Contact The Author: rdlbarton@gmail.com

Ron. Lavalette's work has appeared in these fine publications:



Monday, December 12, 2022

Recessional

 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.


Sunday, November 20, 2022

Plum Tree Tavern (Online) November 2022
Autumn Moon Festival Issue


last night’s fullest moon
still sings, bell-clear, this morning
—Autumn’s aria—

Sunday, September 04, 2022

Fine Point

 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.

Thursday, September 01, 2022

The Arsonist

 Potato Soup Journal (10-Word Story) (online) September 2022


He warmed her heart.
He got her hot.
Boom.
Ash.

Friday, July 08, 2022

But First, A Word From Our Sponsors

 Cow - Pure Slush Books
Anthology (Print / eBook, June 2022)

(This piece is too lengthy (500 words) to post here in its entirety.  Here's the opening paragraph. The whole piece is delivered as a TV documentary voice-over).

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. 


Sunday, May 08, 2022

Civil (re)Engineering

The Drabble (Online) May 2022

We should hand everybody a mirror,
tell them to have a good long look,
ask if that’s who they really want to be.

We should offer everybody a rifle,
see who’s interested in having one,
and hand them the mirror again instead.

We should give everyone a photo album
with photos of everyone else’s family.

We should build a planetary dinner table. 

Sunday, May 01, 2022

Pyrrhicism

Potato Soup Journal (10-Word Story) (Online) May 2022 

“Peace, at last!” said the final soldier to no one.

Monday, April 25, 2022

Candy

Light on the Walls of Life (Jambu Press)

Print Anthology - Ferlinghetti Tribute (April 2022)


I’d like to live upstairs from a candy store.

Over the years, I’ve read a few great poems
about life amid candy:
                                 Just this morning,
on my reluctant drive to work, I stopped
at the rest area and read all about how
Pinsky wakes up with his new love, looks down
at the sweetshop’s wrinkled awning, watches
an early fog lifting to reveal pigeons pecking
at rainbowed gutters;
                                and the venerable old
Ferlinghetti, ages and ages ago, wrote about
falling  in love with unreality amid licorice and
jellybeans on a gloomy September afternoon
in the pennycandystore beyond the El.
                                                       Decades
later, sometime in my early twenties, a baby
poet, I vowed that I’d pitch a tent outside
Munson’s Kandy Kitchen, and live on chocolate
and peanut butter eggs.
                                    I’m not so old, nor
blind, now, looking back, to see I should have
kept that vow. 


Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Backyard Olympics Failure

 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.

Monday, March 07, 2022

Attendance

 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.

Thursday, March 03, 2022

Shadowfax Marie

 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.

 


Saturday, February 19, 2022

Lariateer

 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.

Tuesday, February 08, 2022

Centurion Saturday

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.

 Maybe it’s just because it’s Saturday morning. And early. Very early. Too early for even a gigantic apple fritter to convince him that it’s really there and that he’s actually eating it.  Too early altogether for small-talk local television chat fests, and certainly way too early for the National or World News Countdown-To-Oblivion Update.

 All he needs is seven magic words.

Monday, February 07, 2022

As Directed

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.



Saturday, January 01, 2022

Covenant

 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.