Goines On: Goines’ last day

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On the last day of Goines’ life....Goines wondered how that sentence – that paragraph – would end. What would he have done (or be going to do) on that day? And it could be any day.

Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [13]

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Chapter 13. Oil

Ricardo sat on a small trunk with a suitcase next to him. Everything that he owned in the world was waiting to be put on a train and ride with him into exile.
    The buggy stopped and the driver got off to help load the trunk. Once everything was tied down, the driver popped the whip, and the life of Ricky Rodrigo stopped and the life of Ricardo Rodrigo began again.

Roger’s Reality: Lord of Storms

By Roger Owens

Tuesday, September 3, 2019. We see the reports that a storm is coming. We saw them as far back as last Wednesday. This is not unusual in Florida. It is so not unusual that it is hardly, no pun intended, a blip on our radar. It follows one of the most common tracks, coming off the West African coast somewhere northwest of the Bight of Benin, the name of which I, personally, have always found romantic, dangerous, adventurous; a name from novels of wooden ships, pirates, and slave traders. It crosses the Atlantic, glacially gathering strength like a boxer lifting weights, determined to bulk up for a fight far in the future. It creeps into the southwestern Caribbean, and our consciousness, like news reports of a string of grisly ax murders in a nearby town, disturbing but not personally threatening. Yet. It makes our stomachs tighten up a little, but we are not currently ready to allow it to affect our monotonous daily existences.

Goines On: The intelligence of a persimmon tree

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Three more green, 2-inch persimmons had fallen during the night. Goines wasn’t keeping count of the fruits he saw on the ground below the bird feeders most mornings. The first to fall, weeks ago, had been less than an inch in diameter, maybe about half an inch. And they had gradually become larger and larger. Dozens had to have fallen by now. Maybe more than 50.
    Goines hadn’t yet counted the fruit remaining on the tree, a count of the number of persimmons that might make it to harvest – in October or November. Such a count would decrease as the tree continued to shed its excess weight. For that was what the tree was doing, according to Mrs. Goines: protecting itself from a limb-breaking accumulation of heavier and heavier persimmons. How did the tree know to do that? Goines wondered. It was wondrous strange.

Copyright © 2019 by Moristotle

All Over the Place: Frost in a Time of Conflict

By Michael H. Brownstein










The ice storm begins in the heart
quietly waking its way to the outer limits of toe and finger.
Without a hat, ears soon
fear the crush of heavy cold, breathing
an act of war, breath
an air raid of snow squalls, large chunks of hail, frozen rain.
Is this the hell of the ancient Norse?
Somehow the vapor surrounding us
a napalm attack of frostbitten knives into eyeball and flesh.

Goines On: The young doctor

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The first words Goines said to himself as he lay in bed this morning were, “I am going to die.” They felt truer than usual, more forthright, more definitive, as though he had merely mouthed them before, saying someone else’s words, quoting them, as when he reported what that doctor who wrote books said, “We are all going to die of something.”

Goines On: Counting steps

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Now that Goines was walking for 30 minutes rather than the 20 he had previously thought sufficient, he wanted to make sure that he never went too far away to get back near the 30-minute mark. Obviously, he shouldn’t go farther than 15 minutes away from home. That was easy, since the Runkeeper app on his phone alerted him at each 5-minute mark. And he already knew, for three of his possible return routes, the spot that was 5 minutes away from home.

Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [12]

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Chapter 12. Changing Time

Ricardo took the day off in order to see Claude to his ship. They walked down the long pier toward the massive black hull of the White Star Line SS Adriatic. It had one funnel and four large masts. It was a steamship with four boilers, plus sails for added speed. The sun was out and the weather was much warmer.

Creation or Evolution?

Compromise (a poem)

By Michael Vázquez, when he was 11

[Contributed by his mother, Sharon Stoner, who reports that at age 11 Michael “wrote and illustrated a book of his poems, including some limericks. Using cardboard and stick-and-peel vinyl, he made a book to put them in. I still think he missed his calling to be a writer.”]

There’s an argument in the nation,
about evolution and creation.
    Tho I don’t know what it is,
   I hope they settle the whole biz.
Maybe compromise, and call it Evolation!

Copyright © 2019 by Sharon Stoner

Goines On: Needing to believe

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Goines found himself wondering, as he undertook his 30-minute walk – lengthened by 10 minutes recently on Mrs. Goines’ recommendation – whether Mrs. Goines thought about him as much as he thought about her – or thought as much of him as he did of her. But two people just couldn’t know such a thing. Moored inside their own heads, neither “had standing” – no place to stand – to make the comparison. Did that make the very notion of such a comparison meaningless, perhaps in the same way that talk of “God” was largely meaningless?

Revival of ...the President

W.M. Dean’s unfinished 1974 novel

By Moristotle

Updating our Book Authors’ Corner last week happily afforded me an opportunity, 45 years later, to design a book cover for my unfinished 1974 novel parodying events that transpired during and at the end of the second term of President Richard M. Nixon.

All Over the Place: Dusk

By Michael H. Brownstein

My day begins with a prayer
and a night’s armor
gray breath and gray gasps for air
a leak in the area west of the gut
a somber throat
the last peals of swollen hamstrings

Copyright © 2019 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s latest volume of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else, was published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018.

The Loneliest Liberal: Want to buy?

By James Knudsen

More than once, tales of my time in the retail trenches have found there way into this column. I found two such instances and stopped looking. To review, I didn’t like sales. But many do. An old friend of mine – we’re nearing four decades of friendship – has spent most of his adult life in sales of one kind or another, usually involving electronics for home and auto. His career began in the late eighties with a now defunct retail giant in Orange County, California. He ascended the career ladder, eventually becoming manager of various departments. One stint in particular seems relevant during this strange time in which we live.

Goines On: Seeing the dahlia

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Mrs. Goines asked Goines whether he’d seen the dahlia. He took a couple of steps toward the back door to look out. But she said, “Here, in the vase.” Goines had walked right past the vase, which was sitting on the stand to the left of the sink’s counter. “Yes,” he said, “I’d noticed it.” And he had noticed it, but now he saw how beautiful it was and realized that he must take a photograph, which he made a mental note to do later.

Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [11]

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Chapter 11. Banking

Ricardo had an offer right out of college for an apprenticeship, at Rockwell and Jones Landbank and Saving, in New York City. They dealt in real estate loans and were interested in Texas properties. If that had not been the case, they never would have hired a Mexican as their apprentice, although this fact had never crossed Ricardo’s mind. He truly believed his hard work was paying off at long last.