Gender Grenade
by Matthew O’Brien
I like to shop, always have. I have also secretly loathed the process a little bit as well. However, a new shirt, new shoes, new furnishing, if its superfluous and ultimately unnecessary, sign me up.
Some equate a shopping experience to sex. I have heard people report the same kind of euphoric feelings that a person is likely to experience during intercourse as also being present while in the midst of a shopping spree. I completely agree. Shopping, to me, is exactly like sex, as there is usually an overwhelming amount of anxiety leading up to the moment, followed almost at once by an equally, if not additionally, overwhelming amount of uncertainty and guilt.
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Your Daddy Can’t Dance, and Your Mamma Can’t Rock and Roll
by Ileana Dragutsa
You play the piano and your dog wags his tail like a metronome; in rhythm to, is it Chopin’s Polanaise? or simply, Chopstix? Perhaps a little “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy?”
I am sadly envious.
Would that I could, but I won’t because I can’t. I was not allowed to learn a musical instrument, in spite of pleading and crying. Sobbing uncontrollably for want of music fell upon deaf ears. I was gifted with a musical ear, a voice to carry notes and words; the gift to put notes and words together and entertain my mother at her request.….
And rhythm to learn all the latest dance steps….. There was none better… I was the best, yet deprived of one simple love…. “Please, please, please, dad, let me take piano lessons… it is free. My music teacher is giving free lessons to anyone in the class who would like to learn an instrument…. FREE….FREE….FREE…”
My mother begged him, on my behalf.
The response was “No, I did not learn any damn music, and there is nothing wrong with me.”
Her hands were tied because of the unfortunate circumstances in our family… but that is another story. And so I continued to serenade my friends and my mother…. She was so sad for me, but as I said, her hands were tied. She could only stand by and weep along with her eleven year old daughter…..
I wish my father was a loving and giving man, such as you enjoyed. There is nothing I would enjoy more than to play “Duelling Pianos” …
But yes, Ladies and Gents, as far as I was concerned, there was plenty wrong with him…. He was the most mean spirited human on the face of the earth…. He did not do it, therefore he deprived his children of their desires and interests. He could not respond unless it was negative.
So I sang as best I could, and even that was taken from me… I was in the school choir, because I could sing soprano, or alto…. until it was time to appear at the local Arena to sing competitively….It was time to leave the house to appear at the arena….. “NO, I never sang in any school choir, there is no reason why you should.” My heart was broken. I ran away from home and stayed under the porch overnight, and all the next day. What was I going to tell my music teacher? What was a good reason for staying out all night? I knew my mother was worried sick. From under the porch I watched the father drive away to his work. That was when I decided to become the family rebel….. until hunger overcame me. When finally I could stand it no longer, I emerged from under the porch, face tear stained and dirty, eyes swollen, and clothes filthy with sand and cobwebs, and quietly moved into the back kitchen where my mother was cooking the day’s meals.
Mothers must have eyes in the back of their heads; she continued stirring her tasty creation. Without turning her head she asked. “Are you hungry?” “Yes Mamma.” “Go have a bath, and then come back for your breakfast. I suppose I had better cook enough food for you to make up for the three meals you missed yesterday. Do you think you can eat three meals this morning?” Her question made me laugh; She hugged me and then I cried again. Through her own tears she whispered… “I am sorry it has to be like this for you; just remember you will always be my daughter and I love your music I wish it could be different.”
I had a long bath, and then enjoyed a lovingly prepared meal, with home made bread….. no not three…..
Filed under Stories | Comment (0)No Grand Adventure
by Lauri Langton
Worn hands look young
as they mend
the garden gate that welcomes
the old love, now friend.
Bent willow chairs are carefully
arranged in the shade
and times remembered
that never fade.
We have no grand adventure,
no morning after,
just quiet discourse
and gentle laughter.
Have we lost the energy,
the look, the passion
that we had
when we were in fashion?
Filed under Poetry | Comment (0)The Vanity Crisis
by Matthew Dexter
Mrs. Milner took one last look at her naked body before it collided with the floor. She was hoping she would never have to see those wrinkles in the mirror, but could only watch the lines grow clearer as they shook. The image of an elderly lady was one she had seldom admired, especially her own. The bony contours exposing the top of a torso so ghostly. Those purple veins that defined the bottom of her legs in the shape of an octopus. She had never hated gravity so much in her life. A bag of bones, Mrs. Milner watched it all fall, as if she were an athlete in slow motion, knowing all the while she had never looked better.
She was a skeleton. So skinny and delicious to all the lonely old men with the dead wives who attempted to seduce her every time they saw her in the hall. All the good that had done her now. The bathmat was in the drying machine. Her hip was broken, probably along with a few ribs, and her head was bleeding. “Well Jesus almightily I’ll be damned,” she said, “at least the glass didn’t shatter when I crashed into the shower door.” Continue reading »
Filed under Fiction, Stories | Comment (0)Say Cheese
Morty sat in the window booth closest to the door. The light was better here, he thought, easier to read the fine print of the classifieds. Carefully, he took his fork and poked the egg yolk, letting a little bit drip out. Taking a piece of toast, he sopped it up and nibbled on it as he scanned the paper.
He would start his day in Silverlake, at an estate sale high up in the hills overlooking the reservoir. From there he would work his way across Los Feliz to the Griffith Park area and then head down to Hollywood. Last week he’d been through Long Beach, Lakewood and Bell Gardens.
Morty picked through the hash browns, separating the dark crunchy pieces and ignoring the rest. These he consumed one at a time, savoring them. Refolding his paper napkin, he wiped his face, dabbing around his mouth in small circular motions.
Reaching over, he noticed his coffee cup felt cold. The non-dairy creamer floated in oily swirls on top of the tepid brown liquid. The service was slow here, even if you were a long time regular. He looked around for the waitress and couldn’t see her. Must be on break, he thought. He picked up the check and saw that it was the same as always. He left the same tip as always, gathered up his papers and left.
The first stop on his list was a wash. There was nothing there that interested him. A folding table on the front lawn was covered with souvenir coffee cups, old mismatched dishes, a single book end, paperback books, and a couple of beat up pots and pans. All had prices written on masking tape stuck to them. There were no personal items, nothing that told anything about the person who had owned them. Morty gave the table a quick glance and then looked over at the house.
Filed under Stories | Comment (0)The Earplug
Lauri Langton
My left ear is sore because I have had an earplug stuck in it for far too long. I like the isolation I feel when I listen to music through earplugs pushed way into my ear canals. But after too many hours of self indulgence with the MP3 player, my tender internal ear skin just screams.
Right this moment I am listening to Ray Charles sing “America the Beautiful” which was recorded in 1963 in Hollywood, California It is a grand piece. With my high quality earplug it is as if he is sitting somewhere behind my left ear and singing right into my head, the tone is so intimate. I can see him on stage, let’s say at the Hollywood Bowl, dress in a tux, with a few back up singers standing just to the left of him. Never a bad performance – wouldn’t you be happy if your epitaph stated, “Never a bad performance.”
Transported back to 1963 Hollywood in my little music cocoon. Gasoline is $.30 a gallon and the weather is good. Just far enough inland you can’t smell the beach but you know its there so you drive, drive, drive. Smart cotton summer dress, pointed shoes, a boyfriend who likes to make out, and plenty of room in the front seat of the car for all sorts of shenanigans. Quiet, subdued parents don’t see the tsunami rising in the youth. Ray is singing and life can be called good. I push the earplug deeper and I smell the beach again.
Filed under Poetry, Stories | Comment (0)JAZZ AND POETRY
By Nay Torious The Educator
Jazz and poetry it’s something alike
I never know what I’m going to write
But I’m a jazz head from a kid you see
Listening to jazz since at least sixty three
Ella Fitzgerald was hitting those notes
So much beautiful music came from her throat
Lady Day crooning of lost love and strange fruit
In sartorial splendor the Duke could be found in a snappy suit
And dizz all dizzy creating his legacy, Manteca sprinting from the speakers
Jazz got us high before crack heads and tweakers and two hundred dollar sneakers
That I never buy
Don’t ask me why cause I will tell know lies about the burdens played from a saxophone
And Betty Carter and Nina Simone spilling their guts into the microphone
Have you heard of the watts poet’s brothers from watts telling the truth on society and the cops
Tupac told the same truths was a poet so let’s give him props
Maya Angalou rising still when I hear her, I can feel the honesty that can’t hide in her words
In Memory of V-Tech
By Cameron Cowan
It was any other day
26,000 students trudged off to class
Unsuspecting
Unsuspecting that someone was seeking
For a place
To belong
He was crushed and like a seed must burst
He germinated at the barrel of a gun
His growth
Our sorrow
32 died that he might live for a moment
Filed under Poetry | Comment (0)Have You?
By John Kalpatrick
“Have You?”
Have you ever listened, have you
ever heard,
As trees bend low and sigh?
Have you ever paused, and watched
a bird
Swiftly passing by? Continue reading »
Counting Crows
By Kat Rosa
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for girls
Four for boys
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret
Never to be told
“What does it mean?”
“What? The beginning? Oh, I don’t know. It’s prophecy, right?”
“What?”
“You know, like fortune telling. What we can expect from life. All these fucking crows are landing on a fence and how many there are means something significant about the future. Shit, I don’t know.”
“Seriously, Emily, you’re full of it. And don’t you think you’re a little too old to be talking like that?”
“It’s some folk belief, I think, from the south maybe,” Emily says, complacently sidestepping her older sister’s usual reprimand. “It’s the oldest story, man trying to read prophetic signs into the world around him. Trying to read meaning into the meaningless. They’re not just pulling it out of their ass, Jane. You’re only pretending to misunderstand.”
“Be serious, Emily.” She says this as if these three words completely refute her younger sister, and as Emily concedes her point, perhaps they do. The dominance of being born a full two years before, the wisdom one gains between twenty-nine and thirty-one, has been exerted, and the expected acceptance made, just as the sisters have been exerting and accepting for decades past. Jane, the older, sits down with a full cup of black coffee, picking up the white napkin and rolling it slowly between her finger and thumb – rolling, twisting, slowly destroying. “Anyway it’s a great song, a great band,” she says, shelving the subject.
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