I come from good people. I always wanted a brother, until the day I realized if I got one he’d be a pest. That’s why this picture of my father and his brother as little boys is so funny. Dad’s wearing a play suit and a bowler sun hat turned up around the brim and…
All tools tell a story. The tools lay before her, a hodgepodge to any other eye, but to hers and in her hands, a series of instruments worthy of any surgeon. A set of files, venerable and well used, a clamp so old it belonged in a museum, a wooden handle to fit the…
The wrought iron hung on two hinges between two posts without a fence, just a gate set at the entrance of a garden to which he had come as a stranger in need of comfort, any comfort, but a glass of water would do, with or without the glass. “May I help you?” she asked.…
“I find in life we get what we need most when we need it most.” Julie – The Tango Room 1 It proved difficult to find. Three times I passed on foot before the door appeared set back surrounded by an ivy covered wall. Entering, I beheld an angel. 2 “We try to decorate,”…
“I wonder what it would be if you wrote it this week?” she wrote in her journal, the words hot and fast from last week’s escapade a few pages back now, safely buried in the streaming elements of the new week, new faces, old ideas, new intentions, after work meditations and milieu from a dozen…
There are many realities. Dreams are one of them. Fantasies are another. I sit here looking at an empty bed and I wonder. “Will she and I ever occupy this space together? Will all the combinations of great locks upon time and space and other lives give way and open for this time and this…
“It’s taken,” she said. “What is?” he asked. “The title,” she said. “It’s been taken.” “I don’t care,” he said. “What do you think?” “I think you better ask yourself if that’s the smartest idea you ever had before you go asking me.” She stood at the bar, a very over the hill woman with…
DDD originally meant Dead Dead Dead. I dwelt on defeat, depression and despair. Those made me sick. I determined DDD must stand for any three better words beginning with the same letter in any order. It’s my choice. Dignified At the senior prom I took wine, a red rose and two stemmed glasses from…
This piece is introduction to The Shady Grove, based on my experience as a resident of the trailer park by the same name in Van Nuys, California. I lived with the gypsies. I fought with the Philistines. I lived with them three years, seven months and twenty-eight days. They taught me a lot. John
In which the hero Delbert Bonner college age drops out to hitch hike across America with his friend Alexander Carmichael in the 1960s. To Hell with Life on the Mississippi.