My wife and I sought sanctuary by the lake, our two sons in tow. The four-hour car trip was nonstop requests for candy, cookies, sodas laced with anticipation, halted mid-sentence by the lake’s incantation: the first glimpse of cool, limpid waters and a sweeping lawn of conifers. We sailed among lake islands, swam alongside fish, dove for seashells among undulating stems of pondweed. One son claimed Lake George looked just like last year, emboldened as he sailed a Sunfish, while the younger insisted it was different every day. This was before we returned with his … Continue reading Lake George in My Heart by David Stern→
Once mown a tedder spreads the murdered crop to dry, draws a swath, a windrow waiting. Three days of drought and the hay is fit to bind. Catch and stack. Catch and stack. Breathing diesel, dung, and latent threat, a shirtless boy, fourteen, the mud of field dust and sweat, scratched by each bail’s blades… until you’ve built a plinth above the wagon’s rim to stand atop — prince of something. Stand there rut-bouncing ‘till with one lethal bump, your hay mountain shakes you off. You hit the ground and roll to meet the … Continue reading Harvester by Ned Kraft→
Recently, my wife and I attended a dinner gathering of ten academics of which half were retired. We had met all before, though only a few do we consider knowing well. There was pleasant conversation as folks arrived—much about the inconveniences of the recent snow and ice. These folks were mostly scientists, with a good balance of humanities scholars and all are relentlessly curious and well versed in a range of subject areas. Dinner conversation bounced from tick-borne alpha-gal, to the absence of haggis being Robert Burns night (postponed because of the snowstorm a week … Continue reading A Necessary Addiction by Fred Wilbur→
“Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts have they really and truly any sense of susceptibility.” —Essay on Women, Arthur Schopenhauer See him sulking in the corner with his failed theories, posture rigid, tie-less Oxford buttoned to the neck. Only men possess the power of genius, he once claimed; the fair sex are mere distractions, vessels for reproduction. Art can be made of woman, but woman cannot make art. Now, everywhere he looks— female … Continue reading Schopenhauer Rues the Rise of Women by Bill Glose→
Buffalo Alice stuck her pig husband in the throat with a carpet knife. Made the evening news. Hell of a lady if you ask me, but I don’t get jury summons. It’s break-neck around here. Not enough hours in the day to earn. People pinched by landlords, business pricks, government mules. When nothing’s left to say, there’s violence– blood stains, lead paint chips, hepatitis. My last tetanus shot was fifteen years ago. It was white tail season, farmer Fred caught me lying prone in one of his hedgerows. Had my old man’s 12 gauge slug … Continue reading Concrete Staircase by Jeff Thomas→
The New Year has ambled in and made itself at home, decorations are packed away, the refrigerator leftovers are cleaned out, life is out there in the future. It is checking up on our resolve to do, to be, and to think better; to lose weight, to be kind to the homeless, to take our children to exciting places. How are we doing three weeks in? I sometimes wonder about the difference between planning ahead and prediction. The first has always seemed to me like a wise strategy, though I confess I anticipate (worry?) a … Continue reading Future Tense by Fred Wilbur→
There is a hand dangling from the driver’s window of the car ahead, a sight seen less often on hot days like this, when most folks crank up the A/C and keep hands inside, but this one seems unbothered by the heat. It bounces and pulses, sometimes points fingers or twists the wrists, does a judo chop or makes a fist. I can’t hear the band it dances to, but try to imagine the music from the motion I see, something jazzy, jumpy, full of jive, nothing limp or frumpy about this music or this … Continue reading Hand Dancing in a 45 Speed Zone by Richard Allen Taylor→
A few years ago, a friend of mine was compelled to downsize as she moved from her cottage and asked if I would relieve her of a large dictionary and its slope-topped table. I said I would pick it up and did so in a matter of a few days. I was thankful; she was thankful. It is a Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 1966, with many reprint dates over the years. It measures 9 ½ inches by 12 and is 3 ½ inches thick. Too thick to grasp on the run. Not the OED, but … Continue reading The Weight of Words by Fred Wilbur→
The buffalo are gone And those who saw the Buffalo are gone~ Carl Sandburg I. The sun rose and spread her long fingers of light onto the grasses and great plains of Custer State Park. Over twenty-thousand tourists are herded to parking areas where we line up on both shoulders of the valley to witness twelve-hundred buffalo race through the grasslands, kick up muck, feel their weight pound the earth beneath us. II. When the buffalo come down through the valley, they shuffle like cows going to slaughter. We are told it is too warm … Continue reading At the Buffalo Roundup by Kristin Laurel→
into earth muffled dark with fear that i hold in risen shoulders, sacral plate, pelvis, vertebrae. my earth heart sends a radio signal, a star wink, dragon fly’s glance & wing clicks resonate through my body mass – doubts, societal expectations such as a body can only be whole if white or a vanilla mind must coordinate with skin like matching gloves, hats, shoes & purse ‘50’s style my vertebral discs are collapsing, degenerates, generations crushed from carrying false beliefs squeezed out, cut from the herd, don’t fit transcriptions, images iconically worshiped politicized dirt digging … Continue reading tunneling with my friend mole by Susanne S. Rancourt→
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