WELLESLEY FALLS, Mass.  Todd Smirsky is a highly-successful bond trader for Vulcan Capital Management and the stress of his work week leaves him longing for quiet on weekends.

Dad and son share quality drone time in furnished basement rec room.

“I’ve got people screaming… Read full post »

Good grief—what fools these poets be!
Striving to commit lines to memory,
ignoring a woman sitting there with moist lips
while hoping for a shot at posterity.
Take your mind off the words running through it
and take a look at those hips!

Put down your pen, close up the book,
lift up thine eye… Read full post »

BOSTON.  Amanda Mooring is an empty nester whose new freedom has allowed her to travel internationally for the first time, and she admits she was surprised at the cultural differences she encountered. ”We took a trip to the French Riviera and realized just how uptight Americ… Read full post »

It was the mid-70′s, and I was working the night shift at a little typesetting shop in central Mass.  One afternoon the boss called me into his office shortly after I arrived–he never did that, so I knew whatever he had to say to me would be a big deal.

Holden,… Read full post »

Carl’s wife sits shotgun in his truck
Her doughy face baked whitish red
He gets out and climbs the semi–
Smiling, he asks “How’s it going?”
We just grunt and nod our heads
at the auger hole, and how it’s stuck.

“Better you than me, boys,” he sa… Read full post »

Apollo told Cupid his business was not to play
with bow and arrow, but instead to light a torch
to guide unwary lovers. Cupid disagreed, saying

“Your arrows merely murder, but mine do
one of two things; either they inflame the flesh
with love’s fire, or they kill love with boredom.”

%I… Read full post »

NEW YORK.  It’s 6:30 p.m. and I’m sitting at Greenblatt’s Deli on West 38th Street, eyeing the door nervously.  It is here that I’ve agreed to meet right-wing columnist Ann Coulter, who recently shocked a live audience and viewers of CNBC’s &ldqu… Read full post »

He was a mess of contradictions; the son of a Presbyterian minister, he was a heroin addict most of his life, so strung out at one point that given his choice of prostitutes in an Asian whorehouse, he chose the cleaning woman whose arms “looked like the Penn Central switchyards” because… Read full post »

WASHINGTON. New rules designed to address a wave of entertainment industry deaths triggered by smoking crack in pajamas will be rushed through the normal comment period according to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, over objections by sleepwear and drug industry lobbyists.

%IMAG… Read full post »

He was prosperous enough to buy a place in town so his
daughter didn’t have to live on the turkey farm, where
the smell would repel the sons of the nicer families,
according to her mother. And so they lived
on a shabby genteel block on a quiet, tree-lined street,
a gingerbread house next door… Read full post »

WAYLAND, Mass. After divorcing her husband of thirteen years last fall, tech entrepreneur Beth Marquis knew she needed a new source of companionship in her life, but wasn’t sure she was ready for a dog. “I like to walk around Dudley Pond,” she says, “and carrying a steaming… Read full post »

Is Rumer, the Anglo-Pakistani chanteuse with a retro-pop heart, the new Karen Carpenter? 

                                  &n… Read full post »

In America there are no titles of nobility, although the House of Jazz has its counts (Bill Basie) and dukes (Edward Kennedy Ellington). What, then, is a guy supposed to do who is deserving but without honor in the country that gave birth to jazz–a not uncommon phenomenon in a world… Read full post »

The small of her back,
where the downy hair stands upright
like wheat in the summer light

made me think: pistil
and stamen, as if back in
biology class.

Chloroform, scalpel,
frogs, worms–what else did we cut
up so clumsily?

What a way to keep
young minds off reproduction–
repellen… Read full post »

The Florida Senate voted 37-1 in favor of a bill to legalize no-hands bike riding.  The measure now goes to the state House of Representatives.

                       &nb… Read full post »

"The Bright Stream," a ballet by Dmitri Shostakovich set on a collective farm that featured dancers carrying 5-foot-long potatoes, was forced to close after a bad review by Josef Stalin. 

                  /… Read full post »

          Rahere, founder of St. Bartholomew’s Church and Hospital, was Henry I’s jester, and had a special talent for mimicry.

                   &… Read full post »