Highways and Byways: The Drowning (Part 1)

Beginning of my preamble to a poem

By Maik Strosahl

I was driving up through west central Illinois on a recent day off with my younger son. With a couple hours of driving left to our day, he was lamenting the lack of a decent internet signal for his iPad near Macomb. I was encouraged that his brain had retracted back into his head so he could actually converse.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (56) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Sunday,
March 31, 1918,
continued

Marcus was on the ground, gasping, his breath knocked from him. The horse had jinked sideways and thrown him, and likely on purpose. The shotgun had gone flying into the grass somewhere. That old bitch knew he was a shitty rider. He didn’t like horses, never had, and in his limited experience the feeling had been universally mutual. Horses scared him.

Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 2)

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all published parts

Walt invited some soldiers recently returned from the war in Mexico to join them, because one of these was General James J. Shields. Walt, familiar with the legend of the Rebecca letters and subsequent duel, asked him for the real story, which he was glad to relate, because he was still rather vain and had to try his capacity to charm the beautiful blonde lady seated puzzlingly with these two possibly disreputable fellows.
    “I begin at the site of the action, and, as I felt neither of us truly wanted to be there—we had been friends theretofore, or friendly rivals—I dissembled calm by conjecturing a comparison of ourselves to those other famed duelists Hamilton and Burr. I asked if such had occurred to him.”

All Over the Place: Early Spring Storm

By Michael H. Brownstein


[This poem is an example of a Waltmarie—at least ten lines long (it can be longer) and every even line has only two syllables. This one was published in the Last Stanza Poetry Journal.]

within the context of hush, a vocabulary of whispers

snow fell

time was not essential—Friday evening into Saturday morning

quiet

the valley filled itself with white evergreens

no wind

an infinity of snowflakes erased sight lines, landscapes

silver

we went into the fields tobogganing snow angels

ice warm.

Copyright © 2022 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.

Acting Citizen: Trump’s Journal for January 6, 2021

By James Knudsen

Former President Donald J. Trump is known for communicating using unconventional methods. Conventional for a mob boss, but unconventional for the Leader of the Free World. Unknown to many is that he frequently used a journal to record daily thoughts and observations. It is difficult to decipher in that it is composed entirely in crayon and Sharpie, but we present here the 45^th President at his most introspective on that most consequential day of his presidency, January 6, 2021.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (55) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Sunday,
March 31, 1918,
3:45 PM

John Ashley had been in Raiford Correctional Institution for exactly 16 months, to the day. He had, on the advice of his lawyer Alto Adams, pled guilty to armed robbery in Palm Beach County on Thursday, November 23rd, 1916, and had been sentenced to seventeen and a half years in the state penitentiary.

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#3)

By Geoffrey Dean


Definitions

Gritted too fierce – tooth chipped.

Stretched too far – pants ripped.

Turned too much – screw stripped.

Bird on branch – talons gripped.

Wit too sharp – one-liners quipped.
Thirst too strong – slurped, not sipped.
Psychedelic – on acid tripped.
Kitchen puddle – faucet dripped.
Sudden wealth – generously tipped.
Expedited – already shipped.
Invisible – unnoticed, skipped.
Nails too long – get them clipped!
_______________
(5/16/2019)

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

From “The Scratching Post”: Medievalism, Part 2

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, August 16, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

In Part 1, Congresswoman Greene talked about the futility of fighting climate change. She favors confronting it stoically, as brave people have always done in the face of natural disasters. She declared her love for science when it manifests God’s glory, but she resists the timeline that science assigns to the development of life. She disparaged homosexual marriage because it doesn’t respect Nature’s demand for procreation, and she warned that changes in our sexual mores would soon lead to our extinction. She conceded that she hated Democrats and blamed them for instituting a policy of immigration without quotas. She predicted this blunder would destroy the culture that Americans had come to love.
    Obviously, her enmity ran deep. I wanted to explore this further.
        •
        •
        •
Please tell me more about the disputes with Democrats that push you toward hatred. Maybe it’s still possible to find common ground.^*

I see you’re slow on the uptake, Ken, so I’ll spell it out for you.

Please do.…
_______________
*

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (54) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
concluded

The moon was on the wane, just a sliver in the eastern sky this early in the night, but it was enough for Red to find his way. The lake to his left showed as a dark border of cypress and bush along the bank a quarter mile away. Fisher Creek was a line of river brush ahead, to the east, over where the sickle of moon showed him the way.

Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 1)

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all published parts

“Madame,” began Walt, in a voice of deep and assumed majesty, “I require a cup of your coffee, but only if its taste is as rich and pleasing as its aroma.”
    Whitman spoke to a Creole woman in a stall in the marketplace in New Orleans. Her head wrapped in a lime-colored scarf, she squeezed the juice from an orange in her large palm into a pitcher of glass.
    She turned and smiled at him, scrutinizing him behind a hard-to-maintain modesty, but he held up a finger of warning. “Wait!” he cried. “Do not lie to me now, or exaggerate its quality in the least, for I can be violent before I have had my coffee, and I require the absolute best!”

All Over the Place: How It Came to Be This Way

By Michael H. Brownstein

[There were days I would get off the elevated green line train at 43^rd and violence permeated all of my senses. It would be so great, its stench would actually burn my nose. I had to cross a large empty lot—well, I didn’t have to (I could have stayed to the main streets and sidewalks)—next to Mr. Stubb’s building, the son of a sharecropper who came to Chicago in the fifties. I didn’t know this, but his wife always watched me cross the lot just in case.

From the Alwinac: Summer Song: The Ashland (Wisconsin) Grand Opera House

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go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

I discovered the Ashland Grand Opera House on a recent trip to the Chequamegon Bay area on the southern shores of Lake Superior. A city of about 8,000 inhabitants, Ashland, Wisconsin, was founded in 1854. For a time it was the third busiest Great Lakes port, behind Chicago and Buffalo, with ships loaded with northern Wisconsin pine, brownstone, and iron ore departing from Ashland to supply the rest of the Midwest and points beyond. The central ore dock was, at the time of its completion in 1925, the largest concrete structure of its kind in the world….
    We first learned of the ore dock on a tour through the streets of downtown Ashland, where more than twenty expansive murals adorn as many facades, each visualizing a chapter in the story of Ashland and its citizens….
    One of the murals is a tribute to local railroad workers and located near the former train depot, an impressive brownstone structure two blocks south of Main on 3^rd Ave. W. As we walked along 3^rd Ave., a smaller building on the east side of the street caught my attention. A painted, poster-like sign identified it as the Ashland Grand Opera House. An attempt had been made to visualize a fanciful operatic scene through mural art on a more miniature scale. The familiar likeness of famed operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti in full voice covers an upper window, while a Wagnerian soprano holds forth from another. The boarded-up doors, no doubt leading to the second-story performance space, and twin abandoned store-fronts on the ground level make the prolonged disuse of the building painfully apparent. But the signage seems an encouraging indication that the opera house is still a source of local pride in Ashland….
_______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (53) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
continued

“Mister Middleton here says you’re still in the market for a parcel of lumber, that right?”

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#2)

By Geoffrey Dean


Laying Low

Snuggled soundly in your grave,

No more need to wash and shave,

Chucking foods you know you crave.

Now you’re free to misbehave.

No more need to pay the rent,
Blast your quads or get a stent,
Regret the gaffes you couldn’t prevent,
Or mourn the money you made and spent.

You’ve begun a brand new phase,
Laying low in languorous laze,
Boxed up in formalde-haze,
Wiling away your deathful days.
_______________
(6/24/2019)

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Highways and Byways: Wenn Du Mich Siehst, Dann Weine

By Maik Strosahl
I saw an article today that several hunger stones have been exposed due to drought conditions. [“Centuries-old warnings emerge from riverbed as Europe faces historic drought,” by Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, AUGUST 12]

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (52) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
continued

They set out for Middleton’s camp up by Blue Cypress Creek, Harlan in the lead, both striding strongly through the grasses that dragged at their boots and swished and whooshed as they passed. Cicadas screamed in the afternoon light. As the sun dropped the mosquitos came out in their droves, buzzing in the bushes, impatient for the night when the heat no longer prevented them from hunting blood.

From the Alwinac: Carl Schroeder’s Sondershausen: Schroeder Travel Log, Part 3

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


Exactly three years ago [August 10], as Petros and I circled the central streets of Sondershausen in search of a free parking spot, we noticed the banners with the cello-friendly logo and the slogan, “Muzik im herz” (Music at Heart). Sondershausen’s claim to being a “music city” (Musikstadt) is more than a ploy to increase tourism in this picturesque Thuringian city of (currently) about 21,000 inhabitants. While targeted efforts have been made over the last 20-odd years to strengthen the presence of music in Sondershausen’s public spaces, the city’s musical traditions run much longer and deeper, with local institutions such as the Loh Orchestra and the Carl Schroeder Conservatory standing out as traditional sources of civic pride. Alwin Schroeder's older brother Carl was himself decisively connected to both the orchestra and the music school, and is celebrated in Sondershausen as a local musical hero.
_______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

All Over the Place: Noise

By Michael H. Brownstein

You bundle your words into growls

and pitch them against the scars of others.

Aren't you the glad one able to build

bonfires and lightning storms and one time

a great tornado. It is no wonder plagues

move away from you, history repeats itself.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (51) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
continued

They sat on the log sections they had left for stools. The termites and wood ants had been at them since last season. Next year they’d be falling to pieces. For now, though, they were comfortable enough, eating their sandwiches by the fire, the sun still streaming red banners in the west. It wouldn’t be full dark till after eight o’clock this time of year.

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#1)

By Geoffrey Dean


Meaning-Less

Some poems are a crime
For the sake of a rhyme—
Total waste of time
And not worth a dime.

Words strung along
In vacuous song
For an imagined throng
To sing all wrong.

Rhyming come easy
Makes me queasy,
Sounds so cheesy—
Doesn’t even please me.

That rhyme didn’t work—
Now wipe off the smirk.
It’s time to shirk
This line of work.
_______________
(6/24/2019)

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (50) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
continued

Now, the sun was overtaking them as they headed west, winding slowly down the grove roads. The car was crowded with provisions, including plenty of rum. Two canvas duffels, tough, heavy remnants of the recent war, were strapped to the roof. These contained the tent and Red and Guy’s timber gear: the sawblades, the power take-off strap, an axe, a twenty-pound sledgehammer, some hand saws and a sharpening kit. Guy’s Parker shotgun was wrapped in a scrap of old Army blanket, the wool shiny with oil and age.

Story Challenge #5

Write a poem for its story

By Moristotle

Thanks to Michael H. Brownstein for today’s challenging beginning, something quite different....
    It points to a story in poem form. As Michael suggested in his submission: “Finish this as a poem poem, a prose poem, or even as a work of flash fiction.” I understand “flash fiction” to be a synonym for “short short story” (only a few hundred words).

All Over the Place: A Teacher Catches the Elevated to Go Home from Work

By Michael H. Brownstein

[This poem is based on three true incidents that occurred on different trips home from my teaching job. In the first stanza, yes, one of my students is kept safe by another young man, but in the second stanza, I fail to protect another student. He is in prison for life and will never get out. His mother and sister were released a decade ago, but I do not follow them. Anyway, I firmly believe we are safer because he is behind bars.

Fiction: A Colorful Life (prompted by a Story Challenge)

By Roger Owens

Randy was pissed. It had been a great weekend; it was the Florida-Alabama game and like every fan at FSU, he was jazzed. Problem was, they had no TV. Or rather, they had a TV, in Tex’s dorm room, but no cable to hook it to. Big Paul had come up with a solution—a crazy stoner’s solution, but they loved it—and it had worked. Sort of. Big Paul and Little Paul had gone to the fourth floor, the first women’s floor at Kellum Hall. Wearing white overalls, which Big Paul had snitched from the maintenance office, they had told the few girls desultorily watching a local channel while sweating in the hot dorm lounge, that they were there to fix the TV, which did have cable. Since the channel was local, when they unhooked the cable and dropped it out the window, nothing had changed. Apparently Big Paul knew something about TV cable, which in this year, 1976, was a new thing, and had come up with a one-hundred-foot roll of it and the terminals to connect it.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (49) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
2:00 PM

When Red, Guy and Jenny drove away from Senegal’s that morning early, they were in a 1916 Model T Ford that he had swapped the old truck for. The Judge had set it all in motion, and when Donnie had dropped him off Monday afternoon, Red sat down with Senegal to talk. They sat at the scarred, round table in the kitchen, and Senegal pulled out a bottle of rum and two glasses.

Story Challenge #4

Challenge yourself if need be

By Moristotle

The unwitting contributor of today’s challenging beginning underestimated my deviousness. He emailed me that so far none of the beginnings offered have really challenged his particular interests. But he said he hopes some future one will...or he might come up with a beginning himself, telling a story out of his own life. (Some of you may have noticed that I do exactly that with my Goines On vignettes.)

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (48) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
12:00 PM

Sheriff J.R. Merritt didn’t like it; no, he didn’t like it one little bit. He was being lied to, and he knew it, and it pissed him off, because he couldn’t do one thing about it. He couldn’t beat the truth out of a covey of schoolgirls, or the son of a local real estate developer, who also happened to own the only laundry in Vero, run by said son.

Interview: Carolyn Waggoner & Kathryn Williams

Kathryn Williams & Carolyn Waggoner

The Authors of Rhino Dreams

Interviewed by Moristotle

Kathryn Williams was introduced to me by our mutual friend Jonathan Price, a prolific former contributing editor at Moristotle & Co. Jon wondered whether I might help her and her co-author, Carolyn Waggoner, get the word out about their novel, Rhino Dreams, which had just been published under the imprint She Writes Press.