The Showbear Family Circus

Tag: family

  • Two Pear Trees

    Two Pear Trees

    Soon I’ll forget my grandfather’s garden and the way the two pear trees stand. I’ll forget afternoon visits, stuffing his freezer with zip-locked meats. Below us, garlic hangs in a cellar above canned sauce, the caps dated in Sharpie. Soon I’ll forget the way he shows me the first ripe pear, nodding — proud, as…

  • Melting

    Melting

    like wet lumps of frozen ice- cream cake on a platter on a doggish hot day. her mind in its alzheimers spills thick honey sweetness, running over the spoon and the platter. dribbles its shape, ruined to the kitchen on our shirts and the warm kitchen tile.

  • The Purple Pacifier

    The Purple Pacifier

    The purple pacifier vanished One week ago. I found it today While rocking the baby: deserted Like a dead man’s sombrero That was blown by a western wind Against a stubby leg Of the gray changing table, blended As gray and purple tend to do, Sticking its tongue out at me This whole time Like…

  • Big Dave

    Big Dave

        The priest slid from Latin to English like a kid on a skateboard coming up to scrape a bench. A catch of breath and he launched into the eulogy. No one else in the church spoke Latin, of course. It was a comfortable background noise, a drone, a lullaby. In English he was…

  • Correction

    Correction

    Oh, what will it take for this old heart to be kinder – for me to smile at my mother and say, yes, yes, that’s right when she tells me that the waning moon is waxing.  

  • Antares’ Benediction

    Antares’ Benediction

        Reeves loved Antares, seven hundred times the size of our sun, the giant red star in the constellation Scorpius. Five hundred and fifty light years away sounds like a lot but only when constrained by gravity. The distance shrinks to nothing when freed by death, the opposite of gravity, serving as a celestial…

  • Changing the Duvets

    Changing the Duvets

      I’ve accepted that I cannot control the gloomy chaos in my sons’ lives now that their father and I have decided to divorce. This is a huge step for me. Still, my boys deserve to know comfort—specifically the mind-altering experience of lying under a perfectly made bed. But first, I must get rid of…

  • Key Lime

    Key Lime

    i am the man who strikes his open visage over the vast sea where my grandfather once taught me to fish. He is dead now, and far beyond that sea full of fish lies a great city, where the lights are all shining and it is continuously   storming. In the city there are fish,…

  • Dust Pneumonia, 1937

    Dust Pneumonia, 1937

    When my brother died, I stuffed his shoes with newspaper to make them fit I think of him when I wear them   His lungs, always weak on the baseball field Couldn’t take it. They filled up like flour sacks   OklahomaTexasKansasColorado Topsoil turned turgid all over the plains Invading him   We played soldiers…

  • 6424 Avenue Z

    6424 Avenue Z

        Before she died, Grandma made me promise that I’d take care of her house. How could I say no? She was the only person in this whole world who didn’t look at me and see a good for nothing loser. Mama didn’t even tell me who my daddy was before she up and…

  • OLD MARILYN DOWN ON CEDAR STREET

    OLD MARILYN DOWN ON CEDAR STREET

    Folks used to razz me about it, but we’ve all gotten old and I don’t think fertility is what it was before the mill went down and the school closed and folks called me Sterile Marilyn behind my back. It never got to me. Back in those days, lots of gals here wore their kids…

  • Our Work Here Is Done

    Our Work Here Is Done

      Not long ago, I went shoe shopping with our daughter Katherine. It was a spontaneous outing, which is unusual for me because I am no longer a spontaneous man. I don’t shuffle my playlist, I don’t keep golf clubs in my trunk, and I don’t cross roads without a walk signal. I plan for…