Literally Reruns – Canned Ravioli by Patricia Pocopi

Leila’s introduction to this needs nothing from me:

My downstairs neighbor awakened me after one last night whilst “walking” his dog (walking is an euphemism which describes the acts of either pissing or shitting–preferably some of both). The dude kept saying “Go potty, Shadow, go potty,” over and over and over and some more again, standing right under my bedroom window. Shadow is a good dog, maybe four, some kind of mix; and as a good adult dog he seemed to take offense to being spoken to as though he were a child. So, he obviously just stood there while his “human” kept repeating the go potty mantra. Suddenly a voice tumbled down to Earth from the cloud shrouded Mt. Olympus: “For Christ sake! Either you or Shadow pleasepinch one off so I can get back to sleep!”

The voice was not that of Hera, it was that of my own.

You, and almost certainly Patricia Pocopi, must be wondering what for the love of Hell has that to do with the rerun feature Canned Ravioli. Plenty. You see, anything I write directly about the story will take away from the pleasure you will gain by reading it for the first time. And it is most certainly worth that and you’ll be asking Ms Procopi, “Please…Tell Me More.”

Q: This piece is remarkably self contained. How difficult was it to craft a novel excerpt into an effective short without it coming off busy?

Q: Methinks I shall give you a chance to plug your work–please tell us more about the source material. (I guess that’s a request, not a question. Gotta muzzy head. Up late making new enemies.)

Leila Allison

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Canned Ravioli

Q: This piece is remarkably self contained. How difficult was it to craft a novel excerpt into an effective short without it coming off busy?

I belong to a critique group and this chapter was submitted by me one week. Everyone loved it. Thought it was so full of emotion – loss, guilt and remorse. To make it a short story I just had to distill it down to it’s essence including just enough back story but only what the reader needed. I changed it up slightly including changing the time period to the Vietnam War era since so many young boys were given a similar choice at that time – jail or the army. I often wonder how many who made that choice never came home.

Q: Methinks I shall give you a chance to plug your work–please tell us more about the source material. (I guess that’s a request, not a question. Gotta muzzy head. Up late making new enemies.)  

—  My novel, “Please…Tell Me More” is a story about a family rocked by tragedy.  The story is told by Rose who has never recovered from the death of her baby sister Lily.  She has always blamed herself for the death.  The parents decide to have another baby to “replace” the one they lost but this decision unfortunately leads to the mother’s further collapse and the father leaving.  The replacement baby, William, a little boy is never loved or wanted by anyone and he eventually disappears from their lives. The reader is left wondering if Rose will ever see him again.  While terribly sad there are many laugh out loud moments in the book.