I do it on a cold December day in Oakland, California. I sign the papers and pass the physical. In three days, I will belong to the United States Air Force, my freedom from her and her freedom from me.
Continue reading “The Great Escape by Frederick K Foote”
I was riding the bus last week when I was attacked by a MWCM, which stands for “Misty Water Colored Memory” (lifted from that gooey Barb song she sang before she got the perm that made her look like “Arnold Horshack” on Welcome Back Kotter–a dated reference but very true). As you have likely guessed MWCM is a sarcastic term. It defines an elderly concept in my “Ago” that is always attempting to change me into a sniveling old Shrew. We all have something like that inside (or will once fifty or so comes creeping), an ugsome, nettlesome something that (apparently) has invested heavily in old Shrew futures. I cannot kill mine but I can temporarily beat it to atoms by using my hard, old cold heart as a hammer. I often take satisfaction in imaginary acts of violence. They keep me balanced.
Continue reading “Week 551: The Attack of the MWCM; The Week That Was; A Belated Happy 80th to Debbie”
We went to a local theater production of Little Shop of Horrors. The talking plant looked like a guy in a beanbag, and the singing was off-key. I didn’t mind because I was with you. After the show, you mistook shasta daisies vs. ox-eye daisies at the restaurant. I chuckled and suggested you should learn your flowers — a modest proposal.
Continue reading “Say It With Flowers by David Henson”
Man, in my neck of the woods, color still rules; White, you all right, Brown, stick around, Black, get back. And sometimes we be so black we be blue. And the rules flip on you. Sometimes they do a back flip when you blue-black.
Continue reading “Blue-Black by Frederick K Foote”
The world has always been a snippy place (for instance, the title of this wrap was sneered at me by my boss in 1981. You can’t say stuff like that to employees anymore, but I am certain that the feeling is still felt). In big cities, especially, people go out in public with war faces on. Regardless, you used to be able to count on a reasonable degree of faked manners from clerks when you were shopping (I was often one of those clerks). Not anymore. Nowadays, it appears that the Corporate Stores hire only soulless people for customer service.
Continue reading “Week 549: “Be Nicer, Goddammit!””
The feeling had been growing inside of Henrik Hammersmith for quite a while now.
Damn construction noise.
Start again.
Continue reading “I do this by Adam Kluger”
The month before my thirteenth birthday, my parents’ marriage stumbled. Its arms pinwheeled for balance, and it might have recovered if not for the present I got. It was that seemingly insignificant little thing that pushed their marriage from behind, sending it over the edge of no return to land chest first onto the steel rebar of divorce below.
Continue reading “And the Winner by Knockout Is . . .by Héctor Hernández”
Leon drank a coffee with crinkly eyed, cookie eating car salesman Bob, Saturday afternoon at Desliles,
“Service is great at this altar of consumption,” Leon thought.
It was a few months ago he’d last met with Bob, and they’d discussed hats and bears as well as tales from the past and the quirky nature of circumstance. Bob never forgot anything, but this time, they didn’t mention clothes.
Continue reading “What Bob Remembered by Harrison Kim”
Then they walked along by the riverside.
The man and woman were walking separately and Cowboy, his pit bull, was on his leash at his side.
Suddenly she half-crashed into the man, almost knocking him over, then pulling him back toward her with her strong, powerful, small arms while Cowboy jumped around on the end of his leash and watched the show.
Continue reading “Then They Walked Along by the Riverside by Dale Williams Barrigar”
In 1978, at age twenty-one, my brother Jack blew the windows out of his small apartment when he attempted to light the pilot in his oven. He went from some windows to none very quickly. Somehow, he was neither singed nor injured by the brief fireball he described, but the windows did not hold up as well, nor did the landlord’s temper.
Continue reading “Week 547: Scofflawing the Scythe”
literally stories 