Highways and Byways: Angel in the Corner

By Maik Strosahl

One of my favorite projects I have been involved with as a poet was working with previous Poet Laureate of Indiana Joyce Brinkman at the National Art Museum of Sport. Several Indiana writers were brought in to look at the various art pieces and invited to submit ekphrastic (art from art) poems that could be displayed with the item that inspired it.
    While only one per writer was actually used in the museum, I ended up writing several that went on to be published. This one was inspired by a painting by Tom Hill called “Ecce Homo,” portraying a dazed looking boxer and in his corner his coach shouting encouragement. Sadly, the museum is no longer around. Some pieces have been absorbed into the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, but I have been unable to locate a picture of this piece.


Nine rounds since he stepped
through the ropes, into the ring

Three rounds after it
almost ended on his knees
as he heard every other number
of the referee’s count

From “The Scratching Post”:Chess

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, March 30, 2017. Republished here by permission of the author.]



I can’t recall how old I was when I started playing chess – either 8 or 9. One day, my father came home from work with a cigar box that contained no cigars. Instead it was full of black and white figurines, most of which represented people out of the pages of medieval history. My father explained they were members of warring kingdoms. The field of battle was a chessboard, formerly known to me as a checkerboard. The objective, to invade the opposing kingdom and trap its king.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 42. Crosshairs

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Rainbow flew down the road on his way back to the mill. His job, now that the killer was caught, would be to protect his cover story, and the sooner he warned Kirk, packed his clothes, and hit the road, the better off he would be.
    When Kirk saw Rainbow race through the gates and on to the shed, he looked back down the road to see who was chasing him. No one was to be seen there, but when Rainbow hurriedly jumped off the motorcycle, Kirk rushed to join him.
    Rainbow threw open the half-closed doors of the shed, hoping to find a tarp to throw over the motorcycle. He grabbed one that was spread across the work table next to where the bike had been parked for years. The tarp dragged a couple of shoe boxes and a hammer off the table, and they fell onto the dirt floor.

All Over the Place: A Lesson in Hats

By Michael H. Brownstein

[For a bit there I wrote for the Chicago Reader. This is a true story about what happened right after we moved into a neighborhood where things were gang-ridden and quite dangerous.]

When I moved into a house on Touhy in Rogers Park, a northside neighborhood in Chicago, I was immediately struck by the neighborhood’s clean lawns and the absence of broken glass and graffiti. Then my 13-year-old son and I took a walk to the Howard el station and I got a lesson in hats.

Acting Citizen: Looking Back

By James Knudsen

Now, why would I begin a column with a picture of my high school ring? Hidden from view, inside the band, is an inscription, Jimi Jai. It’s a disaster phonetically, but I was “going through a phase.” A new wave of conservativism was sweeping the country, and I had recently discovered my older sister’s record collection, with its hopeful strains of the late ’sixties and early ’seventies. I wanted to be a hippie, change my name from James to Jimi – yes, like Jimi Hendrix – and swim against the prevailing current of Reagan-era optimism and conspicuous consumption.

Book Review: Poetic Philosophy / Philosophical Poetry

A review of Allegory in Early Greek Philosophy, by Jennifer Lobo Meeks

By Moristotle

From her opening pages, Professor Meeks, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Perimeter College of Georgia State University, manifests writing mastery and loving expertise on the technicalities and history of her subject. I recognized a book I wanted to savor; anyone interested in the roots of philosophy in Homeric and Hesiodic myths would.

From “The Scratching Post”: American pride

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, March 25, 2018. Republished here by permission of the author.]

Have you ever watched “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” You can get an education, and not just from the questions and answers. For example, it recently aired a week of shows with the theme “American Pride.” All the contestants did a service for their communities: charity work, nursing, firefighting, teaching, and the like. Certainly, we should be grateful for the good they do, sometimes at the sacrifice of a livable income. But it’s hard for me to see gratitude as pride, and I certainly see nothing “American” about what I feel or what they do.

Murmuration

Courtesy Nick Dunlop^*

An allegory

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

They descend, tens then hundreds then thousands,

Their mass of tiny wingbeats flattening the bamboo canopy into sparse strands,

Like a helicopter gunship, searching a jungle for prey.

Aggressive and raucous, choosing bullying over tact,

They force the others to the edges of what was their home tract:

“This is our thicket now.”

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where?Part 3 [Final]

Kim & Tom

From There to Here

By Penelope Griffiths

Fast-forward five more years, when, with two kids in tow, I made my escape.
    Divorce is never pretty, but I just wanted out. My lawyer told me that if I left the marital home, I’d lose everything, but all I could think of was, if I didn’t leave, I’d be miserable and probably do something I’d regret – possibly with a heavy, blunt instrument. So, I left, but only after I’d made arrangements for my mother, who was living with us, to get an assisted-living house, and an agreement from my soon-to-be-ex-husband for me to have some of the furniture, along with our dog, Cindy.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 41. Confusion

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Rainbow managed to complete the framework for the new boathouse, but he was having a hard time keeping his mind on the job. It kept popping into his head that he was riding the getaway vehicle used in a double murder. He felt like a pawn on a chess board. He believed that one of the two sons was the serial killer, but what kind of game was the killer playing? Kirk Johnson had to know that when Ted Banks saw that motorcycle there would be a reaction from him. Banks’ telling Rainbow to paint the bike meant that he knew the danger of having the motorcycle show up again on the streets. So why did Kirk give the bike to him in the first place?
    He was deep in thought when a car pull into the drive. The sheriff got out and hollered, “Send the Mexicans home and come to the house. I need your help with something.”

All Over the Place: Let the Earth Speak in Tongues and If You Listen Hard Enough, You Will Understand

By Michael H. Brownstein

The voices in the graveyard have been known to scream

and if you settle where the crab grass grows,

you can hear them skipping over locust burns and dandelion bones.

Water, too, needs a sorting place away from confusion

but the voices flow into it, the voices flow with it

even as we death bomb and death bomb

bone, powder, flesh, fog, burning hair —

stone and scorpion, marker and–

Must-read: “If I ruled the world”

Do your day right

By Moristotle

Moristotle highly recommends Ken Marks’ entertaining, psychologically and sociologically insightful, and self-revealing piece, “If I ruled the world,” posted yesterday on The Scratching Post. Your day just can’t be right without reading it. And your parties might be more fun if you play the game Ken proposes.

Copyright © 2021 by Moristotle

Susan’s Stuff: who raised me

Detail from painting

By Susan C. Price

i include my notes as commentary.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where? Part 2 [of 3]

Me (L) as a midwife

Where I Came From

By Penelope Griffiths

My life in the UK was great. I had a job I loved and was very well paid. I had a lovely house and great social life. My job afforded me comfort and travel all over the world, both for work and for fun. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting and working from Japan to Russia to Africa to the Middle East – all at 5-star billing. I would “pop” over to Paris or Le Touquet for a cheeky day or weekend of shopping and drinking fine wines and champagnes. Very often my two children would accompany me; one can say I was the example for their own wanderlust.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 40. Taylor on Site

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Taylor checked into the Roadway Inn at 3:15 the same afternoon. He called Wayne as soon as he got to his room, and 10 minutes later there was a knock on his door. “Man, I’m glad to see you!” Wayne said.
    Taylor went back to the bed and got a file from his suitcase. “Here’s everything we have on Banks, but there’s nothing that says serial killer.”
    Wayne sat down at the table by the window and quickly perused the file. “It’s the only lead I have,” he said. “Nobody will talk to me here, black or white. The one and the only person who has spoken to me about the murders is a drunk, but I believe him when he said Banks picked up his friend that night.”

Highways and Byways: The Dreamers

By Maik Strosahl

I really enjoyed Shirley Skufca Hickman’s poem “The Old Songs,” from March 5. It got me exploring immigration from the early 1900s compared with today. Spent some time digging into Ellis Island, where some of my ancestors came from Europe. My father’s family came over in the early 1900s, his father from Germany, his mother from Sweden. My mother was born in a small town in Germany on the Polish border. She learned Russian as her second language and only learned English when she came back with my father after his stint in the Army. I let my mind follow their path, then the path that some take to come to our borders today. My, how things have changed.
    Footnotes give the translations of lines in foreign tongues.


Ellis, oh Ellis,
do you see me?
I am coming on a steamer,
I am coming as a dreamer
a man, a woman, a child
homeless not hopeless,
with eyes cast
from these dark seas
upon the torch of Liberty.

Boldt Words & Images: Waiting for Thunder

By Bob Boldt

Ages, my ages ago, I lay awake,
feeling Mother’s starched sheets
between thumb and forefinger,
my incredibly distant big toe

imagined the monster beneath my five-year old’s bed.

I understood somewhere between brain and breastbone

the full push of the terrifying, infinite universe.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 39. Carpenter

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Rainbow knew that a crooked sheriff would have more information than a lumber mill owner, so what better way to get close to the source of the information than to work for him?
    By the time he and Carl reached the mill, Banks had made the call to Kirk about hiring a carpenter. Rainbow stepped down from the truck and Carl drove off. Kirk had seen them pull into the lot and walked over to Rainbow.
    “Well, it looks like you made a hell of an impression on our sheriff. He wants you to start carpentering tomorrow.” He put his hand on Rainbow’s back and nudged him toward the shed on the side of the cabin.

All Over the Place: Death Arrives Suddenly Near the Bed in the Laundry Room

By Michael H. Brownstein

My father was born without an expiration date.

Nor was he offered an explicit warranty against defect.

One evening he arrived home to discover

free choice was no longer an option, passion a myth,

red food coloring an agent of kidney disease.

They say when you hear thunder,

someone passed successfully to the other side.

Poetry & Portraits: Ode to a Department Store

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Ode to a Department Store
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on May 13, 2017]

Discriminate, my child! Leave cheaper wares
to bargain-basement huntresses downstairs;
let Target’s multitudes stampede or graze;
let online shoppers stalk in negligees.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where? Part 1 [of 3]

To an Alternative Reality?

By Penelope Griffiths

I’ve only lived in the USA for three years, but I visited this country multiple times after the 1980s. The shortest visit was just for five days but most of my visits were for from three weeks to the full permitted twelve weeks.
    I’ve travelled east to west, north to south, taking in the sights and sounds from city to mountain to rural and back again. From the beginning, as much as I love the US, I have always felt the undercurrent of racism and homophobia in varying degrees, wherever I went.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 38. Long Road Ahead

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Things were quiet around the new office. Peter and Mary would video-chat with Taylor and Blake each morning, but the noise level was very low without Shelley, Tony, or Wayne. Blake had heard from the people taking care of Shelley and the report was good. Tony hadn’t reported in and Wayne was overdue. Blake hated not being in the field.
    The four still in Memphis were working on the June Killer case. Everybody wanted to change the name but no one’s suggestions impressed the others, so “June Killer” had remained. They were working on a computer prediction of five routes that the killer might take on his next vacation. Amazingly, the computer had started all five routes from the same town in North Carolina. It was a sprawling suburb of Raleigh called Cary. Blake and Peter were in an ongoing dialogue as to how the computer came up with that town.

Correspondence: Rocks, Knives, Teeth, Ropes, Guns, Dingleberries

Edited by Moristotle
 
[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

My local rock sculptor has been busy of late, and magical. His sculptures don’t last long, thanks to someone’s need to knock them down. The rocks lie helter-skelter till the artist reassembles them. I’ve not watched him at work, but I spent an afternoon watching the artisans at Sausalito, California. The artistry is in choosing the surface of each stone so that they balance and counterbalance as the structure takes form. My sense is that the form is dictated more by the surfaces of the particular rocks than by the vision of the artist.

Highways and Byways: The Giant’s Unmade Bed

By Maik Strosahl

Neil Hoffmann described in a comment about the last holes of a golf course that it looked “like a giant’s unmade bed” – leading to the experiment of the poem below. Thanks to Brooks Carder for his recent piece “My Chat with Harry Truman,” which inspired me to search through the archives to see if he had written anything else, and, of course, Neil for his descriptive comment on Brooks’ piece from last summer, “A Father’s Personal Impressions of ‘A Little Slice of Fife’.”


He threw covers open each dawn,
almost with disdain
for the slight of being inadequate
and pulling up shy of cold feet.

Self-pity Sucks (a poem)

By Roger Owens

So, my buddy Swabbie had a stroke.

We used to smoke

And drink and talk, laugh loud and long.

He was strong, the second-best surfer I ever knew,

Like he flew through the waves, a grizzled longboard man

showing the grimmies how it’s done
Now it’s time for a cold one.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 37. Wayne and the Klan

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Wayne pulled out of the Kroger parking lot and took a left at the corner. He crossed over the railroad tracks and went from the white world into the black. Other than the older buildings, the most noticeable thing was the roadway. It went from being well maintained to being full of potholes, and some side streets were still gravel. Wayne felt as though he had stepped back in time – nothing had changed in that part of town since 1950. He had stopped at a church in this part of town earlier and spoken to a number of people on the street. He had been told that the Short Rib Café was the place to go. It was the heart of the community. It was sort of his last hope.

All Over the Place: Needles on the Sidewalk

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

This was published in Education Week on March 1, 1990, back when I ran an afterschool program called “The Reading and Math Program” (RAMP). Every student came from the Chicago Housing Authority.


“We can’t take them,” one of the boys told me. “We don’t have room.”
    Another child said, “My mother told me books aren’t allowed in the house.”

Save the text of a comment before you try to post it!

...in case there’s a problem

By Moristotle

A reader emailed me this morning, “I wrote a comment on...and hit preview, and my comment vanished!” And his wasn’t the only such email.
    In fact, I had a few minutes of very unusual activity surrounding my own initial attempts at commenting this morning. (Blogspot is only human.) But everything cleared up shortly and I was soon back in business, posting comments again with no problem at all. I didn’t even have to re-enter the initial comment, because I had saved it to the pasteboard before I clicked to preview.
    Always save the text of a comment to the pasteboard before clicking to preview or publish. And do it when commenting on other websites as well. It’s easy to do (especially after developing the habit), and it will save you from frustration and rework.

Copyright © 2021 by Moristotle

Missionary Kid: Majestic Mt. Everest

By Vic Midyett

Recently someone sent me a group of pictures of which one was of the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest. It reminded me of my semi-personal experience with its magnificence – a memory from when I was 6 or 7 years old that I have never written about.
    I was born and lived in the State of Assam, India, as it was called then. It is now Bangladesh. We had no electricity or running water. Water came from a well that was brought into our home in buckets. We did, however, have a refrigerator, which ran on kerosene. With no electricity we didn’t even have a fan.

The Old Songs (a poem)

By Shirley Skufca Hickman

They wiped their feet politely,
Knocked at Ellis Island,
And came to find America
Singing the old songs in their fear.

Men packed into black trains
Like fat sausages rode
To Colorado mining towns
Singing the old songs on their way.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 36. Rainbow and the Klan

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Kirk Johnson was a big man. He wasn’t just tall at 6'-2" but also broad across the shoulders and chest. His family had been in the lumber business since the first Johnson set foot in Morgan County in 1832. The first Johnson, Hugh Johnson, ran the sawmill with slaves and supplied the South with railroad ties during the North’s invasion. After the war, Hugh Johnson’s son, Herman Johnson, helped form the Morgan County Ku Klux Klan and they hanged three of Grandpa Herman’s slaves from the tree at the entrance to the mill. The slaves had thought they were free and started their own logging business. It was the first and last black-owned business for 100 years.

Highways and Byways: The Woodline

By Maik Strosahl

The recent coup in Myanmar brought to mind my Burmese coworkers from my days in an Amazon warehouse. Many of them had escaped the constant wars and religious persecution in the Chin province. When I was working on an ekphrastic project and looking for inspirational photos, one friend shared two watercolors painted by Chin refuges. I found them haunting and, after some research, the words quickly flowed. Here is the first of those, along with the painting that inspired it.

By Lian Tuang

Boldt Words & Images: Back to Work

By Bob Boldt

“Smartassed kid,”
the foreman grumbled,
throwing his cards down
on the worn, wood plank

Outside the wagon window,
a cloud broken sun awoke
from the rain. A clatter of spades
announced our return to the ditch.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 35. Career Decisions

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Once back in Memphis, Blake was on the telephone all morning setting up a retreat location for Shelley. He was kicking himself for not sending her to one after the Betty Walker shooting. He had watched her closely on the trip back from Seattle and noticed some classic signs of PTSD. He wondered whether the signs had been there all along and he had missed them.
    He reached out to some of his friends from the past and was told of a ranch buried deep in the Smoky Mountains whose specialty was treating people suffering from PTSD. They could have a room waiting for her.