PRISMATIST

They’re called flyover states for a reason ... most people have only glimpsed those states in the middle from the air, if at all.

The first time I visited the Pacific Northwest was on my honeymoon in 2002.

I think I am turning into a heterocephalus glaber, otherwise known as a naked, or hairless, mole rat.

On a warm, breezeless day, rare on the Oregon Coast, I join a queue of impatient motorists going south on the Coast Highway.

A woman sits at a table next to an open window.

As my VW van rumbles towards Zacatecas, Mexico, Jimmie rolls down the window and shouts, "Fantastico."

My name is Tony Lopresti and I’ve been a lector since I started high school.

I was a Minnesota Boy Immersed in Irish joy ...

... a svelte, attractive young woman at the dark wood-paneled breakfast bar of a quaint country inn taught me that we are all killers.

I’m writing this several hours before the much-anticipated spring equinox arrives. I can’t wait!

I sit on a bench in a gallery staring at a giant comic-book-style painting by Roy Lichtenstein.

In September of 2025 the Indescribable Scribes, a prose and poetry writing group affiliated with the Astoria (Oregon) Writers Guild, sponsored a day long writing workshop.

Ogling tourists and transitory travelers attempting to “find themselves” are drawn to Astoria.

Clinging to a cup of coffee from the Astoria Coffee Shop and a notebook as if they were life preservers, he makes his way through the Cargo showroom near Astoria, Oregon's waterfront.

I have become a fearful woman, after becoming a frightened woman.

One of the more humbling realizations during this Trump administration is that it has forced me to confront how much I don’t know.

She watched in fascination as her older sister primped at the bathroom mirror ...,

Change won’t come in the winter; even though the sound of rain, like sharp nailed fingertips, drums with impatience on my roof.

Five of us, including the Chinese driver, were crammed into a Toyota land cruiser that bounced along on the vast Tibetan Plateau.

Anya and Kerensa, my granddaughter, have been friends ever since they met as college freshman percussion students four years ago.