The clouds were moving. If Harvey closed one eye, he could see them as they drifted above him. He didn’t know when dental offices began putting relaxing pictures in their light fixtures, but he was damned grateful for it. It could have been the numbing stuff they jammed into his gums or that he had been in this chair for an hour and was starting to hallucinate, but those clouds were definitely moving.
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Maggie and I sit on our front porch at dusk. We drink ice tea and watch the sun sink. In our fifty-five years of marriage, we have rarely missed a sunset.
Today, the sun bleeds through the haze, and the horizon is apple red. Maggie rocks in her rocker, knitting a shawl. I smoke a pipe filled with Captain Black tobacco.
“It was a hay loft, sweetheart,” her mother said. “The old lady who used to live here kept hay up there to feed her cows.”
“But it’s empty now,” the child said. “And I hear things.”
“It used to be a hay loft,” her mother said patiently, “so there were lots of small animals lived in it.” She smiled encouragingly. “Dormice, you know, like in Alice in Wonderland.”
Solomon Sands stood on the dock at Norfolk Navy Yard and wondered how the hunched skeleton in the wheelchair could have ever cut a fearful figure. River water, bay water, ocean water, chopped into crests and troughs, assaulted the USS Cormorant, ready for decommissioning this October day in 1868.
It took me over a year to convince my father to move into Riverview Gardens, and now, four months later, it looked like I’d done the right thing. He was eating well, sleeping well, even playing checkers most days with a man from Montreal. As for his dementia, it was no better, but no worse either. And, now that Riverview was in the process of building a new state-of-the-art facility with more space and more light and wonderful things like a pool and a library and a little movie theatre, I felt even more sure that I’d found a good, safe place for my father to live out his days.
Another week, another bunch of innocents. Egypt continues to be hit hard and our thoughts are with all those caught up in this mindlessness.
Continue reading “Week 152 – Journalism, Plagiarism And ‘Sinkin’ The Heid.’”
Lush land, loud with growls, moans, tittering, screaming, slithering, barking, buzzing, rustling, snarling, warbling, neighing…
Soft sounds of growing, dying, breathing, dissolving, materializing, joining, evaporating, hissing, pissing, lusting, listening…
Continue reading “Adam and Eve by Frederick K Foote – Please note – Adult content.”
Reuben chomped on a crispy chicken back at the kitchen table when Deputy Nancy smoldered in through the back door, coughing smoke.
“Tanning again, Nanc?”
“These are flash burns!” The deputy dented her waist with the oven door handle. “Bog fog was thick. Smashed a boulder. Patrol car’s toast.”
Continue reading “Return of the Bog Monster by Jeff Blechle”
Every morning he takes a Post-It, records exactly what she’s wearing, and sticks it on his desk phone. Today it’s “red blouse, green pants, purple sweater.” This way he can tell the police if he has to.
Thomas Darwin, his cheeks stained with tears and his body quivering, slowly marched farther into the frigid Delaware Bay. The crowd gathered on the beach shouted for Thomas to stop, to turn around, to return to the shore. Eventually he did stop but not until the water lapped at his bare chest.
Continue reading “Modern-Day Heroes by Douglas James Troxell”
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