You Know How Women Are
The streets were empty. Even the moon and stars were tucked away on a frigid Maine night in January of 1969. The darkness was broken by light from a single window of a lone house at the end of a short, dirt road. The wind howled and tossed handfuls of snow into the air as a solitary person trudged slowly along, buried in his coat. The scene was one that John had experienced many times before. He was back in his home town now, and despite the weather, he was enjoying himself. He softly sang the familiar radio ad he heard again today; “chez McDonald’s, on fait tout ca pour...
Read MoreThe Rotten Ones
The rook sailed southward, its black wings spread wide against the blue sky while Lee Sung-Ki watched it go from the earth below. He did not know what kind of bird it was — he knew little of birds at all — but he knew that it could fly, and as it disappeared from his sight into the backdrop of green trees on distant hills, he wished that he could follow. To be away from the stone and steel, to see forbidden cities — that’d be truly something, Sung-Ki thought. Not today, though. Today was school, and hunger, as yesterday was, as tomorrow would likely be, and it was not his lot to...
Read MoreEggs
Babies know when they come out unwanted. I did. I was born with a hole right inside my heart and spent too many years tryin’ to fill a space that didn’t want to be filled. I never knew the empty could be so heavy. Daddy already flew away by then, and Momma didn’t care enough to use her own healin’ touch. She shoved me off on Rayanne, who never wanted me anyhow. We lived down a long, dirt road and out past a barn older than my Momma. She told me once that she kissed a boy in the hay field down the way. She said he smelled like fresh dirt and had a freckle by his left ear. She’d...
Read MoreDear Mr. Shakespeare
Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Sir, some are convinced that your wisdom and creative genius are unsurpassed; others believe someone else is writing those so-called masterpieces that bear your name. To point 2 above, I say “Sir Francis Bacon? Christopher Marlowe?” To point 1, I say “Baloney!” I have waded through your most recent bloodbath, Macbeth, which you recently proffered for publication. Having recovered from several nightmares about drowning in an ocean of blood, I am ready to respond. Since I can’t address every weakness in this lurid “historical”...
Read MoreFull Frontal Idiocy
I take full responsibility for depriving the world of Soon Rae Suks’ talents. True, she was certainly not in the pantheon of the cellists like Yo-Yo Ma, Pablo Casals or Jacqueline du Pre. Yet coming in second to those luminaries is nothing to be ashamed of. And that was the track she was on until I came into her life and imploded a promising career. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of what she might have been, had our paths not crossed. I was hired to escort Miss Suks’ four-week New England tour. I was a part-time culture critic for the Portland Press Herald. The...
Read MoreIqbal the Cat
Iqbal was born into his 33rd life as a cat. This would have surprised him, had he retained more of his previous memories, because his 32nd life had been spent as a Muslim who believed no such thing could occur. Iqbal the Muslim had, in fact, spent delightful hours over tea with a Hindu neighbor discussing the possibilities, or lack thereof, of reincarnation. Iqbal the cat dutifully washed his paws in the drinking-bowl after visiting the litter box. Then, catlike, he would be distracted by the trail of water splashed out of the bowl, follow it with his nose, and return again to the bowl to...
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