An elephant escaped the Point Defiance Zoo and strode the streets of Tacoma briskly, briefly, as if going to work. At a summer party my parents threw, outside in the High Sierra, the ever- silent plumber, Otto, sipped whiskey. He saw a horse come up  to the pasture fence. Otto climbed the fence & leapt on the horse,  which galloped and tossed him off. Otto got up, came back, climbed over, and sipped more whiskey. First time her husband struck her, she loaded the two kids and some luggage  in the Chevrolet and drove away, {No more of that shit,} she said to her friend. Th ..read more

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You collect photos, public records, articles,, obits. Follow DNA maps. Recover family lore. As you work, you float out on a cloud, looking down on all those people you will never know and who will never know you. The mothers and miners, soliders and bankers, caped eccentrics, farm wives who plowed, gay married uncles, preachers. You cannot know them, only scraps left behind, ghostly outlines in chalk. They are your family. They are not your family. You want to build a castle out of names, places, facts. And live there, calling it Family. It is a grand, fascinating illusion, this ancestry ..read more

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It's August in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Green and gold and wildlife reign. Bluest skies. You're 11 years old. You think of September and school and cold ball bearings gather in your guts: dread. It's July, same place. You're sixteen, working at your uncle's gravel plant. He's often enraged at life. He scares you. Every workday morning, carrying a gray lunch pail, you walk slowly, as if condemned, from your home, up a dirt road to the rock crusher. It's more than five decades later & you're lying on a bed in an operating room lit up like a stage. You stare at an unspeaking se ..read more

 In a queue, people shuffle toward a museum's door. Finally all inside, they take off coats, hats, gloves, scarves. Winter chill did not come in. The walls of the single vast room remain blank. No art depends from them. The people sit or stand or lie and examine each other, and each one becomes a work of art, and each one's a startling rendering. Shadow and light, noses in profile or not, heads, shirted shoulders, bellies, lines and angles. Sculptures alive, paintings that breathe, dancers in repose. Some people seize delight from being seen & stared at. Others look away or down. G ..read more

 I own hundreds of regrets. I've made dozens of bad bets. I lavish love on household pets. I am a wealthy man. It seems I always had a job. Cash in pocket, corn on cob. Clock on wall, watch on fob. I am a wealthy man. I have love and hope-- interests, too. These help to ward off deepest blue. People to see, things to do. I am I am I am a wealthy man. Hans Ostrom 2024 ..read more

 Editors who loathe the Linear cut and splice hybrid scenes as I lie on padded islands in sleep's softly surging sea. Under slumber, I lumber into the theater of these films like a weightless rhino. Swing low, sweet licorice lariat, wrapping up my stubby hooved legs. Sing low, buzzing baritone, I'm lullabied like incubating eggs. Hans Ostrom 2024 ..read more

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