50-Word Stories (Online) December 2022
“No, no, no,” he said, his voice fading. “I see what you
mean. I get it. I get it,” but his delivery had become a mere mumble as he entered
the unlit room at the far end of the hall, softly closing the door behind him,
making everything even darker.
50- Word Stories (Online) May 2019
It wasn’t until his third unsuccessful attempt to get something—anything—worthwhile onto paper that he realized he’d been using the wrong pen. Somehow, a 0.7 had made it into his pocket along with his favored 1.0 and he’d been accidentally selecting it, thus guaranteeing his dissatisfaction with the outcome.
Potato Soup Journal (10-Word Story) (online) September 2022
He warmed her heart.
He got her hot.
Boom.
Ash.
Today,
ladies and gentlemen, we’ll look at one of the world’s foremost chefs, and how
he creates his masterpiece. The key is
control: from the feedlot to the slaughterhouse, from the slaughterhouse to the
skillet, and from there to a serving platter, the truly great chefs exercise
complete and total control over even the tiniest details of meal preparation.
The Drabble (Online) May 2022
We should build a planetary dinner table.
Potato Soup Journal (10-Word Story) (Online) May 2022
“Peace, at last!” said the final soldier to no one.
Light on the Walls of Life (Jambu Press)
Print Anthology - Ferlinghetti Tribute (April 2022)
I’d like to live upstairs from a candy store.
50-Word Stories (Online) March 2022
It wasn’t until the final, near-miss horseshoe toss was disputed that things escalated into open warfare. Heavy metal shrapnel flew in almost every direction, none of it intended for its usual targets, all of it meant to send an unmistakably on-target message of protest. Neither team took home the gold.
The Birdseed (Online) March 2022
He
put a checkmark in the ledger next to his own name in the column marked
“Absent/Unexcused”. He was only a couple
of minutes late. No one really wanted to get down to business, anyway. No one
wanted to stay, but no one dared leave.
Only four or five of them had ever actually been struck by lightning.
Two were twins, but their identical siblings were elsewhere. Everyone was
dreaming, hoping for better days in far more hospitable places, but everyone
was, after all, only dreaming and—sadly—everyone knew they were only dreaming.
No one dared to wake up.
No one could wait for it all to be over with, least of all him. He checked his watch and double-checked the ledger; noted his own unexcused absence. He closed his eyes and made a silent wish.
A Story In 100 Words (Online) March 2022
Just before he’s seventy, just before 7:00 AM he
finds Shadowfax Marie at the 6068 Spa, lets her drift him into his morning
pages, levitate him, lets her let him forget everything, dismiss all of his
desires–even his morning coffee, even his Beloved (still in bed, dreaming he’s
still there, sleeping, beside her).
But his wings are only borrowed and
insubstantial. Before he can float away, he remembers his flesh, recalls his
agenda, and realizes that there’s a day ahead during which Shadowfax Marie will
inevitably fade; a day filled with no sound worth hearing, no vision worth
sharing.
A Story In 100 Words (Online) February 2022
When he finally finishes his regular morning exercise, he considers going back through his earliest journals and numbering the pages but—smart as he is—he knows he can’t count that high. He thinks about all the pens he’s ever used, tries to calculate how many oceans of ink he’s expended; imagines uncurling his cursive and deconstructing his print, laying out all of his pen strokes end-to-end and seeing just how many times the line would circle the globe, or if maybe it would form a lifeline out into space to lasso the moon or play jump rope with Mars.
A Story In 100 Words (Online) February 2022
He’s feeling less than complete this morning. Some parts
have vanished; most just haven’t woken up yet; a couple are only pretending to
be there. But for the most part, for one inexplicable reason or another, he’s
feeling incomplete.
Appointment At 10:30 (Anthology)
Pure Slush Books Vol. 22
Print & ePub Feb. 2022
It was 10:15, so he only had
about ten minutes to put together a back-up plan, including a list of potential
support providers in the community that could be finagled into housing his
client in case of an emergency.
It wasn’t a back-up plan, really, but an emergency fallback disaster plan, outlining what to do when the plan and the back-up plan failed—as they invariably did. He’d been through this procedure half a dozen times in his two years since joining the agency, and every time the plan, the back-up plan, and the fall-back had all failed and he ended up driving out at some ungodly hour to pick up the client, who inevitably spent the balance of the weekend alternately sleeping on his couch and standing out on the back lawn, screaming obscenities.
Despite his complaints about the impossibility of locating willing support providers, the Supervisors insisted that he arrive at the staff meeting with the names of at least five qualified individuals.
He used the last few minutes before the meeting to their best advantage. In his cubicle, sitting at his computer, he gathered dozens of names.
Then he printed out his resignation, attached it to the staff directory, and stepped around the corner into the conference room.
Vita Brevis Press (Print Anthology III) December 2021
Nothing Divine Dies (Nature
Poetry)
---------[||]---------
There is nothing ambiguous about
the absence of sunshine this
morning;
nothing open to interpretation;
nothing
equivocal. No. This morning
on the lawn—if brown can be a
lawn,
if a lawn can be a mat of last
year’s leaves—
this morning’s lawn, then, is
frost alone,
no new snow anywhere, just cold
and a frosty glaze, the promise
of impending winter.