This poignant tale by site friend Michael Bloor is definitely suited for November. The Next Morning is a fantastic example of telling a story clearly though indirectly. It allows the little things to build up, and the payoff is tremendous.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Next Morning by Michael Bloor”
here we are just past October, or, Rocktober, as some of us like to call it. There’s something wonderfully reflective about that month (perhaps enhanced with an abundance of mini Three Musketeer Bars); and in such a mood I go all the way back to the Summer of 2016 for this Rocktober‘s rerun.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – When Planet’s Miss by Doug Hawley”
From the two sides to every story department, we present The Last Lost Eye by Marco Etheridge.
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In this impersonal age of cyber friends (like me), witch hunters who never meet in person and gaining the gospel from unholy sources David Henson’s My Powdered Friend is a satire that is uncomfortably close to being true. As in much of David’s work, he takes a bright, keen, even flippant tone, which intensifies the darker themes. And he has the great knack of making you believe just about anything.
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This double tribute to his hometown is Tom at his best, and we feel that you will agree with that assessment.
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Walk a ways with me, here by the Saugus River and the Old Iron Works, where I played as a boy, where arethusa bulbosa (dragon’s mouth orchid or swamp pride) waits for spring and new reeds to hide the young of red-winged blackbirds, where indentured Scot servants worked off their passage, where Captain Kidd brought his treasure to bury on Vinegar Hill (not found yet by boy or man), all leading me to say: The Hour Falling Light Touches Rings of Iron (at the First Iron Works of America, Saugus, MA): You must remember, Pittsburgh is not like this, would never have been found without the rod bending right here, sucked down by the earth. This is not the thick push of the three rivers’ water hard as name calling… the Ohio, Allegheny, and the old Monongahela, though I keep losing the Susquehanna. This is the Saugus River, cut by Captain Kidd’s keel, bore up the ore barge heavy the whole way from Nahant. Mad Atlantic bends its curves to touch our feet, oh anoints. Slag makes a bucket bottom feed iron rings unto water, ferric oxides, clouds of rust. But something here there is pale as dim diviner’s image, a slight knob and knot of pull at a forked and magic willow. You see it when smoke floats a last breath over the river road, the furnace bubbling upward a bare acidic tone for flue. With haze, tonight, the moon crawls out of Vinegar Hill, the slag pile throws eyes a thousand in the shining, charcoal and burnt lime thrust thick as wads up a nose. Sound here’s the moon burning iron again, pale embers of the diviner’s image loose upon the night. Oh, reader, you must remember, Pittsburgh is not like this.
(On back cover of the book, “Small Victories for the Soul VII.” Wilderness House Press, 2019 and Back Home in Saugus.)
Image: Banner Pixabay.com
Saugus Honor roll image from Wikicommons images
Ah, the brave year of ‘15. No matter the century, I’m certain that someone will claim that she/he walked ten miles uphill through snow both ways to and from school, upon recalling 2015. Time distorts perception and makes exaggerant raconteurs of us all.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Everything Happens For a Reason by Adam West”
Shaming works. I can no longer bear the terrible weight of Hugh pointing out every week how no one ever offers to take on the challenge of suggesting a story for Literally Reruns. I’m going to pull myself out of my narcissistic reverie on my own stories long enough to break the chain. And throw down the gauntlet to the next person. And any other hackneyed phrases that might offend all you literary readers enough to prove that you can do better.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns—L’Erin Ogle—How to Raise a Monster – chosen by Shawn Eichman”
We conclude the weekly version of the Sunday Reruns with the only rerun of a rerun I’ve ever brought back. It’s a high class story by Hugh Cron called The Swans. (The Reruns will return in January as a monthly feature.)
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This early gem, The Number 26 by our own Diane M. Dickson, involves a group of lives which end with the cessation of one heart.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Number 26 by Diane M Dickson (11th December)”
As advertised, our stories come from all over the world. Although most are from the West due mainly to this being an English language site, we are often given sensitive, intelligent glimpses into the mores of various cultures. Still, when you get to it and remove all the traditions, we are all human and hurt much the same.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns-They Always Welcomed Visitors by Mariam Saidan”
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