Spots
Midst purgatory’s weedfields sprouts one clover. On blinded shelves, between the pulp and pap, a dashed and stashed encryption offers sight as fortitude is found in looking over the life of Job, the context of mishap. And even the most sweat-sopped marish night about to drown you in its sea of horror dissolves in dawn: The dark defines the light. So if I’m looking at a fun-house mirror or through a curved perverted looking glass to spot a glimmer through a pane of terror of what you say shall never come to pass, it could be that you aren’t looking right. The dark of sunspots, after...
Read MoreCookies of Fortune
I scanned the Golden Gate Bridge toting fortune cookies in my backpack, the wind whipping the hair islands encircling my ears and chilling the crown of my head. The elements were unkind to balding men like me. My bushy mustache warmed my upper lip, which didn’t require warming. I had hair everywhere but where I wanted it, where it would have benefited me in becoming a ladies’ man or even a man’s man. I was clownish. But I didn’t mind. I was in the business of making people laugh. I could usually detect the ones I had come for from across the bridge. Their silhouettes, alone and...
Read MoreThe Ark of Memory
Two nurses rooming on the third floor were having a party that evening. One of them had slipped a note under my door, bidding me to come and bring my own bottle. And so, shortly after nine o’clock, I climbed the steps carrying my fifth of Jack Daniel’s. The sounds of laughter and badinage reached me as I climbed, and I arrived on the third floor to find the nurses’ door wide open and guests overflowing into the hallway. The party had reached the point of uninhibited conversation. The kitchen was full of people mixing drinks as they talked and blew smoke, and one man eased past me...
Read MoreChoices
“…if poets (often lacking God, less often lacking cats)…” – Dan Chiasson I’ve often heard that politicians own dogs and we with creative natures tend towards cats, and I wonder why. Do politicians need clear emotions, eyes filled with slavish devotion or rage on the verge of attack, while we of poetic bent have become accustomed to the blank, disinterested...
Read MoreThe Introvert Who (Almost) Ran for Town Council
I can make a difference in this town, she told friends. They were encouraging from the start, pleased by her omission of the words “I believe,” her phrasing of desire (and ambition) as fact. Yes, this was to be her time, of that they were sure. They remembered the many ways, large and small, that she had helped them, the good she had ushered into the world. How she located a shelter and then a new home for Marie, who for years had been unable to relinquish the fists and the honey tongue of Caleb. How she decorated Stefan’s studio apartment on thrift shop scavenging. As if from a...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Dec. 29 (Reflection)
As the final days of 2014 wind down and we look forward to 2015, this week’s contributors aid us with a little self-reflection. In Jenna B. Morgan’s short story, “The Coefficient of Friction,” a college professor comes to terms with her changing life. In Michael Estabrook’s poem, “At McDonald’s,” people-watching at a fast-food joint causes the speaker to turn inwards. In Paul Alan Ruben’s short story, “An Actress Prepares,” a single mother, unhappy with her acting career, makes a dire...
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