DEAR HAPPY ENDING It rained last week for a hundred years and change, bitter change like ninety-nine nuts for one squirrel and one nut for ninety-nine, loose change like the weight of bodies depends on the neighborhoods they come from, the ones they fall in. Neighborhood may not be the right word. […]
Wherein I pull out a chunk of my once-upon-a-time noveling (working title: BANG), said chunk of which was published back in June 2012 in an on-line fiction supplement to the great IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) newspaper, in part because I knew the supplement was going to feature a story by Daniel Woodrell, the […]
The river stinks tonight, and Mackey Rottler’s running into the headlights of evening traffic. Past the big metal Piasa Bird and its backdrop of limestone quarry, he imagines half-breed Mustang LaForte hiding up there in the bluffs. Postcard in the mail exactly four weeks ago hit him like a letter bomb, like a depth charge, […]
Here are the lyrics to the latest Art Box Collective song, Johnny Cash Clerihews.” Johnny Cash Clerihews (published originally in Radiant Turnstile 1 back in 2007) Johnny Cash Eat your mama’s hash Play the hand you draw Tennessee by Arkansas Johnny Cash Don’t take your trash To town, son, Or that gun Sam Phillips at […]
Writing Race in America I regularly have lunch with a colleague. He’s a writer, too. We meet on Tuesdays or Fridays, when neither of us teaches, and our meals include Guinness and sometimes Scotch and always lively conversation. He’s white and built thick, has a shaved head and a goatee, and for several […]
The Goatman’s Wife; Or, Mackey Rottler’s Grandpa Dirge 1 Don’t think of her as Dutch’s wife. How many times does she have to explain that the Napoleonic Code was overturned more than a century ago, that femme couverte (watch her lips, woman as that which is owned) was replaced by femme seule (it’s […]
BOMB 1-5 1. Bomb’s not indifferent. Bomb believes in the Way. Bomb speaks in tongues, wades into water for full-immersion baptism, expects complete sanctification, observes the Pentecost, understands the necessity of the half-way covenant but isn’t crazy about it. Bomb carries the Word close to his heart, tucks it right in there, walks […]
Two Birds It occurs to Bald Guy as she’s going down on him that he’s never been good with a gun and is only slightly better behind a bass boat on water skis. Once after missing a bottle ten feet away on a fence post for the fifth or sixth time, he convinced […]
