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.