phoenix Art Museum, mainly to see an exhibition of ceramic works by avant-garde female clay artists, and afterwards we had an exotic meal (Thai Shrimp Curry for me, a brie&apple “handheld” for her) at the museum’s café. We also goofed around with pics at a quasi-installational Florentine Baroque gilded frame/stand.

Moving Day is June 30, a mere 17 days from this writing. There is at least one more Farewell Tour event scheduled, the last Esso Coffeehouse Open Mic on June 21st. I hope there will be one or two more.

emit a nopu ecno

June 11, 2026
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emit a nopu ecno

the frustrated prince

hurled the slipper

forcibly into

the brick and mortar of the castle wall.

it would have shattered

had not his vizier

slowed its flight

with time-slice magic

and plucked the slipper from the wall

before

it more than bent with the impact.

the prince brightened with an idea.

“use your magic to reverse time

back to the party and her in my arms

but let me keep my memory of now.”

“that i cannot do,” said the vizier.

“time may be slowed, or sped,

but what is done cannot be undone.”

the prince growled.

then he brightened again.n

“speed me up, then.

make me so fast

that I can search my kingdom

dwelling by dwelling

and be gone before anyone sees me.”

“majesty,” said the vizier,

“i could do that, but think it through.

your subjects deserve dignity

and privacy. your search

would shatter their privacy,

would destroy their dignity,

while you feasted your eyes.”

there was a silence.

the prince’s face looked

like a gathering storm. at last he said calmly,

“well, but after all, they are MY subjects.

slow time for me. now.”

with an inscrutable face

the vizier put his hands to his temples

and spoke an incantation

in a long-dead language. “prince,

it is done. time outside you will slow

from hardly at all to stock-still

depending on how fast you move. do not

go faster than a brisk walk.” he paused

and then said with some bleakness,

“farewell.”

the prince grinned lasciviously

and vanished from the vizier’s sight.

“if he follows my instruction, he will live,”

the vizier mused. but he will not.”

as if on cue,

there were screams from the greensward

not fifty feet beyond the castle’s drawbridge.

the charred form and burning raiment

of the prince of the realm

had suddenly popped into existence

near a group of villagers.

the vizier went up to the battlements

for a proper view. “he couldn’t wait,

the lustful knave.

he ran,

and became like unto falling star,

burned by the air

that flensed him as he sped.”

he sighed.

“we are better off without him.”

he allowed himself a playful smile.

“well, after all,

there was always

too much friction

between us.”

scrap

June 8, 2026
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to not remember much of a day

is to have a scrap

of memory. to wrestle

with decaying memory is to have a scrap

with the second law of therm

odynamics. to knock an e

off a scrape is to have a scrap. if you

don’t care for th

e ran

domeness of this mess

let us cons

ign it to the scrapheap

of non-history, which viewed

through a mag

nif

i

er

is a lovely

crazy

quilt of chao

s.

boom x 3

June 7, 2026
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boom x 3

butter is

oleaginous

oleo is

mucilaginous

..

bartholomew in the zoom

outlasted his confreres

or orchestrated doom

made ripostes after parries

..

bindlestiffs are difficult to find

of late the backpack is the better lugg

obtaining one takes mere goodwill of mind

make camp make peace make everloving hugg

Phoenix Memories

June 4, 2026
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Eponymous cityscape by Kathleen Plasko

Phoenix Memories

She put an airplane in the sky

Of the Phoenix cityscape she made

And indeed my first memory of Phoenix

From 1958

Was of landing at Sky Harbor airport

After seeing moonlight on a blanket of fluff clouds

Below us.

..

She put a skyline in the middle of the cityscape

And it compelled the memory

Of the Bowers family driving down Central

When I was very young.

There was a big blue building

That headquartered Guaranty Bank

And one of the corners of the top two floors

Boasted the giant monogram GB

And someone, probably my mother, joked

That we were approaching the Gary Bowers Bank.

It was wonderful, that joke–made me feel

Like a Big Shot

At three feet something.

..

Below the skyline of her cityscape

Are gridded lines that evoke the Phoenix Street grid

With a thick through line that might be the 202

Or I-10.

When I was growing up

We just had the Black Canyon Highway, I-17,

And the Buckeye exit was what you used

To get to the airport.

The intersection of 59th Avenue and Camelback

Was stop-signed dirt when we moved

Into our nearby house on Pasadena Avenue,

Technically in Glendale

But really it was Greater Phoenix,

And across t9th

They later built Grandview, our shopping mall

With the Valley National bank

Where I got my first savings account

And the A J Bayless for groceries

And Cox’s Bakery with their deep discount

On day-old bread

And W T Grant that had a terrarium full

Of little bitty turtles.

..

The cityscape she made is awash with red and yellow

Colors of the Phoenix bird

Everlastingly burned to ash

And everlastingly rising from her ashes

And red and yellow also evoke

The relentless furnace heat

That yields a summer from April to October

And in my prime I came to love that heat

Loved walking in it till I was sweat-lodge soaked

Ran 5 miles in a July midday in 1992

And felt as if a blacksmith had forged me

Into a broadsword, sturdy and sharp.

The maker of the cityscape has seen to it

That Phoenix will always be with me.

..

broth and bhoy

June 2, 2026
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Beef broth, orange and yellow peppers, diced sweet onion, stew meat,Yukon Gold mini-potatoes, coarse kosher salt, fine-ground black pepper

one hour on high and the potatoes were still hard and woody. two and a half hours and the onion was caramelized and the potatoes were softish but firm.

with each successive bowl the broth became more agreeable. even the meat softened and chewing ceased to be a chore.

the ingested broth is becoming a part of me. of course it became non-broth as i ate it; became an acidic slurry and was enzymed and shunted over finger like absorbers,

and its warmth dissipated delightfully, euphorically;

and a search was sent to my brain;

broth. comic books.

and it turns out that in the comic book

Fantastic Four

Stan Lee

had an Irish doorman think about Ben Grimm,

The Thing,

some wistfulness including the phrase

“…what a fine

broth of a bhoy

he would be.”

even in my tweens,

though i loved comics and read them voraciously,

i thought Stan’s characterization of the doorman

hackneyed, a rather god-awful caricature.

the storytelling was superb, though,

thanks to the plot-assists of illustrator Jack Kirby.

..

I have digested the broth to the extent

that i am now partly former broth,

and have integrated the search

within my pop-culture continuity,

and so now am ready to face the day

with a bhoyish smile.

wombwater revisited (first incarnation)

June 1, 2026
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once upon trochaic times

nelly floated in a sac

very like a uterus

wore a latex fetus suit

snorkeled-air umbilicus

saw just shadows and vague shapes

licked the slicks of nutrients

on the innards of the mask

(having had colonic flush

there’d be meconium)

..

five days passed in fetal bliss

nell hallucinated with

shades of blobbed angelic choirs

hallelujahing away

then bright light bedazzled her

with the sac forthwith unzipped

with the fetus suit split wide

hose-off in her unitard

..

“it’s a girl!” the tech exclaimed

“you’ve been billed,” the front desk said

nelly took the subway home

climbed the stairs and was reborn

failures

May 31, 2026
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there are dnfs

(dnfs stands for did not finish and a dnf can be devastating for a long-distance runner)

and on a report card the letter f is a failing grade

(the student of sufficient shame may also think of f for fool, for frustrated, for feeble-minded)

there are divorces and bankruptcies and estrangements and mass shootings

..

there are creative failures

but we can turn them into misfires if we try try again and pay attention to concept and execution

..

there are also melting glaciers

cardiac arrests

but the mother of all failures is cowardice

(failure of nerve)

and in this year and last we have borne witness to cowards in power cowed by a presidential coward who in turn kow-tows to a muscovite who has enthralled him

and this has engendered a failure of national enlightenment

the silencing of the voice of America

death and destruction abroad

and everlasting shame

..

but some few of us fight against and fight whole-heartedly

stansbury of new mexico

king of maine

schwartzenegger of california

valenzuela of washington state

..

so let’s not call a time of death on this beloved nation just yet

we have heroes

we have receipts

and we have fierceness where it counts

isogi, friends