All Over the Place: “Water and a Lack of Wire” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Water and a
Lack of Wire

Stress lines are not the stretch marks of love

the way a man is more notable from the outside

as if chicken wire can drill barbs into skin,

bring the power of anger against the scrotum,

Bibliophile (a sonnet)

By Eric Meub

I like it when you’re looking into Pope:

His was an age of rhymed enlightenments.

The Essays and Epistles give me hope

We’ll make a couplet of our common sense.

Lord Byron, though, would have your lover drawn

More like a rugged, weather-beaten Giaour.

And really, did they ever get it on,

Or was it only talk? Give me an hour.

In and out of pout (a limerick)

Detail of a sketch by
Bev Johnson (2016)

By Moristotle

That little girl is often in a pout,
No one can figure what it’s all about;
    One moment she’s jocose,
    The next she is morose.
Just wait, you’ll see her lower lip push out.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

One Leptoglossus, two Leptoglossi

Spotted lounging on
our compost tumbler

By Moristotle

Are you interested in bugs? I spotted one of these on Monday morning, a Leptoglossus oppositus, or leaf-footed bug – at least according to Siri Knowledge, after it (or she?) performed the photo-search I requested on my iPhone (aka my camera).

Image from Siri Knowledge,
with link to Wikipedia

Highways and Byways: The Aging of Water

By Maik Strosahl

    Inspired by a photograph from
    Heather Cox Richardson’s
    Letters from an American
    (July 9, 2023)

The Aging of Water

This mirror still flows,
this glass still reflects,
but it has become
clouded with murk,
rippled with time and gravity,
wrinkled to the sky and
to my bespectacled eyes.

Amber Alert (flash fiction)

By Moristotle

His cell phone made a startling, eerie sound as he was chewing his first mouthful of lunch. He struggled to extract the phone from a thigh pocket.
    “Damn those amber alerts!” he said to his wife, whose phone was now sounding as well.
    “Humph,” he said, “it’s a severe thunderstorm warning. Hey, we might get some rain!”
    Still thinking about amber alerts and how often they sounded, he asked his wife whether she thought they actually helped.
    “I think they do. They help locate the vehicle that somebody’s child has been abducted in.”
    His phone rang. “Hold that thought,” he said, “it’s our daughter.”
    “Dad, Sally’s been abducted. A neighbor got their license plate, and we’ve requested an amber alert.”

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

A Look into Flash Fiction

[Click on image for a
flash fiction challenge]

By Moristotle

I found challenging Michael H. Brownstein’s examples of flash fiction (and micro fiction) stories. I have so far managed to write a few that I thought were okay. One of them, “Jesus on a High,” even adhered to the exact upper limit of the prescribed word count of 100, including the 9 words of its opening quote from Karl Marx. I remember the pleasure of whittling the words to exactly those 100, which took me many drafts. They were not an easily found 100 words, just like an article I recommend says:

All Over the Place: “The Laurel Tree—Because....” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

The Laurel Tree—
Because Daphne Prayed
to the Gods for Help
When Apollo Wouldn't
Take No for an Answer

This is how magic works against us—

how being in hell is not always necessarily a bad thing—

how the odor from the man sitting nearby decomposes oxygen—

how the feral cat bites the hand that feeds it—

how newspaper headlines promise to lie

and skin sickness spreads into leaves of hair—

sorrow bends tears into strings of bark—

a minute slaves into an hour, the lecturer going on and on,

an hour becoming a day, a day a week, the pen out of ink,

the pencil lead broken, a time to sleep, a time to stretch,

a heart stone, the grain in laminate, rings of tile,

the number of seats in one row, the moon, the sun,

the moon, the sun, the moon, the sun, the moon,

clouds, rain, snow, frost, the moon, the sun, the moon,

the sun and the man at the lectern still speaking

clears his throat finally, swallows an imaginary wind,

begins to sing—the sweat of swamp, the swamp of musk,

a triage of lips/tongue/throat: an eczema of wood.

Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.

Goines On: Wind rushings

Image from
Juan de Valdés Leal’s
“Finis gloriae mundi” (1672)
Click image for more vignettes

In perusing his archives, Goines was reminded of something from thirteen years earlier. The passenger window in their car had stopped working, and as he was driving with both front windows open to a repair shop, a cattle truck passed him on the interstate, and he got a nose full of the aroma of livestock.
    The cattle were presumably on their way to a slaughterhouse, and Goines had felt bad about that.
    He still felt bad about animal slaughter. Those animals were related to us, as his 2010 reading of Richard Dawkins’ 2004 book, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, had underscored for him:

Goines On: تونِس

Click image for more vignettes

Mrs. Goines’ chuckle reached Goines in the kitchen. She was at the dining table reading the day’s features while he prepared breakfast.
    “What?” Goines inquired, in the shorthand that had evolved from his various ways of asking her what she was finding funny or otherwise interesting.
    “The people of Tunisia are obsessed with tuna. They put tuna on pizza, pastries, and in many other dishes.”
    Goines joked that was probably why the country was named “Tunisia.”
    And then he wondered why Tunisia (تونِس) wasn’t spelled “Tunasi,” pronounced “tuna sea,” but he didn’t have the Arabic for that thought, nor the pronunciation.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle

Boldt Words & Images: Sawdust (a poem and its back story)

By Bob Boldt

Not much talk in my father’s shop.
I stood for hours watching him work
helping where I could. 
I remember how it felt when my sweat
caught the ticklish maple dust,
in Tinley Park, Illinois, 1947. 
 

Shots (a true story)

By Pat Hamilton

Nick and I walked home from the campus movie, knowing that a few cold beers in the breeze on the front porch would cap the end of a long stifling summer day.
    “Help! Help!” someone cried next door. “They’re killing us all in here!”

Goines On: Is today a sex day?

Click image for more vignettes

The Goineses had just had sex, something they hadn’t had in weeks.
    Or was it months? Goines remembered groping Mrs. Goines more than she wanted when they were in Paris the previous year. Had that been the last time?
    They had had sex right after lunch, after a few pieces of Hershey’s milk chocolate. Chocolate was indispensable, he said aloud because of the occasion.

Goines On: Holy days, holidays...all folly days?

Click image for more vignettes

Looking for something old to fill the day’s posting slot, Goines discovered that exactly 14 years earlier he had railed against holidays, including both the secular ones like the Fourth of July and the holy ones (“holy” was in quotes). He had declared that about the only good thing to be said for holidays was that they excused us from going to the office.

    Had Goines been going through hard times at the office 14 years ago? He doubted they were hard times. They were midway through the tenure of UNC President Erskine Bowles, and Erskine was delightful, more outgoing than Molly Corbett Broad had been.

All Over the Place: “Rootworks” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Rootworks

This is the length of tree

and this is the impression a tree makes of root

anaconda long, hooked buffalo thick, yak swayed.

Flame and earth broil over, wind throws out its back,

rain a thunderstorm without lightning, without darkness,

but thunder, lots of thunder

and later, rain a storm of darkness, without thunder,

but lightning, lots of lightning.