Goines On: Casting out 9s

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In the hours after Goines’ muse reminded him of the “casting out 9s” method of double-checking arithmetic calculations, he remembered where and when he had first heard of the method. Because Goines had been his high school’s “bright boy,” his math teacher (and the schools future principal), Mr. Loren Court, invited him to attend a teachers’ retreat in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas during the summer break of 1959.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (35) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
August 31, 1922,
morning

Despite having killed a man for the first time in his life, Red Dedge couldn’t remember when he’d slept so well. It probably didn’t hurt that he was in the best bed, with the cleanest sheets, where he’d ever laid his head. Or that thing Jenny had done with her mouth; Red reckoned he’d have to tell Guy he was right, as much as it pained him to admit it.

Sketches from the Twin Cities Poetic Diversion (or drive version): License Plate Haiku Varié

By Geoffrey Dean 

During the warmer months of 2021, I started considering the possibilities for poetic realization suggested by the automobile license plates of Minnesota. The typical MN plate has six symbols—a series of three letters followed by three numbers, or vice versa. How might the information on an MN plate be interpreted as the structural basis of a haiku-like poem?