The prompt for this piece was to anthropomorphize a smell, a taste, or an inanimate object. This is what “popped” into my head! Have you noticed the smell of salt and fat casts a spell over theaters? It hits you as soon as you walk through the arched doorway, filling your sinuses, then your mouth … Continue reading Popcorn
Earlier this week while eating chocolate pastries with friends at a local coffee house, the subject came up of Physicist Erwin Shrodinger and his thought experiment involving a cat that was both alive and dead simultaneously. You know, the way these things do, when you're eating chocolate. I decided this might be a good time … Continue reading Schro and His Cat
This poem continues my theme of December oranges, but also serves as a holiday warning: don't let this season try your patience and drive you to exhaustion! Remember, the smartest thing to do on the longest night of the year is sleep. If I can pluck the moon from the sky I may find it’s … Continue reading Don’t Eat the Moon
Continuing my December theme, I give you my own personal ode to oranges. . . Oranges are loud. Oranges are splashy. They are not subtle. They are not shy. They may be as big as softballs, but they consider themselves to be miniature stars, small globes of fire, a reflection of the solar energy that … Continue reading Juicy
Written with my Thursday night group using the prompts: no, nothing; tired of using words; so many reasons not to; teenager; rainfall; gratitude; advice; airplanes; ordinary people; noun deficient Marie grew tired of using words. It started during the pandemic when she decided out of boredom to clean out the closets. It felt good to get rid … Continue reading The Inadequacy of Words
I wrote this with my Thursday night group with the prompts: how?, good for them, but what do you really want, Monday is for ones, be happy and smile, find love, she enjoyed the solitude, lunch friends, fellow misfits, Jimmy and Ted “Good for them,” Celeste said when she heard about Mark and Marie’s engagement. She injected … Continue reading Monday’s Cafe
St. Jude showed up at my door today with a little package tightly wrapped in pale blue paper, adorned with a large clump of curled white ribbon (he’d obviously had it wrapped at the store.) I was surprised to see him; I was unaware he made house calls. It seemed impolite not to invite … Continue reading Goose Girl
As a Valentine treat, I'm reviving a little romantic tale of an amorous, adventurous couple. Charlie was a regular guy living a regular life. Then he met Mabel and he slipped over the edge. Mabel was a force of nature, a combination Earth Mother/Ruth Bader Ginsberg no-nonsense intellectual feminine feminist who believed the world was a place … Continue reading The Saga of Charlie and Mabel
In the first paragraph of Deacon King Kong by James McBride, the title character, aka Cuffy “Sportcoat” Lambkin, shoots a young drug dealer on the plaza of a public housing project where they both live in 1969 New York City. The surprise is that a story with such a gritty opening turns out to be a genuine, feel-good, … Continue reading Deacon King Kong, a review
Written with my Thursday night writing group with the following prompts: extra bread, to this day, time and place, small injuries, new sense of dread, donut shop, marvelous, no more accidents, easy to. . . , autumn leaves, I smell cat, the bed, warm evening, God's waiting room, third conflict in a year, running in … Continue reading Extra Bread
