Sometimes the Messenger Deserves Killing
Once you start stabbing people who deserve it, where do you stop? So many worthy candidates. Macbeth’s problem. At least he had a wife to blame. There are always going to be witches, cackling over cauldrons, to set you thinking, woods to get lost in mid-life, battles to come back from with your mind on chores left undone back at the castle, scores to settle, slights to avenge. The moat needs draining, the murder holes are low on oil, and that distant relative chained to the dungeon wall has a dentist’s appointment. No need to question where these messages come from, this clarity that...
Read MoreThe Termagant and the Task Force
She stood at six-foot-four, a miracle, a freak. Most any wooden floor she walked upon would creak. No window, porch, or door was safe from her physique. When she stomped into town, petunias would wilt and greenery would brown and pails of milk be spilt, and weaker walls fall down and have to be rebuilt. One by one, in her wake new houses rose, improved to withstand such a shake. And some thought it behooved them all to let her quake; but most were still unmoved. A Task Force was assigned to meet her face to face and ask her if she’d mind staying at her own place, but she was not...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Jan. 14 (Finding a Voice)
One of the best ways to learn and grow as a society is by listening to those whose voices are often overlooked. This week’s contributors do just that. “Eight Days in Prison” by Nicholas Chittick chronicles roughly a week of experiences in a medium-security Illinois prison. “Own” by Brooks Lindberg is a poem from the point of view of a young person dealing with family strife. “Dissolution” by Julie McNeely-Kirwan follows a man as he strives to get a lawyer to help him secure an unusual...
Read MoreThe Potato in Me
What if it’s not a poet in me, but a potato that lies mute, still as a stone, stiff with all that starch, sweet beyond all blessed belief? Yet doomed for some inevitable and — yes! — edible destiny. And would all my words abandon me? All my days above ground have not prepared me for this single moment of roundness being next to soundness, of brownness being wholly skin deep and just as easily bruised. A fist, a hand in glove, a hardened heart. Half-baked, I see more than I am believing; I have the lumps to prove it. So what about grief? Don’t ask me. I only said...
Read MoreApproximately 465 Words of Sterling Wisdom
This has not been an easy piece to write, for it deals with a very odious category of people, those who are so unpleasant that, upon sight of them, many flee and hide. Are you such a person? Ah, you automatically declare “NO!” I assert, though, that you must study my words of sterling wisdom before you can be positive. Now let’s move on to today’s probing topic: How to tell when it’s time to work on your attitude and general demeanor. I proffer to you six ways you can tell: (1) Just after you run a stop sign, yell obscenities out the window, and flip someone...
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