Life as interpreted through the eyes of a child is a tricky thing for an adult writer to pull off gracefully. We can remember believing certain things as children, but not why. The most challenging aspects are understanding adults; parents tell children that grown ups know what they are doing, even though they know that is usually not the case.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Night Game by Jennie Boyes”
Here we are at Week 346 as another seven days slope into the distance.
I really do appreciate when these write themselves.
Continue reading “Week 346 – Beasties, Beasts And No Pressure There Then!”
One Christmas many years ago there was for me one present from my parents, a little, done-over red wagon with a long hauling handle, and slatted sides. The sides were for extra cargo! For overload! The name, the logo, of the wagon has not stuck with me, but its ownership has. That the wounded wagon, from some wars of its own, had been touched-up, repainted, a bit of rust covered over, two wheels replaced, had no interest for me. Early and mid-Thirties had all ready made their impressionable slash in the mind of a seven-year old. This one, now, was mine!
Continue reading ” A Little Red Wagon, a Long-remembered Face III by Tom Sheehan”
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They say that trouble arrives in threes. That old bit of nonsense came to mind when a trio of my home grown Fictional Characters (FC’s) came to my office on behalf of an alien FC, also of my creation.
The petitioners were Renfield (my lead human FC), Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess and a Siamese Cat named Boots the Impaler. The creeps either walked, trotted or sauntered in, each one via her, her and his natural mode of locomotion. I just sat there and watched as Renfield gently hoisted the small animals onto my desk and sat on the corner of it herself.
We all sat in silence, save for Boots, who was purring. It worried me that the chocolate-point fink was content about something that I was unaware of. For I’d designed his personality to be “like Genghis Khan in an Angora sweater–soft and fuzzy, but don’t touch him.”
Continue reading “Citizen Pie-Eyed Peetie the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon By Leila Allison and Daisy the Pygmy Goatess”
My life is a sea of ifs.
What if I’d published this collection? if I’d studied harder? If I hadn’t shot off my mouth at home? What if I hadn’t eaten too many potato chips and drank too much Merlot?
On my thirtieth birthday, they all rise up like the ghosts of Christmas past, whispering. If, if, if, a hollowed-out word that sits next to me in the coffee shops, follows me on my nightly walks, snuggles too close to me.
I procure the biggest whiteboard possible. Eliminate ifs. Draw up concrete whens in lavender marker. No red markers bleeding with psychological pressure, thank you. I lay out goals and visions.
Continue reading “What If? by Yash Seyedbagheri “
At Phil’s small memorial—we took his ashes home to the ocean—a man I didn’t know who patronized Phil’s beach asked about his drinking.
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”
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