Shots (a true story)

By Pat Hamilton

Nick and I walked home from the campus movie, knowing that a few cold beers in the breeze on the front porch would cap the end of a long stifling summer day.
    “Help! Help!” someone cried next door. “They’re killing us all in here!”

Goines On: Is today a sex day?

Click image for more vignettes

The Goineses had just had sex, something they hadn’t had in weeks.
    Or was it months? Goines remembered groping Mrs. Goines more than she wanted when they were in Paris the previous year. Had that been the last time?
    They had had sex right after lunch, after a few pieces of Hershey’s milk chocolate. Chocolate was indispensable, he said aloud because of the occasion.

Goines On: Holy days, holidays...all folly days?

Click image for more vignettes

Looking for something old to fill the day’s posting slot, Goines discovered that exactly 14 years earlier he had railed against holidays, including both the secular ones like the Fourth of July and the holy ones (“holy” was in quotes). He had declared that about the only good thing to be said for holidays was that they excused us from going to the office.

    Had Goines been going through hard times at the office 14 years ago? He doubted they were hard times. They were midway through the tenure of UNC President Erskine Bowles, and Erskine was delightful, more outgoing than Molly Corbett Broad had been.

All Over the Place: “Rootworks” from The...Other Poems

By Michael H. Brownstein

Rootworks

This is the length of tree

and this is the impression a tree makes of root

anaconda long, hooked buffalo thick, yak swayed.

Flame and earth broil over, wind throws out its back,

rain a thunderstorm without lightning, without darkness,

but thunder, lots of thunder

and later, rain a storm of darkness, without thunder,

but lightning, lots of lightning.

Links to First Appearances of “Goines On” Covers

A Visual Index

By Moristotle

While applying the finishing touches to “Links to André Duvall’s Father Billy Charles Duvall’s Art,” I thought of the rather obvious possibility of constructing a similar index to my “Goines On” vignettes, using the column’s unique cover images and linking each one to the very first (or only) vignette that used it.
    What you see here (and can also see in the sidebar) is the result. Try out a link or two.

And that wasn’t all (or even half of it), because I felt a strong inspiration and motivation to get on with fulfilling a commitment I had made to my son and daughter, that I would begin publishing book collections of my “musings & perusings” before the end of 2023. My initial book would be (and might still be) a collection of some of my better poems.