In the whole of Riverside Cemetery this was the one stone that had slipped its mooring, leaned not forward into the new millennium, but backward, into the one passed by mere years ago, as if saying it was tired of all the holding on. In one instant the scribed name was home with me: Dumont Pulsifier, an old pal from my neighborhood, but everybody, including his mother and his dead father while he was here, had called him “Scratch.”
Continue reading “Scratch by Tom Sheehan”
Leila has gone back quite a way with this one and singled out a long time friend of the site. David Henson has stuck with us for a long time and it’s great to see his work getting another moment in the sun. This is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Bracelet by David Henson”
Well here we are at Week 302.
I find it interesting not just the state of mind that someone is in when they write but actually when they write.
Continue reading “Week 302 – Showaddywaddy, Yes Jesus Loves Me And Everyone Needs Some Bowakawa Pousse, Pousse.”
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22 August. According to my Writer’s Calendar it was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. Mrs. Parker was famous for her wit, light verse, stories, book and theatre reviews, A Star is Born, dogs, as well as alcoholism, suicide attempts, failed romances and a hodge-podge of emotional problems of varying severity. She was the sort of human who was aware that she was human and desperately wished to surrender and join the other side. Although she already knew that such a thing was tantamount to squaring the circle, it didn’t keep her from trying.
Continue reading “Band of Barnyarders by Leila Allison”
Three months have passed since the death of my wife. It has been a long summer, hot and unbearable. My only solace is knowing that it will be my last. I sweat incessantly. Others thrive in the sickly heat. Oh, that the rain would rinse the smiles from their faces. I keep my ghastly body hidden from the outside. Sometimes I cough. Recently more and more. But I rarely dwell on this. Hacking out a thick wad I get on with my business of living and dying. It is all I know.
Continue reading “Summer Nightsweats by Shane O’Neill”
“Thanks love,” the red-faced punter wheezed, tossing over a tenner, as Charity Proudfoot wiped away the spunk he had dispensed on her lip with the back of a frayed coat sleeve.
She didn’t reciprocate with a banal pleasantry of her own, as per usual, she just took the dishonest twenty and climbed out the motor, which is how she knew a monster of a rattle was on the way if she didn’t hurry up and get her shit together. Normally you couldn’t shut her up.
Charity the chatterbox had been her school moniker, or as her mam preferred, a right mouthy little pain in the arse.
Continue reading “Cheap Tricks by Alex Sinclair – Warning Adult Content”
Sixty-six years now and they come at me, in Chicago, Crown Point, Indiana, by phone from Las Vegas.
I tell them how it happened, long after parting, one night when I was in a bar, thinking of them all.
Continue reading “Once Screamed to Drunks at the Vets Bar, Memorial Day Evening by Tom Sheehan”
Chairs splintered. Egg yolk dripping off the ceiling. A gash here, a bruise there and he was tired. He was more than tired. The lumps and blame he had taken over the years finally put him over his line and as he sat nursing the latest wound, carefully devising another excuse to avoid punishment, a little place in his feline brain began expanding. Instead of the inevitable excuse, instead of the blood dripping down his paw, the brain space began to grow. It began to focus on his blood.
Continue reading “A Better Mousetrap by syndie allen”
Leila has brought a big grin to my face by choosing this piece for a Rerun. I read it over again, it’s a while since I wrote it and – though I freely admit it has glitches it did make me smile. This is what she said:-
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Overpowered by Diane M Dickson”
Thanks to everyone who took part in last weeks celebratory post!!
It was a lot of fun to do and to see the response.
Onwards and upwards to posting number 301!
Continue reading “Week 301 – Questionable Bargains, Aneurisms And Remembering Petunia’s Tongue.”
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