The quiet prince in Heaven leans down from the clouds and smiles at all the graves of his predecessors, whispering, “I stole my way in here. Got that, graveyard?”

Padlocked doors in the old house we grew up in.

Outside the steps of the levitating City Hall Courthouse, a small crowd consisting mostly of families and umbrellaed journalists stood in a flock under the assault of the sky storm, conjecturing, spreading misty clouds of breath up into an already tense atmosphere, with swirling talk of worries and fears. Shortly before twilight, a representative of the court stenographer appeared on a balcony from the Courthouse. Reading aloud from a small, thin sheet of the recorded session no more than a paragraph or so’s worth of information, the representative then offered a slim commentary, the brevity of which was based on a verbal agreement with the Judge and the Jury not to be very specific about facts until an investigation into the matter could be recorded by the stenographer; all in all, from what I gathered, the defendant in the trial had evaporated into thin air before a verdict could be reached. “We’re very sorry to you all,” the representative muttered into a microphone. Her words fell down upon the crowd as heavy as the rain, if not with an even greater weight. The crowd of families and journalists erupted into a fever of questions, but the representative had folded the stenographer’s sheet and backed away from the balcony, out of sight.

Tonight, in Portland, an intimate reading/performance from my new book at The Slammer Tavern. Accompanied by Portland FX artist Alexander Jay Boyce. Gathering around 6:30pm. Reading’s promptly at 7pm. Enjoy.

Softly, to myself, I whisper, “Please don’t leave me.”