the dead wife
Carl Watson
The dirt floor had to be leveled
And all the stones raked out,
Carried out in buckets and piled
In the yard as ballast against
The bowed foundation of the south wall.
There were boulders and bluestone
Slabs, some big ...
Meme Drift
Carl Watson
West Midtown, when empty, could seem like an ancient old growth forest formed of concrete, granite, iron and glass. And like such a forest it had a dual nature— peaceful yet simultaneously seething with hidden aggressive l...
125th Street
Carl Watson
125th Street
Once there was a Harlem of the mind,
In a New York of green youth and mystery,
Steaming manholes, fevered sleep,
When I was a pilgrim without ambition.
Characters with metal teeth and top hats,
Sn...
Sensitive Skin Best Of 2017
The Editors
Welcome! Time to ring in the old and ring
out the new. Or whatever. Here's the best of 2017 picks, from our editors and contributors. Remember, it didn't necessarily come out in 2017—it's just something we enjoyed in 201...
Enjambment
Carl Watson
Enjambment
Gravity made this planet, sucking in rock dust
And gas, which, pressurized, went round.
Reproduction is a gravitational force, too,
Attraction packing bodies together.
Regard the highway lead...
Best of 2015 – Sensitive Skin More Better Favorites
The Editors
This was so much fun last year, I thought we'd do it again. (Two of my favorite books of the year were ones I picked up from last year's list: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, recommended by Deborah Pintonelli, and ...
Love and Strangulation
Carl Watson
The philosophers of the old romances say, and many specialists today concur, that desire is nothing more than the result of a necessary and continuous projection of the self into others; an unattainable wholeness is represen...
Kiss of Kind
Carl Watson
Virtue and Fear
Stare at each other in the mirror,
They feed upon & tease each other
Until neither one remembers what it used to be.
That mirror’s name is Vanity,
It can make a body live in harmony ...
What I Did Today, Carl Watson's Issue
Ron Kolm
After contributing to an earlier issue of What I Did Today, Carl Watson collected three two-thousand word essays to go along with his already published one, to complete his own follow-up issue. Here’s Michael Randall’s ...
Five years in Fleischmanns
Carl Watson
As some of you may or may not know, I have been trying to restore an old barn in the Catskills for several years. I had thought of writing funny little stories about my experiences but never produced anything. This year th...
What I Did Today, Part IV
Ron Kolm
So we’re about to be hit by hurricane Irene, alright! And, at the same time, Carl Watson spends the day in an upstate hospital with something akin to colitis – so it goes. Carl is the very person who would give both his ...
What I Did Today, Part III
Ron Kolm
If you’ve been following this series of posts, you’ll remember that there are four 2,000 word “essays” in each What I Did Today chapbook, and that Dan Waber is the publisher, and that if you want a copy you have to c...
Late Night Phone Call from the Used to Be
Carl Watson
An excerpt from backwards the drowned go dreaming
People like to blame things—they like to pretend life is an accident, that it’s not their fault. But accidents can be intentional. We make ourselves magnets by o...
A Tale of an Affair
Carl Watson
An excerpt from Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming now available at Amazon
Sometimes the speed works for you. Sometimes you’re left behind. The latter is my usual state. It was the early 1980s, West Lakeview. Subtle ...
