I drove a 1963 Flamengo-orange Thunderbird, wore navy blue tennis shoes, and sat eating a banana split at the A&W. It was 1986. In White Haven, Tennessee, where truck drivers were thought to be rich, it was still considered a big deal to go to the movies. Girls looked forward to losing their virginity in the back row at the Malco Theatre.
Continue reading “Shake or Float? By David Lohrey”
I view Tom Sheehan’s Johnny Igoe, Spellbinder Remembered as more of a link to rather than an item lost to the enveloping past. This tale is full of remembrance, Ireland, poetry and a melancholy for those little things lost. There are certain persons in our lives (sadly, too few) who make you sad to think about what it will be like when they are gone, even as they live.
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Q: From what I observe, good oral storytellers, those who make you lean forward as they weave a yarn, are an endangered species. Yet there is nothing out of date about that ability. It is still desired, but has fallen off. In your estimation is there anything besides our reliance on devices (for communication and entertainment) that has contributed to our lack of good speakers?
Q: I keep casting about my mind for a better way to phrase this question, but have come up empty. Simply, is this a true story? Seems so to me. Even if it is fictionalized, it has great truth to it.
Tom’s response:
Too much attention elsewhere for many folks, Leila, and Johnny Igoe hangs in my mind as if it is his memorial, every word like an echo I grab on the run through his life again and again., so lucky to have known him so close for a long time, though I am a poor mechanic at this machine and often can’t remember what I want to look up, which is a stumbling block, there is so much work captured here someplace.
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Mister Hisster
For the past three years I’ve been feeding a “neighborhood cat” I call Mister Hisster (yes, that is him in the header). I figured that by giving him a name I’d eliminate the “stray” stigma. Mister Hisster is a smallish long haired gray tabby, and leads with his right. There is nothing overly tragic about Mister Hisster because he is feral and has no use for the human race, but tolerates me–to a quickly arrived at point. Whenever I place his food at his spot under the boxhedge, I’d better get my hand out of the way awfully damn quick or the next thing I will do with it is open a tube of neosporin.
“Good morning, Mister Hisster. How’s my favorite little son of a bitch today?”
Continue reading “Week 345: Mister Hisster, Star Turns and Things That Need Inventing”
Howard Adams turned off the engine and gazed at the anthracite column of the high-rise. He counted the floors up to the ninth. The lamp by Sonia’s futon shone through the gauze curtains, a penumbra of warm yellow. Adams checked his watch. The haris, a young guy with a scruffy beard, might still be sitting behind the lobby desk. He would lift his head with a studiously blank expression when Adams walked past. The haris’s eyes would then follow the unbeliever to the elevator, well aware of the sins being committed in his building. The prayer bump on the haris’s forehead always caused a cramp in Adams’s solar plexus. Did the guy worry her at all? Sonia had flattened her mouth in that amused way of hers, half-closed her eyes, shaken her head—“I tip him well.”
Continue reading “An Evening at Sonia’s by Martin Rosenstock”
Though he had spent two years as a ship’s doctor, Naudain had never in his life seen such a storm. The crew had not glimpsed the sky in two days, only dark storm clouds bombarding the sea with rain: a monotony of shadow, broken by thunder and the crawl of lightning.
Continue reading “Unbound, Toward Her Repose by Livia E. De Souza”
Even with a personality of its own, my Saugus River is hard-pressed to be itself… so many things have happened to it, on it, with it, because of it. Did I dream all these scattered events, these small terrors? Perhaps. I was dreamy as a boy, romantic as a young man, possessed now. Possessed.
Continue reading “Hard-pressed My River Is by Tom Sheehan”
I try to leave Mom a voicemail. Again.
The voicemail cannot be delivered. Again. She always stores old voicemails. Always says you never know when they might come in handy. Especially if you’re in a jam and need proof that you communicated with X at Y time. Pre-empt the world.
Continue reading “Voice by Yash Seyedbagheri”
The year becomes indented, single-spaced, and winter edged with summer grammar. Every stamped boot is a syntax-wish for warmth, a yearning, for once upon a time, happy ever after, when things were and always will be, somehow, golden, likely better, bountiful, without end. Each shudder this morning is modified by such expectations. This is an English season to be endured.
Continue reading “Christmas Lights Icicle Frost by Antony Osgood”
There’s always something that is both hidden and in plain sight at the same time in Hugh Cron’s stories, and Jim’s Aunts definitely has that quality in abundance. Although it is a short piece, all the words tell and the thing that it causes to form early on in the back of your head comes to light with the final sentence–even though it is also open ended.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Jim’s Aunts by Hugh Cron.”
First off I need to apologise to Diane for having to set up a posting with the longest title ever! (Are you taking that as a challenge Leila??) They’re all quotes, the first two are difficult to find but the third one, the one that really does get to me is there and can be found.
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literally stories 