Platero And I: Old Skool Bloodbrothers

No doubt you have been wondering, dear Platero, why Stefano keeps spitting on the ground each time we pass his house and I greet him with a slight nod.

We grew up in the same neighborhood and became good friends. Later we went to college in the same city, where we got drunk together and whispered similar sweet words in girls ears. We were convinced the world was at our feet and nothing would ever change that.

But then...the civil war broke out and blood brothers became sworn enemies.

Time heals many wounds, Platero, but clearly not all.From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé (°1968 – Ronse, Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and he hasn’t stopped since. Generally he writes them hatless and barefooted.

The Fall Of The Roman Empire

Frank stumbles down the street in broad daylight. The crisp air helps dull the pain in his wounds. Lightheaded and off balance, he is reminded of late nights in college, wandering drunkenly back to his dorm room. His vision now has the same tunnel focus that causes him to lose sight of his surroundings.

He'd never finished that final essay for History of Rome, but Professor Dutton had allowed him to pass anyway. She'd always liked him. Maybe it was her fault that he'd never learned any discipline.

What a weird thing to remember as he is about to die.

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

A college-age girl collecting money – no doubt for a worthy cause – rings the doorbell, sending our little white dog into a barking frenzy. Sorry, I tell her after kicking aside the dog to get to the door, but we gave last week. She doesn’t believe me. I can read it in the sudden hardening of her face. If anything, she’s probably thinking it’s necessary sometimes to kill what is in order to bring about what is not. I start to shut the door and then stop and glance up the street. The falling leaves die saying, I want to go.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horse Were Beautiful (2022), available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection, Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems, later this year.

Not Today

Sam’s touched up face, slicked brown hair and embalmed body, reminded me that he really was gone.

I sat in the front row as family and friends approached, the same words spoken repeatedly.

“We’re so sorry for your loss, Janny.”

The room filled with flowers, from bleeding hearts to white lilies gave an aroma of a florist rather than a wake.

The priest began to speak, and the room quieted, except for my weeping.

Cancer took my husband too early. He’ll never see his daughter graduate college.

Now I must break the news of my Parkinson’s disease. But not today.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Dead Language

The beggar standing on the corner was holding up a cardboard sign I drove past too fast to read. I heard a red alarm bell ringing when one of my students, a college junior, spelled “toxin” “tocsin” in an essay. In the surviving fragment of his book, On Analogy, Julius Caesar tells us to “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea,” which, I admit, seems like sensible advice. But even so, I’m not about to take writing tips from the man who started the fire that in 48 B.C. destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

Untethered

Odd remembrances haunt my lazy brain unbidden at odd times. Family legend has me nearly drowning after falling out of a boat when very young. The woman who is now great grandmother and widow that I made out with in my car sixty years ago. A small clothing store that I walked past in West Portland fifty plus years ago. Now there is a freeway where it was. I think it was small, isolated and named Mode O’Day. The traumatized beauty that abruptly rejected me while in college. Did she ever care for me, or was it completely one-sided?

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

Brad

Brad is splayed out on his couch watching the Seahawks. He is surrounded by snacks and beer. He had played football in college but had never made The League, a great disappointment. Suddenly Brad felt very sleepy. He put down his beer and closed his eyes. “I will rest for a few minutes,” he sighed.

In the next moment, Brad is running down the field in a large, noisy stadium. People in the stands are cheering him on. Brad has never felt so exhilarated.

Brad’s wife comes into the room, screams, and dials 911. Brad has achieved his wildest dream.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

Bare Ruined Choirs

An ex-beauty queen has been found in her bedroom decapitated, limbless, a chainsaw nearby. On the wall, a decorative wooden sign says, “Breathe deeply and calmly.” How do you do that? We need a plan, an intervention, something. In Hiroshima after the bomb, they piled the bodies in the swimming pool at the college and cremated them with scrap wood. Last night when my mother finally managed to fall asleep, she dreamed she was walking through a ruined city in a hospital gown left behind from her cancer surgery, while, in the distance, sirens screamed. Assume the monster is everywhere. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Homer

Marjorie and her husband Herbert thought that names were important. When their first child was born, they named him Homer in hopes that some day he would be a major-league baseball player. Herbert used to laugh at the concept even while he predicted that Homer would be inspired by his suggestive name.

When Homer was three, Herbert bought him a baseball bat. Then it was Little League and high-school baseball and finally the college baseball team. Marjorie and Herbert were ecstatic; their dream was coming true.

In the end Homer majored in Classics and wrote an epic poem in Greek.

From Guest Contributor Anita G. Gorman

Waiting Game

“I hate this waiting,” grumbled Rob.

In childhood years he waited countless hours for his mother’s homemade cookies. He sprung leaks in pj’s waiting for a sister to leave their one and only bathroom. College dates made him wait outside their apartments. He didn’t know why but when they emerged they looked gorgeous.

Now this. Physical distancing to get necessities. Because of a virus.

Rob’s phone rang.

“I’m still waiting in a lineup for the pharmacy,” said his wife. “At least a dozen shoppers before me.”

Rob stepped inside the grocery store smiling, relegating another ‘wait’ time to the past.From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She resides in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, stuffed animals and many friends.