A few years ago, to get out of work for a couple of days, I told a lie. Sure, that’s how it’s done. You say you’re not feeling well, your basement flooded, your car broke down, there’s been a family emergency. Some even say there’s been a death in the family. I went one step further. I called my manager one morning, sobbed into the phone and said, “My best friend, Blake, got into an accident last night and died. I’ve been at the hospital all night.” Two days later, when I finally went back to...

A few nights ago, my friend and I went to see a movie called, "2 Days in Paris." It was directed/produced by Julie Delpy who was also in the "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" movies. We figured it would be somewhat similar and since we had both liked those two movies, we were excited to see this one. It turned out to be entirely different from the other two (which were directed by Richard Linklater, who also did "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly"), the only similarity being they all took...

My company, a once-prestigious architecture firm, one of the largest in Northern California, owned by three-time president of AIA, Gordon Chong, is getting bought out by Stantec, a Canadian engineering giant, and will cease to exist as of Monday. We are not happy. Suddenly, we have dress codes (my miniskirts and I were frowned upon this past week when their HR was visiting us), there are rules as to what we can swap over e-mail (apparently not drawings of urinating penises, and certainly not ...

So, I recently had two new roommates move in. Two chicks. It's been a long time since I've lived with girls. It's not as bad as a I thought it could be. Just that I realized that sometimes guys, who are notorious for not being clean and tidy (sorry, guys), can be cleaner and tidier than women. The girls have now been here for two months, but neither seem to be a big fan of unpacking their boxes or cleaning, and our place still looks like they JUST moved in. I guess it's partly my own fault, b...

Again The disheveled folds of last night Unmade bed and exhausted pillows Smell of you In the rumpled sheets And A dip of longing Where you had lain

she desires silent grammar a strange play of words a certain full-page voice the dictionary heart the manuscript brain he is almost a poet but finite clichéd

Some say he died from being an artist. Some say he was a postman- delivering love letters. The coroner confirms he died of a broken heart. He was a poet who lost his words. He misplaced them, in an envelope, perhaps, or maybe he’d emptied them into an ear. He looked and he looked and he looked, but he couldn't find them anywhere. He looked under his bed, and between the folds of his sheets. Under his hat and inside a box of Kleenex. He searched between the pages of the books on his shelves. I...

The room is dark except for the bleak late evening moonlight struggling to seep in through the thin curtains billowing into the room. There is a desk against one wall, with a window overlooking the untended backyard. Sheaves of paper cover every inch of the surface of the desk, and on top of them all, at the center of the desk, sits a 1941 Royal Quiet Deluxe, its keys collecting dust, a ribbon broken. A pair of glasses rests on a stack of black and white photos with scalloped edges and a grai...

At Momo's, the favorite spot for Giants' fans, before and after games, Lele and I stood trying to figure out what kind of a practical joke to play on his friend who was about to join us. At the last minute, just as Guillermo or Jacob or whatever-his-name-is walked in, I pulled away from Lele and said: I'm going to pretend I don't know you. I sat down on a barstool and started talking to the fat guy behind me who seemed a bit incredulous that I was speaking to him. So incredulous, in fact, tha...

make no sound, poet you forget I am one, too we can read hearts even as they lie locked up in chests- we can hear the truth in a pause