Literary Lunes Magazine

January 2012 Issue

Edited by Beth Ann Masarik

Literary Lunes Magazine copyright © 2012 Beth Ann Masarik & Literary Lunes Publications. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information about reprinting, distributing, or otherwise sharing the contents of this book, please contact Beth Ann Masarik at info@literarylunes.com

First edition, January 2012

Originally published in paperback and e-book by Literary Lunes Publications

Interior edited by Beth Ann Masarik

Cover design by Beth Ann Masarik

Smashwords Edition

Literary Lunes Magazine

www.literarylunes.com

Literary Lunes Press

www.literarylunespress.webs.com

“This magazine has become so much more over the last year. The people involved have worked extremely hard and it shows with each new release. I also like the welcome given to anyone who wants to be involved and how new submissions are always encouraged. I have no doubt that Literary Lunes will be very successful and the new blog will push that success even more. I'm happy to be associated with this group.”

Mimi Barbour

Multi-published author - The Wild Rose Press

“When Beth came to me a little more than a year ago and told me she wanted to start an online magazine for writers, I was impressed with her forward thinking. I'd never heard of such a thing before. She continued to impress me with the level of quality that has gone into every issue, the articles and interview procured, and the hard work she displays when she puts it together. It seems that every issue gains more readers and I am proud to say I am one of them, that I've been with it from the beginning. Being on staff now, I hope to help Literary Lunes grow in 2012.”

Erin Danzer

Table of Contents

Letter From the Editor

Our New Blog

Calendar of Events

Blog Tours: Are They the New Book Tour?

Poetry Palooza

I Never Wanted to be a Coke Dealer

Good Girl

Wacky Writers

Dream Catcher

There You Have It: My Opinion

The Staff

Affiliates

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

Happy New Years from all of us here at Literary Lunes! This is a very special year for us, for we have many exciting things happening in 2012! First up on the list…IT’S OUR ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Yup! Literary Lunes Magazine is officially one year old! Can you believe it? It seems like it was only yesterday when I had the idea to start this baby up. I officially set up the website on January 1^st, 2011 and our first issue went live on our website on March 1^st, 2011! Here we are, a whole year later!

This issue is full of important information, new stories, reviews, poetry, advice, and important upcoming events. The next few pages are dedicated to the changes and exciting events that are going to take place this year. Don’t worry! These are good, positive changes and events!

I sincerely thank everyone for your support during our first year, and for putting up with all the changes and the lateness of some of the issues. I will be posting a calendar on the next page of deadlines and events for this year.

As a friendly reminder, GOING FORWARD, ALL FUTURE ISSUES WILL BE PUT OUT BI-MONTHLY. I am expecting this to be a VERY busy year for me, but a VERY good year at that.

Why are we going bi-monthly? That’s because I am working on my second novel (my first one was released in August of 2011), and more importantly, I AM GETTING MARRIED! Yes, that’s right! I am getting married on October 14, 2012, so I need that extra time to format and prepare the magazine around wedding plans. Don’t worry! I will be sure to keep you guys updated on how things are going . We already have the Church and reception hall booked.

Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with all of that now though. Let’s get on to the rest of the magazine, shall we? I would also like to encourage everyone to please consider purchasing a paperback copy of this magazine on Lulu.com to help support the Literary Lunes website. As you all know, running a website is not only hard work, and time consuming, but can also be quite costly. I’d like to improve the website and the features we have on it, plus open up a cafepress shop for it to sell Literary Lunes merchandise. Don’t worry, ALL ECOPIES WILL REMAIN FREE OF CHARGE! I would also like to be able to offer payment compensation for those who regularly submit to the magazine in the future, but I can’t do that unless the magazine makes a decent profit. I hope that some, if not all of you wonderful people will consider purchasing a paperback copy of each issue to support the magazine you all love!

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Beth Ann Masarik

Our New Blog

One of the big projects that I have been working on over the last couple of weeks, is putting together a blog for the magazine. The blog link is www.literarylunespublications.blogspot.com. What is the purpose of this blog you ask? Well, I have at least thirty books on my bookshelf that I have been collecting since high school. My goal? My goal is to start weeding (I mean reading) them this year. After I read these books, I will then be reviewing them and posting the reviews on the new blog.

In addition to those books, I received a Nook from my beloved fiancé for Christmas. Do you know what that means? It means that I can purchase even more books and not have to worry about running out of storage space! Why am I telling you this? I am telling you this because I am now accepting book review requests! Yup! That’s right! I am now a book reviewer. My fiancé, Kevin, has also agreed to give book reviewing a shot (I gave him a Nook as well. Hehe). I would also like to welcome Barb Gary, owner of the Diabetic Snacker website, which is http://www.diabeticsnacker.com/ to the review team. Kevin and I will be reviewing fiction (all genres), while Barb will be reviewing Non-fiction.

For our review policies, please visit the Literary Lunes blog.

In addition to the reviews, I will also be participating in some blog tours, including two in January, and one in March. In January, I will be hosting authors C.S. Splitter and Stephen Prosapio. Stephen is a fellow author from Otherworld Publications (my own publisher), and C.S. Splitter is a near and dear friend of mine that I have become friends with over the last few months via Facebook. These two guys are hysterical and wonderful writers! You have got to check them both out! C.S. Splitter is an Independent author who published his debut novel titled The Reluctant, and Stephen Prosapio is the author of Ghost of Rosewood Asylum.

Calendar of Events

With the new changes taking place to Literary Lunes this year, I thought it would be helpful to list a Calendar of Events. This way, it will help keep us all organized, and will hopefully give people more time to prepare their submissions.

January 2012-A Very special birthday and anniversary issue. Deadline was December 30^th, 2011 for submissions.

The next issue will release on March 3, 2012.

Deadline for submissions for March is February 23^rd, 2012. The themes for March’s issues are: Valentine’s Day or Romance, and Shadows (for Groundhog Day).

Future issues will be released on May 5^th.

Deadline for submissions for May is April 21^st. The themes for May’s issue are: the end of winter/or beginning of spring. March also has St. Patrick’s Day and April has April Fool’s day.

The following issue will be released on July 7.

Deadline for submissions for July, is June 20^th. The Themes for July’s issue are: Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Summer, and Independence Day.

The next issue will be released on September 8^th.

Deadline for submissions for September, is August 20^th. The themes for September are Summer and Labor Day.

The next issue will be released on November 10^th. (or there about.) Please remember that October is my wedding month, and I will need extra help and patience from everyone from September-November. I am getting married on October 14^th, and will be on my honeymoon right after that.

The deadline for submissions for November, is October 27^th. The themes are Columbus Day, Halloween, Fall, and weddings!

November will be the last issue of 2012. I am going to need November and December to get acclimated into my new life as a wife of a soon to be wonderful husband! The next issue after November, won’t come out until January of 2013. I will post the themes for 2013 in November’s and January’s issues.

Blog Tours: Are They the New Book Tours?

By Beth Ann Masarik

Blog tours seem to be the new big thing with the rise of the e-market for books. What is a blog tour you ask? A blog tour is a virtual book tour where an author can reach thousands of people with the click of a button. The author or author’s publisher, publicist, or literary agent, reaches out to bloggers and asks them to host the author. The author usually participates in interviews (whether they be with the author themselves, or characters from their book), or a special guest post with a specific topic. Sometimes authors even do special giveaways!

This raises the question, “Are blog tours the new book tours?” Let’s face it; with the rise of the e-reader generation, and the slow downfall of trade paperback books, I think it’s safe to say that the answer is YES! I don’t know about you guys, but I find it very difficult to get my books on the shelves of bookstores. Even the book stores that I go to frequently are reluctant to stock a new author’s books on their shelves. Why? This is because of the economy.

Blog tours are a great way to boost up sales, both nationally and internationally. Plus, you get to visit other countries without having to leave the comfort of your own home!

The one important thing that you need to know about planning blog tours is that they take time to plan. You should try to book your blog stops at least a month before the tour begins. This way, you will give the tour participants time to prepare their blogs for your visit and time to read and review your book.

There you have it folks! The scoop on blog tours.

Happy writing!

Poetry Palooza

Art & Anna

By Denny E. Marshall

Many of the good poems I’ve read

In books and magazines

Have been written by Art

You know Arthur

No one’s published more

Than Arthur Un Known

Except maybe the work

Of Anna Nymous

Soul’s Tattoo

By Jamie Danzer

Like a mistake made on paper

I tried so hard to erase

Wished no more to see your name

Written ever so delicately

In such a fine print

Upon my skin, my heart

Though the mark you left me

Tattooed to my soul

Like a permanent marker

A painful memory never forgotten

One Canadian Christmas

By Steve Bergeron

1Winter night, snowy white

Oh what a Canadian Christmas night

Coming down inch by inch

Feeling like a Christmas Grinch

November is that time of year

What children wishing what we’d like dear

It all started with that big parade

Bundling with scarves and mittens hand made

The end of the parade is near

Children anticipating for him to appear

Reindeers and sleights are now in sight

He then passes by all golly wishing a good night

December now is here

Stores all jammed with festive chear

Toys and games are ample galore

The changes are imminent from wall to floor

Then off to the forest all one and all

In search for that tree bushy and tall

Then into the parlour it shall go

Full of light and garland all aglow

The houses are all wrapped in lights

As people drive by enjoying the sight

There are people going door to door

With song we all adore

A perfect beautiful Canadian sight

One I wouldn’t change with all of my life

Inspiration

Thomas Michael McDade

It's February, ’75,

I'm a sailor in Venice.

Gypsies are parked

in vans on the pier.

The Doge's Palace is closed.

Miss Universe is rumored

to be in town and some

lucky ship will get a visit.

An incessant net

of rain traps all

but the pigeons.

Paying my respects

outside the Gritti,

Hemingway’s hotel choice

I sense Inspiration

shadowing me.

Rain dripping off her

wide-brimmed hat,

she snickers while

I translate the plaque

on John Ruskin's house.

The downpour seals

the lips of my dictionary.

Suddenly, I must have a Venetian

haircut and lickety-split a barber

is toweling my sopped head

so vigorously

my imagination rattles.

Later, I dine on artichoke

pizza in a restaurant

where Germans list

celebrities they’ve met.

Gusty rain jerks me

down the pier to the beat

of a Gypsy accordion

as I plot to ambush

smirking Inspiration

with a sharpened

pencil and legal pad,

twist her fickle arm until

she cherishes my words

as greedily as tourists

do autographs.

I Never Wanted to be a Coke Dealer I Never Wanted to be a Coke Dealer

By B.D. Fischer

That’s never what I wanted to be at all. If you had come to me when I was a child I might have agreed, but only because I thought you were talking about the soda my anxious mother forbade except on the first weekend of the month. This rendered it an object of desire as reliably as the moon draws in the tides of Lake Michigan, and the prospect of swimming in its effervescence would have appealed to my childish mind, sucking on a blankie wrapped around my thumb, considering options. If this is how it went down. I kept that blankie into my second grade.

If you had come to me when I was a teenager I would have been frightened, and disbelieving, and perhaps laughed in your face, depending on my mood. How does one even get into the business? I might have asked. Is there a course you can take, a certificate you can earn, replete with elaborately seriffed fonts and faux wood framing? In the shakiness of my adolescence it was hard to understand a business with credentials, a formal entrance, and in their absence I would have blown my bored bangs out of my eyes and left the room. It was impossible then to imagine people, let alone me, snorting a fine white dust, and not for the reasons—corrosion of the striated muscles of the heart, addiction, whatever that is, a frightful paranoia—they gave us in health class. The reasons are far more primal and boil down to a single question: Who first had the idea to subject the leaves of Erythroxylum coca to a brutal refinement, and then suspire in the results through their nostrils? Our days are after all in the main spent guarding the access points to our innards, and we aren’t in the habit of seeking out anything besides food, drink, and air for ingestion. Logically, snorting ought to be an impassable barrier to use, but I knew nothing then of cocaine’s miracle anesthetic properties, the ones that make the dollar-bill slide across a shard of mirror bearable, and delightful, when the coke is good. They just don’t tell you that in health class.

Of course I was still a teenager, just nineteen, when Dara’s brother passed off his operation, making of me a weed-variety businessman. I made up this joke myself. I don’t know what I expected to be—defense attorney, second baseman for the Tigers, pirate-astronaut, the records are lost to history, and even my memories, if I had them, would not be reliable—but never this. It was startling and delightful as the morning sun in early spring, melting the leftover snow. If you had come to me in those early days, when I operated at the pinnacle of my profession and traded in the finest weed in the world, Chocolate Thai, the supreme Maui Wowie, Odin’s Beard, the great purple monster Amethyst’s Delight, I would have scoffed, and looked down my nose, in the manner of a landscape architect at a Mexican. Coke then was still frightening, baffling, mysterious, and nothing at all like weed. For a time, the fact of how I made my living was itself a hallucination to me, and the notion that I might one day deal in coke past laughable, beyond the pale. What lands lie on the far side of the verdant plains and fragrant swamps of hallucination? The flora are unfathomable, the fauna impossible, and I still can’t believe it even now, even now that I live here, for the difference between dealing coke and dealing weed is the difference between a nuclear bomb and the nuclear family. I guess it’s different if you’ve grown up in the ghetto, or the barrio—not a single one of these bloodless Mexicans betrays a hint of a second though, or even a dollop of worry, or any feelings at all—the faded patch on Ramón’s forearm is a tattoo scrubbed into the skin by the eraser of a pencil—but if you had told me I would one day be sitting in this van ... well, I would have responded as you respond to a child who tells you that he’ll grow up to be Spiderman, or a point-forward in the NBA, running the triangle offense: better come up with another plan. Because now we’re talking about trafficking, and this is what disaster does to you. It thinks you knew thoughts, traces new empty landscapes to be sketched in by the palette of your desperation. This is what it did to me.

But weed, my precious weed ... you are not like that, no, you are not at all like the coke. You shall never be like that, and in fact the opposite. There’s not a high school in America without a weed dealer, or at least a narc, and so he is in the popular memory as familiar a figure as the school nurse or a crossing guard. Come on there with the bikes! Were we an honest people the weed dealer’s statue would be erected in the town square. Everyone’s life has a weed dealer, even if it doesn’t need one, and even if it doesn’t know it. This is one of the ultimate truths that only we know, me and my people, the high clergy of a brood forced by the law into shadows we have come to like, crave, need. As a priest gives absolution for tithing so we trade in smokeable saving grace, at prices that ranged up to $1250 an ounce ($50 per gram, my scale toggled from avoirdupois to metric with the press of a button) at my peak. The highest end sold mainly to rich girls, for only they could really afford it; price it out and the result more than doubles the price of gold, which as a currency of last resort fluctuates wildly (Basic Principles of Economics, B). There is only one reason my product line—which consisted after all only of plants, I was merely a greenhouse salesman, a mystifying fact to consider—came so dear, and not even my All-Americans could afford the top of the line except for such special occasions, like draft weekend in New York. Weed is there for us in these good times as well as bad, as a loving mother or child’s blankie is there for the birthday celebrations and the skinned knees. Such is its virtuosic versatility.

All these things in combination—my developing command of the language, habits, and power of weed, the growth of my bottom line, my close relations to dozens of rich girls and superstar athletes—provided me a comfort and protection that was like a crackling fire or down jacket in winter. In Michigan it always seems to be winter, the night falls with the soundless snow and as darkness overtakes twilight the streets grow quiet except for the rushing away of distant cars that might just be the whispering of ghosts. The strange acoustics of the snow in the dark make everything seem far away, inducing a pleasant loneliness. Despite all that has happened, this will always be Ann Arbor to me, and the good times as I remember them, looking out the window of my luxury condo and sipping a Scotch, counting my money and turning back to my chandelier bong. I was called to take a seat and found it more comfortable than I imagined, with a good view of the blackboard and the windows overlooking the athletic fields, where the cheerleaders practiced during study hall, showing off their panties in the sun. There was nothing to complain about, and I never did.

The novelty of those early days, the sheer intoxication of surprise and control, can hardly be overestimated. Dara’s brother (Joe? Bill? Some street name like Blades?) left town less than a week after announcing that I was the heir apparent. He stood by me for those first few deals but then I was alone, alone. He told me to call him if I had any problems, but he never gave me his number and it was mostly things he couldn’t help with anyway. I remember still the fright of being abandoned, as though I were a child in national park staring over the edge of a cliff, and contemplating stepping over. It was mostly a struggle to find a rhythm. What even to say when I got a call, the words to use. None of this is as natural as it came to seem. There’s always an argot to learn, and then to make up. The idiosyncrasies are everything. Mistakes were made and money lost, but still in that heady time I felt as though I were surfing through the clouds, unable to see where I was but nevertheless thrilled by the wind in my face. I know that this happened to me, but it is so easy to forget.

Of course, I learned quickly enough. After all, I was and remain a smart guy, accepted with financial aid into the four-year program of an elite university, even if I never reached the upper division. The newness of my profession wore eventually off, but between mastery and routine lies a soft spot, common but oft-missed, and it was in this place that I came to understand myself as a participant in a grand tradition, a cog in a machine that has been grinding humanity forward since the dawn of consciousness, memory, and imagination. Without the University of Michigan I have no doubt that the complexity and truth of this understanding would have escaped me. For this and everything else I still revere the maize and blue. Where I to have children I would insist that they wear these colors, and if in the end they proved unable to gain admittance, well, I hope that the boy would still sit with me on Saturday afternoons in the fall, and the girl allow rice dyed yellow and blue to be thrown at her wedding.

And yet I don’t regret dropping out. The business climate demanded my full attentions, and I would have been a fool to ignore my once-in-a-lifetime shot. I paid a price for my ambitions, in lost opportunities to link together the disparate strands of thought and experience into the tapestry of history, but I’ve never looked back. I am less for having been forced by circumstance to leave the University, and it is even possible, I have come to believe, that what happened might not have had there been some way to stay in school and continue to work, to broaden my horizon to encompass first Lake Superior and then the Oceans. It is possible, I am saying, that further Michigan education may have increased focus, reduced mistakes, and helped me see the connections necessary to stave off declension. I can’t be certain, but I believe it to be so. The University of Michigan Wolverines would have saved me if they could.

But it wasn’t possible. The hours were crazy and late-night intoxication with morning hangovers a cost of doing business ... and yet I cannot help but think about what might have been. I don’t see how it could have gone the other way, but still I wonder, a dangerous rabbit hole. It’s the kind of thing a man can’t let himself think about lest the world become too much, including and especially these Mexicans. I’m surrounded by them.

I cough, hoping it will clear my head, and the sound echoes in the van but there is nothing they can do to me.

The money was the deciding factor, it was the only thing that could have got me to drop out of school. Dara’s brother dropped a gold mine in my lap and what was I supposed to do? I came from a middle-class family, my father worked at the engine plant in Romeo, and here was all this money, all these rich girls. I couldn’t have known that they would never reveal themselves to me. I have nothing to apologize for, not to anyone, least of all myself.

And yet it was always more than money. I found what the self-help gurus agree is the key, a meaningful job that you love, that completes you, where you feel like you make a difference. Selling weed was all these things and more: The links we make, between ourselves and the ones we love (although I have never been in love), between nature and philosophy (British Romantic Poetry, D+), between apparitions and the wet black bough, are products of the central human act, aided at all the crucial moments by the consumption of smoked weed, or at least the consumption of something. Even coffee is something: Do not underestimate the effects of caffeine, particularly on a Mormon. It is like a mushroom. And is alteration not our central endeavor. Leave the world a little better than you found it, or at least different, so someone knows you were there. Civilization begins with distillation, or at least with fermentation, and the stoned apes ventured onto the steppes of Africa and developed in that open space in response to the novelty of the horizon the audacity to walk upright and shed their tails, all in pursuit of richer, more complex sugars to feed their strangely ravenous appetites. From the cosmic perspective this is how it happened, and like everything else it happened for a reason. I won’t pretend to know specifics, but the story is impossible not to believe, and not necessarily because it is true. The medicine man recites tales of himself and his elders and ancestors and in so doing effects a becoming so vital, so natural, that our stories could not survive its absence. I hate to assign myself the role of American shaman or griot, but, well, there you go. At least this is how I felt, even though I am now confined to the bumpy silent company of Ramón and his friends, most of whom are probably also his cousins, by marriage or inbreeding, and locked inside a cave-dark van. I couldn’t get out if I wanted to, not without some violence. I have in my pocket four crinkled twenties and the change from a fifth, used to purchase a Three Musketeers, an advance against my share in case of emergency, but where would these get me from the side of the road? I haven’t had a cell phone in more than year and money’s not worth anything without somebody to take it, to exchange it for goods and services. We are somewhere in Kentucky or Tennessee, I figure, and no one in here looks at me ever, or pretends to any conversation, and it’s the silence more than anything—more than the descent into dealing cocaine, more than the loss of all that I was and believed, more than the fifteen to life I’m looking at if things go sour—that makes me feel helpless, and want to throw up my hands. My unbidden face wrinkles in the manner that is a prelude to tears, I know event though I can’t see it in the blacked-out windows. But I can feel it, and the feeling is all too familiar. I would sigh, if I thought that it might help, and that it might not be noticed.

In the end the equation is simple enough: Like a dervish setting himself ablaze (Religions of the World, D+) or a Japanese hari-kari I subsumed to something greater than myself, which is the recommended course. Even our presidential candidates came to talk in these terms and when they did a thrill coursed through me, for I knew exactly what they meant. In fact I had lived it. Nothing has prepared me for good citizenship like weed. I attempted at all times conscious imitation of Dara’s brother (his name, his name) and perceived to hang from my shoulders the same mantle of civic responsibility. It was strange to feel this at first, not weighty just strange, but the role came to seem familiar until it was natural, integral, and finally necessary. Dara’s brother was a standup guy, a real mensch, and the opposite of these Mexicans. He was a man who did not want to leave anybody hanging, who wanted to provide for his people, his friends, and I wanted badly to do as he did. I still miss him. So concerned was he with the public good that in leaving me his business he also advanced me a substantial sum to make it through that first shaky year, at 0% interest. We’re talking close to six figures, a duffel bag of cash that left me speechless with emotion when he unzipped it to show me the stacked contents. His generosity was the sinequanon of my success, and remembering this now brings me again to the brink of tears, of gratitude as well as of regret. Imagine these Mexicans making such a gesture. They’d sooner knife you for a dollar or to prove their manhood, but for Dara’s brother it was neither the drugs nor the power nor the money. I repaid him inside of six months, but that cushion was the difference between temporary success and immediate failure. If I had heeded his lessons and example the success might not have been so temporary. If only I could remember his name I might not now be in this van. Because he could help. It would kill him to know how things turned out. My blithe indifference to his example was no doubt the prime cause of the bad luck that finds me here now, deaf to everything except the shitty suspension of this blacked-out van and the silence of my reluctant companions.

Not that I didn’t try. For example, I never sold to minors, despite the financial opportunity they presented. There were plenty of Ann Arbor professors’ kids looking to get high, but I wouldn’t take their money. I remember in particular the sister of a rich girl visiting over the Presidents’ Day weekend and damn near begging me for a sack to take back to Grosse Pointe. It was a sight to see a rich girl begging like that, and I would be lying if I said that it was unattractive. The girl herself was no more than fifteen, and wore a pair of $300 jeans so tight that I could make out the folds in a flower only beginning its bloom. Just a gram, she said, or even a half-gram, if my scale could make such fine distinctions. Of course it could, but I wouldn’t dignify her with a response. And yet she continued, shrugging off the hand of her older sister, “Do you know who we are?” and then with the contention that I would be “ruined.” But I stood my ground, I had my standards, my community standing and professional pride. I have no regrets about this whatsoever.

No regrets ... and yet by the time the story of me and my people is told—if it is told and not left on the cutting room floor (“History is a fickle mistress, inconstant as the breeze but as lovely and refreshing and as necessary to the refinement of a man.” -Gibbon, Introduction to Historiography for a writing credit, B+)—we will be long gone, the generosity and philanthropy of men like me and Dara’s brother but a memory of a memory in the coming monsoon of legalization. Our society is morphing, and while I may be out of the game I’m not so far gone that I can’t feel the catastrophe coming. It is still in my blood and there is an elephant in the corner of every room bedecked with a bong. It will change who we are and how think of ourselves, but no one has any idea how, and no one is even talking about it. We are the children of a loathéd prohibition, we, the stoners, my people. Every decision carries metaphysical hazards and none of our choices are neutral, as I’ve been unfortunate enough to learn down through the years.

In our religion as in all others it is the rituals which anchor, and ground the beliefs in a shared past, a shared present. When we pull into the parking lot of a movie theater and fill our cars with smoke, when we sweeten our tongues with the gummy strip of a zigzag, when we enforce the timeless discipline of puff puff give, we are getting high, yes, but we are also partaking of rites so ancient that they achieve the nature of the sacred. And, for us, the rules of our worship are steeped in the forbidden, soaked in a culminating illegality. Remove this foundation and our liturgy is deformed, little different than the Catholic Church forced to conduct its mass in Pig Latin and to use Wheat Thins for the transubstantiation. Religions of the World again. What will happen to the eye drops and the chewing gum, the quickened sidelong glances before application of flame to plant? I would lying if I said that I were not terrified. These separate strands, these tributaries to the sacrament, have never been separated, but they are about to be. Like a French braid undone, they are about to be, and soon. Within in the next generation. Before I’m dead. No one denies this now. The type of man that Dara’s brother was and I aspired to be will be soon enough consigned to the curbside of history. This fact is so scary that we avoid not only its mention but even the bare thought. And yet now, this moment, is a time for honesty, if ever there was one. Perhaps the move into coke is the right one. It is always impossible to see from the vantage point of the future past.

And what then? I feel as an Ottoman, or a Visigoth, or a Hapsburg (mandatory pass/fail semester of Western Civ, which I passed by the skin of my teeth thank you very much), and it turns out that being the last of a dying breed is only for tubercular Romantics and von Sacher-Masoch. Who knew? But history has not yet overtaken me, and I still have sufficient fight to endure the claustrophobia of this blacked-out van, a lightless conveyance, a box on wheels, state unknown, and focus my attentions on the score that might get me back in the game. The beating of my heart. The endless craggy road. Even at the height of my success there was always admixed to the smoke a faint tragic whiff, as if of coming in at the end, of arriving to the double feature as the final scene of the second movie fades to black, the house lights coming up. I think that many Americans feel this way. As the hooks on which we hang our hats come unmoored from their studs all of us stand in danger of falling, falling, and each step could be our last. The savvy among us have always been aware that the rules that apply today may not apply tomorrow. The options we thought we had disappear with the passage of time, without a single choice being made. I will never have a son to whom I could pass the family business. I suppose in the end this is a good thing.

Gah, I hate myself. I’m sorry, I think all this travel has gone to my head. The immobility of it leaves me queasy, grandiose, uncertain. My seatbelt pulls tight across my hips, and the Mexicans I cannot help but notice take no such precautions. I want you to concentrate on the blankness of their faces. Surely their blankness points to confidence and thus our success, or else to oblivion and our failure. Surely they would bear the brunt of an investigation, the unsuspecting gringo a victim of Mexican manipulation. God only knows what Wellover has in store for us, the town where we will wait for word that it is time to cross. Four brown Mexicans and a gringo white with the Michigan winter. They tell me I won’t stand out to the uniformed guards but I have no idea whether to believe them. Everything is on faith, they’ve turned the facts into a mystery. I’ve put my trust in Ramón and hold my breath and try not to make a cold assessment, like a man at a craps table riding a hot streak. You don’t want to think about it. I’ve put ten years’ rent money on come. Even the atheists among us believe in things they can’t verify, not even in theory, a faith, a baptism, a cross around the neck. There’s no other way. A cross and a crucifix, I only recently learned, aren’t the same thing, for I wasn’t raised religious. Not like these Mexicans with their crazy cult of Mary and the kissing of icons, the echoing reality of felt emotions. All this is familiar, at least to them, and I try to retain my cool, to breathe in and then out, and to imagine the passing landscape. The sun must be well up by now. It will get warmer as we go farther south. I’d love to get some fresh air, to clear my head, but I don’t dare ask the driver to stop. I don’t even know his name. I don’t know anyone except Ramón, with whom in the past I have done some minor business, and out of nowhere this fact seems like the thinnest thread with which to stitch a connection, as though I am attempting to swing from one skyscraper to another on a spiderline of dental floss. Ramón Ramón ...

Even when I was going under there was a nobility to what I did and how I conducted myself. I know how that sounds, but this blacked-out van has no nobility. These Mexicans have no nobility. Trucking coke across the border has no nobility, and doing fifteen years even less. I don’t mean to mythologize, except that maybe I do, and this feels completely justified in my present circumstances, speeding south in a lightless ferry to cross the Stygian Rio Grande, my white face making of me a ghost, invisible. At least that is everyone’s hope.

Good Girl

By Matthew Wilson

Anna hated Joey with the passion a normal person holds for murderers. She’d warned mother against buying animals from people coming to the house, but since when did she ever listen? Wasn’t she always right?

She said her daughter’s marriage wouldn’t last the season, her first and only pregnancy wouldn’t see full term. A normal person would call mom a witch.

Anna had worse names, but since the divorce had a choice of living there or on the streets. As the saying goes, “beggars can’t be choosers.” It had been close, then that darn bird, Joey was a grey and white Cockatoo sharing mom’s natural ease of making her life miserable.

"You’re drunk," Kathleen Tanner said distastefully as she heard the back door open.

Again she didn’t add.

“You’re alive,” Anna thought similarly. Disappointed, she held onto the fridge as she removed her high heels, no need to fall and give the old bat ammunition to highlight her life going down.

"I think it’s disgusting you go out every night, sucking the face of every guy you come across, what about diseases?"

"Come on, mom. You know I hurry home, you know I miss you.”

It was just past two a.m.; she’d hoped mom would be in her coffin by now, or hanging from the ceiling beams by her talons.

"Look at the time, no wonder you can’t keep a man."

Anna stuck her head in the fridge. She wouldn’t mention the white pill, but it was giving her the munchies and the heart rate of a marathon runner.

"Dad left you too, mom." Anna whispered, attacking a triangle of cheese. Maybe some dairy would soak the alcohol.

"He didn’t leave me, you were an awkward child, I-"

"No, mom," Anna said wearily, pushing a thick tick of blonde hair from her hazel eyes. "It’s late; I’m not getting into another argument with you"

Mom sipped her coffee, the best weapon in her arsenal for staying up. She was always there to make Anna’s life hell. "Honestly, dear; you sound like you’re the center of the universe."

"Whore," Joey chirped from his cage, tore a feather from his tail and repeated the greeting.

"So you haven’t been talking about me to the bird then?"

Kathleen stood up. She had bad knees from years of pushing her elderly mother round in a wheelchair during that cancer scare.

Yes, Anna felt bad wishing one day when mom got up there’d be a snap, she’d release a pleasing scream to Anna and down she’d go.

Yes, she felt guilty for being a bad daughter, but mom reminded her of that fact very often, and ofcourse the drinking helped.

Anna closed the door, staring hard at the cage till Joey defecated.

I hate you.

But mom was surprisingly light on her feet. The washed plates on the sink rattled, as she covered the distance from the table to the fridge in one bound. As she did so, the fat beneath her arm pits jiggled; the doctor told her to lose three stone in five years if she wished to see any grandchildren, mother knew best.

Anna didn’t press mom did anything to extend her life.

"Leave him be," Kathleen said lifting Joey, cage and all off the fridge

"He`s not an animal, he’s part of the family."

He’s welcome to it. Say a Lion bounded into the room, would mom have defended her like that? A human shield to protect the thing she loved most, moms love had died some time ago, like everything good in life. All that remained was this poisonous, snidely husk. Called

mum.

"You got a letter from Stevens solicitor while you were out" she kissed Joeys cage making sick, smooching noises. "All day" she added hitting the espresso machine.

Whiiiirrr! It sounded like a dentist drill.

Anna moaned, feeling the ground sway like the 2.03 train from Tokyo blared by.

"You opened my mail again?"

"Mail again, mail again" Joey coughed, nutted his bell and checked his beak for dents in his tiny mirror.

"Your mail, my house," Kathleen explained as though one and the same "He wants more money, I told you never to marry him."

Of course all that negativity had been the main reason she took him down the aisle, the one sweet certainty mom was wrong. But of course she wasn’t, and Anna suffered because she hadn’t listened.

She tore open the letter, fingers fighting the spirits that only a few hours ago seemed a good idea to blot out moms voice, the criticisms that haunted her sleep, the endless disappointments now worked against her. She read it twice, sometimes the words fizzed like badly mixed chemicals that didn’t register in her head.

Whiirrr-

If only she could think.

Whirrr!

The shelf shook as mom added cream, the machine went haywire, whacking the plaster off the sideboard.

"Must you have that on?" Anna said so softly, she thought the monster making of a hangover might tear her head apart.

"I’m thirsty." Mom lied.

"Thirsty," Joey threw in his two cents, her defense lawyer; a sixty year old can have coffee at two a.m. in her own home if she wanted. Even when she lived alone she was in bed by nine.

"Stay out of this, you lice infested-"

"Anna, leave him be, I’ve raised you better, it’s not his fault you’ve ruined your life, because you can’t keep a man"

"Stop it, mom, I know you prefer that bird to me."

She’d meant jest, a statement so bizarre it would stun mom to silence, wonderful, sweet nothing. But mom didn’t reply, her eyes full of guilt.

"Well that’s lovely" Anna muttered, scared to raise her voice in case it broke, she reached for another beer - who needed sobriety? "No wonder I’m so messed up."

"He keeps me company, never runs out the house chasing men, trying to get myself pregnant to make up for the one I lost-"

Anna stopped moving, sure her heart would stop. "Thin ice," she whispered. "You’re on thin ice, go to bed before I lose control. If you want an argument do it at a more considering time."

Mom, I think something’s wrong with the baby, can you hold me.

"I was right about that poor thing inside you, all that damn beer, caring for your own fun, the babe didn’t stand a chance, the walls are paper thin, I hear what you get up to with those men you bring back-"

"Mom, I will not have this talk with you now, get away."

Anger pulsed through Anna, it became a living, ravenous thing born of her most sensitive point. She’d planned to call him Steven, after his dad.

She made fists, her fingers closing round a beer bottle neck.

"Don’t you tell me what to do in my own house, you’ve always been a bad child, and you’re a murderer!"

"No!" Anna turned to face her slanderer. "I loved him and he loved me, we were going well till you stuck your nose in- mom?"

Anna looked at the broken bottle in her hand; green glass littered the floor like pebbles on a beach catching sunlight.

"Mom?" she felt a minute of her life had been edited. There was a dent in the old woman’s head, something purple oozed and leaked out the cracks between the skull shards. "Mom?" Kathleen wasn’t breathing.

"Oh God"

"Mom? Mom?" Joey repeated and Anna jumped, expecting the world to close in, every face at her window, neighbors pointing at what she’d done.

“You’re in trouble,” she thought and lifted Joeys cage. "She’s my mom," she started crying as she put him in the living room, closed the door.

"Mom?" Joey said and Anna shouted till he quieted. Now she could put all her mind on staying out of prison, mom always said her daughter was good at looking after herself, now Anna would give the world to hear that awful screechy voice again.

She dropped the glass with some difficulty, some shards indented in her palm.

"I didn’t mean it," she insisted as she washed her hands.

Wash it all, wash everything.

No, it had to look natural, mom had taken all that was good, she wouldn’t take her freedom. That hate filled her again, that mom had bought her down to this, made her do it. She checked her pulse, unsure which side of the line she was on, did she want her alive or not? Either way she’d be a prisoner of her or the system.

Her knees.

She had the doc`s memo as proof should this go to court, she’d been out all evening, had drunk enough people under the table to convince them she’d be comatose as soon as she reached home.

How could I do such a thing when she’d gone straight to bed, officer? Could hardly stand. But those pills, those wonderful pills locked her legs, gave her back control, her mind raced.

"You always make more work for me," Anna complained as she filled the sink, letting it overflow. The water would wash away any trace of contradicting DNA she’d over looked. Mom had complained she cleaned the floor earlier in the day, the windows would wait for a squeegee.

But for the plan to work there’d have to be one unpleasant act.

Her feet sodden wet, socks sticking to ankles she squatted besides her mother body and lifted her head, choking on that mothball and boiled sweet smell that continuously emanated off her.

Open and closed officer, she was old, her knees bad, she left the taps on while doing the washing, gone to feed Joey and on running back slipped, smashed her face on the edge of the tiled -

"Anna?"

Anna looked toward the living room, her name hadn’t been said a while, that brain dead bird echoed everything before its makers breath had faded. Was he learning to talk properly?

"Anna?" Mom said only able to open one eye, her left a bloody, bloated mess that had seen her first steps now saw only darkness. "I can’t move, I think some thing’s wrong, I think..." She made a clicking noise as her moisture less tongue separated from the roof of her mouth. She’d only one working eye but it saw the truth in Anna’s.

"Please don’t kill me, Anna."

Anna looked away as she grabbed her mother’s ears, pulled and pushed, bringing all her weight down as she smashed her head down again and again on the floor.

Stop moving, for once in your life listen you old fool and stop moving.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

When it was done and the air seemed gone from Kathleen’s lungs she vomited, that was good, it would go with the story, surprise at this tragic accident. Sure there was nothing left, wearily, woozy she went to the living room and picked up the phone.

“Think sad,” she thought though she smiled. Bring on the tears.

She thought of her dead baby and on they came.

"Hello? Ambulance please. I think my mother’s dead."

"Ambulance please" said Joey, then whistled.

Anna covered the phone with her palm and said "When this is all over I’m gonna put you in a pie"

Alan Keeping gave the woman his sympathies and reassurance these things happened far too often - it was quick and that in itself was a small mercy. He’d been a police man twelve years and nursing home assistant for ten before that so he had some sympathy for these old dears, left

alone, neglected. Pulling his eyes from the floor, to spare the woman’s misery he ordered everyone pack up, call it an early night as he tickled the bird and poured seed in its bowl. "Pretty thing, my mother had one too"

"That’s Joey" Anna explained, reaching for him, returned to his rightful place upon the fridge, her fingers were almost at his head before the bird recoiled like she might tear it off. "We’re best friends, just us two against the world now, huh Joey."

Joey hopped from the cage edge, as far as he could from her.

"Pretty thing" Joey squawked and Alan thought it a shame the only witness could say nothing more than his name and request crackers, a detailed account of the accident would be nice but so would world peace and that hadn’t worked out either.

"You’re tired." He said as his men closed the door leaving no trace of their passing but the slight whiff of cigarette smoke and cleaning fluid.

"I can see this has been a shock, I’ll leave the final details till morning, you’d best get some sleep."

"Thank you" Anna pushed her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking like the bones inside had melted away. Alan thought she was crying when in fact she was trying not to laugh, she was so close to being free, of all things.

"Is there any one I can get in contact to spend the night here? You shouldn’t stay alone after walking in on such a thing."

She declined, grateful for his kindness, a handsome, likeable guy, she thought he`d make a good father, would he have left her for another woman like Steven?

She blew her nose for effect and walked him to the door. "Again, thank you."

He shook her hand and wished her courage. "Goodbye Anna... Joey"

He tipped his hat and started to close the door, the area was a mine field of burglaries, a locked door was a safe door-

"Anna, please don’t kill me" Joey chirped and nutted his bell.

Alan put his foot in the door, Anna had her weight behind it but his size tens weren’t moving. The policeman’s face had changed, his smile was gone.

"Actually Miss Tanner, could I ask a few questions down the station?"

Anna coughed, reluctantly stepped from the door. "It’s a little late," Alan looked at the bird, then back at her "If you please, it would make this easier."

He didn’t say on you but he didn’t have to. Neither was he calling her by her first name now.

Anna felt her tongue dry, a fat maggot that writhed and drowned in its own lies behind her teeth. "May I have a moment to comb my hair, mother said a lady must look her best."

"Certainly, take all the time you wish."

Anna looked at the house; she could have done such good here. But mother was right, mom was always right. "I won’t be a moment."

Alan waited till he heard her on the stairs and picked Joeys cage up.

"Come on, old boy, softly does it."

"Softly, softly." Said Joey.

"Is this ok?" Anna asked as she put on her mother’s coat "It would clash hideously with handcuffs."

Alan opened the door for her "There’ll be no need for that will there, Miss?"

She looked at Joey, wishing he would burst into flames. "No," she said

"I’ll be good"

Just like mother wanted.

Wacky Writers

With the New Year here, and people making New Year’s resolutions, we want to know what yours are? Even better, we want you to write a short, fictional story about a character from your own imagination that has a new year’s resolution, and struggles with keeping it. (We all know how difficult that is!)

Dream Catcher Review

I'm the Author of Adult fiction, Poetry, and a few Children’s books. I am a Host at Robin Falls Kids on Red River Radio Called ' the Dreams of our children.  I'm pleased to announce a new joint venture, specializing in publishing eBooks with MLR Publishers. I continue wanting to inspire Children and Adults with  simple stories with a big message. ‎

"Worlds imagined, worlds displayed. interpretations of past, present, and future." Introducing Virtuoso Books. A virtual catalog of creations from Authors and Publishers from around the world at the tip of your finger. www.vivirtuosobooks.com

In my Poetry book; ‘Too Much Ado’ I speaks to the heart, with a poetic voice, reminding all of us that relationships can be very difficult

.

Excerpt: A Father's Eyes

“I remember standing at the door, peeking out the window, never seeing either of my parents depending on how their career goes.

Those promises that were never kept at a time that would soon be gone.

You sit inside your room and wonder how long must it go on!

Holding one truth within your heart "I will never do this to my son…”

Each piece is a simple reminder that while life can be difficult and even debilitating it is better shared together with love and understanding.

After writing my first Poetry book Too Much Ado, I wanted to address my feelings more poetically about what I’ve learned over 50 years. My experience as a social worker has shown me many people and ways of life. This has taught me compassion and understanding.

Tadias means “Hello or What’s up” in Ethiopian which is my ancestry. I wish to show readers just what I’ve learned through this time.

Excerpt from book : Tadias

The world they say keeps changing

every step we take.

There are so many questions that

flatter our mistakes.

The more we learn

the less we know.

Our aches and pains

begin to grow.

Life and time

begins to matter.

As this life on earth

begins to shatter.

Know I see less of me

and my world has come full circle.

All I've aim to be has seem

to be dysfunctional at best.

What I know or did know

has taken away my past.

I once thought I could live forever

but now I live each day.

link: http://www.vivirtuosobooks.com/ www.story-e-books.com and other internet book stores

Poetry E-BOOK REVIEW

Coffee House Window

by the river, wind

drifts over rock& tree,

ripples current

I see you Glistening sunshine,

waves. While I know

you are busy, shores lap

like whispers between you & me.

Butterfly on the leaf

I could touch you,

My hands in the river,

water is cool, splish splish splish—

—my fingers,

caress your flowing

reflection, in circles.

White clouds drift overhead.

Along the shore, bare feet in the wet muck

sand is gritty, driftwood leaning & I stare

like a crane before flight maybe,

You were just, Reflection on the river

My Review: Coffee House Window

T.R. Woodruff’s Poetry book has you overlooking the Missouri River through a coffee house window, There are observations to be consumed; they float along the cobblestones and come on occasion - each with their own aroma. It is there, among the brick and trees, that poetry curls its steam.  Tony Angelo

Poetry E-book Review

AUTHOR: Terry Ledwell

Publisher: M.L.R. Publishera in assion with dream of our children ebook

TITLE: Emerse

Terry Ledwell’s Poetry book shows that once you can touch another human being with words, there is nothing deeper but the love that accompanies it. Words can penetrate places that even darkness can't.

Continue reading this ebook at Smashwords.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
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