Here we are at Saturdays Posting number 483!
Something has came up this week that we want to share.
Before I start explaining, I must say that none of our writers have done anything wrong. We are in no way criticising.
Continue reading “Week 483 – Also, A Chinese Meal, Get Your Babies Kissed And, Yes, I know It’s A Life-Choice.”
The chemistry of life in an era of endless miracles can be deceptively corrosive. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Like putting a hen’s egg in vinegar, it reveals the soft, internal wonders of the world—the things we’re so prone to build shells and containers around. Living in this era of endless miracles does, however, require special handling and some degree of caution. It often demands we abandon our reliance on the element of reason. Just as you should never mix vinegar with bleach, parsing miracles with reason and rationality can blister your lungs and blind you where you stand.
A magician taught me this.
Continue reading “Pink Tongue Flailing by Dana Rollins”
You can believe in hauntings and not in ghosts. You shrink a bit when you enter your parents’ house for Christmas dinner and feel your powerless teenage self slip her tired arms around you and whisper a reminder that you’re not enough and somehow also too much. The rage that boils in your chest while you watch your father criticize your mom only finds a way to possess you at this table, in this room. The icy indifference that serves as your answers to all your mom’s questions is a ghost of the child you killed so you could survive long enough to become an adult.
Continue reading “Christmas Spirits by Anna Sahli”
(Please see tags for content warning)
“‘I can’t go on,’ just doesn’t cut it. Doesn’t stand out from the crowd.” Mandy pushed the offending piece of A4 back across the table.
Timothy looked at her and she knew what he was seeing.
Continue reading “Signing Off in Style by Simon Berry”
“You got old early.”
Hannah didn’t need to finish the thought. She’d already said it so many times, and then, when she got tired of saying it, she left. But even when she came back to pick up this or that, she sometimes would say it again, maybe for old time’s sake. “You got old early when you lost your job and started spending your days getting way too wrapped up in the neighbors’ business.” I never had a good response, even though clearly I had plenty of time to come up with one.
Continue reading “Your Grief Doesn’t Interest Me by Simon Nadel”
The young girl’s sandals slap the buckled sidewalks of Wesley Street. She feels silly and conspicuous in her grandmother’s sun hat, the sweatband stained blue-black by hair dye and perspiration. Stiff from decades of blackland prairie summers, the straw crown swallows her head like an overturned bowl, hot and heavy on her scalp. She thinks about taking it off, but wearing it was a condition of the old woman’s consent for this little outing, and spying eyes lurk behind curtains along the way. In this town, everybody knows everybody’s business.
Continue reading “1964 by Bett Butler”
Poetry is one of those things that seems to divide readers into quite different camps. I am a poet and a poetry lover but fully understand how other people just don’t ‘get it’. This piece, though it’s about a poet is not altogether about poetry. Mick Bloor shows yet again what a knowledgeable and well read writer he is. Excellent stuff.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever by Mick Bloor”
Jon Brower Minnoch (1941-1983) was, and remains, the heaviest known human being ever to live (according to Guiness). He topped out at 1400 pounds ( a hundred stone in the UK). He holds many weight related records including the most pounds lost (900 plus) and the greatest weight difference between husband and wife (1300). Mr. and Mrs. Minnoch had two children, which is testament to both the determination of life and a prime example of something I’d rather not consider too deeply.
Continue reading “Week 482: Remembering Jon Brower Minnoch; Five Acts of Daily Goodness; the A to Z of Slang and Catchphrases”
He rolled out from under the boat and lay on his back. The sun soaked into him. But the fly that had awoken him kept buzzing near his ear. It landed on his face and he brushed it away.
Continue reading “The Young Man by Danny Antonelli”
The seatbelt light clicked on and Tess checked her latch, her eyes flicking to Jake’s lap—unbuckled, of course. He got the aisle seat. She was in the middle. A stranger sat by the window.
The captain crackled on the intercom. “We’re experiencing a bit of turbulence, folks. Please remain seated as we begin our descent.”
Continue reading “Assumed Position by T.L. Tomljanovic”
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