Revenge, Once Removed

50-Word Stories (online) February 2019

“That’s what I would’ve done,” he said. “I would’ve asked all the same questions; would’ve been sure exactly who I was dealing with; would’ve made certain he’d done exactly what they said. But I don’t think I would’ve pulled the trigger on him. I would’ve gone looking for his sister.”

Honeymoon

50-Word Stories (Online) January 2019

They’d only been married since the weekend, but she could readily identify his writer’s block.

She suggested that he might at least try to write something short, perhaps about a convicted criminal in his cell, awaiting the executioner’s call.

“Nah,” he replied. “I’ve never really been that much into autobiography.”

A Man Among Ferns

A Story In 100 Words (Online) December 2018

He remembers waking up—ages ago—amid ferns, with neither a plan nor any desire to ever be waking up again at all, least of all amid ferns, which he had considered to be beautiful before he wandered into them and disappeared, hoping to disappear forever.

 

Now, almost a half-century later, he endures his almost unendurable insomnia in the broadest daylight his personal December has to offer. He sits with his journal at his favorite café table by the window, attempting to capture any fragment of last night’s dreams, but is sadly reminded—again—that not all attempts are successful.

Stormfront: Bookstore Café

The Writers’ Cafe Magazine #14 (Online) December 2018


It seems like half the town comes in
for coffee between noon and two,
most of them hooded and mittened
against the cold, some of them
—despite their best efforts—
appear nearly frostbitten, their
movement toward the café tables slow,
their utterances clipped, their eyes
still frozen into a sub-zero squint.

He peers at them intently
from his corner table, observes
them so carefully that, mesmerized,
he almost ceases to exist.

Suddenly, a snow squall breaks out
over by the periodicals. Small drifts
build up around the travel guides,
ice forms on the cookbooks.

Inside Winter

The Writers’ Cafe Magazine #14 (Online) December 2018


The snow is only a paper snow today, only a
story of snow outside the window, and the snowdrifts
I pass in the hallway are only paper snowdrifts.

This morning there’s imaginary sunlight.
I bask in it in bed from nine til noon, a new man
in a new year under the same old imaginary sun.

The sky today is a painted sky
and the imaginary sun is only pinned to it
the way a child pins a paper dragon to a bedroom wall.

Outside, I can see the air in motion. I watch it
through the window, remembering the snow
is only paper, blowing away, forgetting to bite. 

Reduction

A Story In 100 Words (Online) December 2018

He sat alone.

He watched her scrape the painted letters from the window; watched FINE ARTS CAFE become FINE ART, then FINE and finally FIN.

She took a break.

He couldn’t bear to watch anymore anyway, imagined PAINTING becoming mere PAINT, then PAIN; LESSONS, LESS.

Having finished his coffee, he talked to the café owner about her plans now that she’d finally served up her last cup.

He mentally counted out the other empty storefronts, some of the buildings invisible from where he sat, their windows staring out at a rapidly fading Main Street.

He knew he’d be gone soon, too.

Unforgettable

The Drabble (Online) December 2018

When I finally walked away, years ago, I could hear her telling me all about her upcoming descent into hell; how it was all my fault.

 

If I turned my back, she said, I turned my back on any chance we’d ever meet again. But I knew it wasn’t true.

 

Even as I walked away, I could sense her reaching for the pint I know she always carries in her bag.

 

I wake up, years later.

The phone is still buzzing.

Incipient Pariah

50-Word Stories (Online) December 2018

Although he’d never been
officially banned
from any of the many
downtown establishments
he frequented,
he increasingly found himself
isolated
at one end of the bar,
other patrons
choosing to congregate
at the other, even if
half of them had to stand
two-deep,
reaching through the crowd
for their beer.

Conservation Of Energy

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)

7 deadly Sins / Volume 4 / Sloth (Print /e-pub) November 2018

I meant to start mopping up
the last of that spilled and
spoiled milk a month ago
last week. I meant to start,
at least, to scrub those fugly
upstairs bathroom tiles
and—while I was at it—maybe      
try to unclog the toilet or
open up one of the windows,
let in a breath or two of that
less fetid outside air.
I meant to. I really did.

I know I made a pledge

on New Year’s Eve, a pledge
to change my ways, a pledge
to do the things that anyone
else—anyone with gumption—
would do in a heartbeat, do
without a second’s thought;
but that was then, and this is
now. I’ll get to it later. Maybe.

The way I see it’s like this:

parked here on the couch,
I’m saving a bundle of cash
at the hardware store and the
laundromat; I’m not likely to
injure myself or wear out all
my shoe leather waiting for
take-out I don’t have to cook.

14-Year-Old Pediatrician

50-Word Stories (Online) November 2018

I saved my little sister’s life.
She had a bad case
of deadly Arphidarfilus.

She sought a second opinion.
Mom was busy in the kitchen.
Dad was, as always, on the road.

I prescribed gumdrops.
(Gumdrops is the only cure.)

Half a century later
she says I’m still her hero.

The Plan

Here Comes Everyone (e-pub & print) November 2018

Recycled recycling,
washed wash. Find a way
to avoid the keyboard.

See the light: fix 
the  lamp, stow (at last)
the Christmas strands.

Before anything, coffee.
After the landfill and storage,
a shower. Maybe a nap.

Wish you were here.
Count the moments.
Pucker up.

Absent Relatives

300K - A Poetry Anthology About The Human Race
(Print / epub) October 2018)

Nothing reminds us of you now
and nothing remains but these:
a small stone adze
and a scrap of buckskin boot.
It is recorded only
that you sat near fires
but not that you felt the snow.
Your glazed clay bowls are gone,
broken by the sun;
you have taken them with you
to an endless spring
beyond that far blue mesa.

Not Too Much To Ask

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Vol.3 / Greed (Print & e-pub) August 2018 

 

 

All I want is whatever little I

already have. And half of yours. 
I mean, you’ve got plenty,
eh? Way more than you need.
So I’m only asking for half.
Equal shares, y’know?
Fifty-fifty seems right, right?
And his, too, maybe; half of
his and maybe half of hers.
Half of theirs. It’s all I need.
It’s all I’m asking for. Half.

Flying Home

Winner of Laureates' Choice Award at Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest
(Online - August 2018)

Tonight the latest April sky, a sky
I rarely venture out to see, is filled
with smallish change: a quarter moon and stars
like dimes that spend their tiny light on eyes
a million billion miles away. But still,
with her away, they do not seem as far.

If I could fly away, or fly at all
—had wing enough or wind enough—I’d fly
across the empty miles of senseless air
to where I know she waits, and then I’d fall 
like starlight, lightly, kiss her face and eyes
and never fly away again from there.

We cannot stay, but always we must go;
the home we seek’s the only home we know.

The Skip

The Linnet's Wings (Online) August 2018

It’s like when that needle hops
on your favorite vinyl but it hops
at just the right spot…just the right
spot…just the right spot
 
and you almost don’t want to
go over and fix it because it’s
just the right spot…just the right
spot
 
and it’s the snippet you could
listen to forever…forever…

Silent Night

Montana Mouthful (Print & ePub) June 2018

Even when you’re not there to

hear them, only half the trees
falling in a forest make any noise.
The trees you don’t hear you don’t
hear, and the rest of them fall
silently, often at midnight.
                                    Even when
you try and try again, like all the
childish fables say you should; even
smack in the middle of the forest,
in the middle of the night, in the
middle of winter; even though
you keep your eyes open, your ears
peeled; even then, the falling trees
and the winter’s midnight night
remain silent.
                     All the silent night
long, all the falling trees keep falling;
but all you can hear is the nothing.

     

Turtleglass

Montana Mouthful (Print & ePub) June 2018

He puts a glob of turtleglass

under the jeans in her suitcase
before she goes away.
                                  Later,
when she calls him after midnight
to tell him she’s arrived, tell him
that she misses him already,
and he answers the phone,
calls her his little turtle dove
and she doesn’t react,
                                he knows
she hasn’t yet unpacked, hasn’t
found his little round travel gift.

                                 He hopes

she’ll find it nestled in the jeans
shiny in the shiny morning; hopes
she’ll put it in her pocket, keep
their little green secret crystal
close to her heart all day long;
hopes it brings her safely home
                                and soon.

New Snow and Disease

Medical Literary Messenger (Print & eBook) June 2018

It’s freezing here & there’s
new snow. I can’t write a word
and the doctors want a second look,
another look inside, and yet
another. I’m X-rayed to death
and there’s new snow and I can’t
write a word. I’m thinking of you,
Doctor Guru, out in sweet Siouxland,
your deskful of papery lab reports,
neatly stacked and white.

There’s new snow here this morning
and I’m spending my time these days
in labs and waiting rooms
waiting to hear something
I’m not wanting to hear.
I’m having my coffee on the porch;
I’m looking out at a full foot of new snow
and I’ve nothing more to say.

One test leads to another, no?
Nothing speaks to me now.

Fat Ronald Cheats

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Vol.2 / Gluttony (Print & e-pub) June 2018 

 

All the ads say it’s hot and juicy,

and it’s hot alright, but the juicy’s
really just grease that congeals
pretty quickly back into fat.  He’s
reasonably sure he can feel it
coating his cluttered arteries
even before he swallows. 
None of this, though,
keeps him from eating there
four or five times a week,
nor does he ever—even remotely—
consider ordering a drive-thru salad
or the lo-cal fruit parfait.

His wife says he’s turning into a

bacon-wrapped double cheeseburger,
but all he hears is how delicious he is,
how much she wants to gobble him up.
He still loves her madly, but she
just doesn’t satisfy him anymore.
He’s always somewhat disappointed
when even her tastiest dishes
refuse to dribble down his chin,
promise neither cardiac arrhythmia
nor the ever-expanding waistline
he’s come to honor and obey.

Fernophobia

Night Terrors and Daymares / Vol 1  (Print / PDF Anthology)  June 2018
--Previously Published: Amygdala (Online) 2015


Nearly dawn
near the border:
Seconal, Valium, booze.
No one expected
the slow opening of eyes,
least of all
the man among the ferns, dismayed.
This was to be the longest sleep,
the rest, at last, so well-deserved.
Imagine his surprise:
dew-soaked, a slug
across the bridge of his nose,
no shoes or recollection.

After The Pills Kick In

Night Terrors and Daymares Vol 1 (Print / PDF Anthology)  June 2018

Limp, rattled, and torch-bruised
I jug an octopus jam
stow tomes, strum rug fringe

Feeding The Cat

Night Terrors and Daymares / Vol 1 (Print /PDF Anthology) June 2018

She called from the road, said not to wait;

told us to go ahead and eat without her,
her shift at the vet’s had run into overtime
and she still had to swing by the store
for cat food and a new scratching post
for that feral one-eyed flea-bitten stray
she brought home a couple of weeks ago
that had dropped its mewling and scrawny litter
amid our newly-laundered bedsheets.

We’d already finished our impromptu dinner;

everyone, satiated and amiable, had helped
with the dishes, retired to the living room
for another joint and wine when she finally
walked in the front door, apologetic, her arms
laden, her eyes surprised, and shouted
“You didn’t make the pot roast? What did you
cook instead? And where the hell’s the cat?”

"...some sort of gun."

Night Terrors and Daymares / Vol 1 (Print /PDF Anthology) June 2018
--Previously published: See Into The Dark (Print Anthology) May 2016

I’d like to think

I might have found more to say

had it been me lying there
             instead of him.

Slippers

The Writers' Café Magazine (Online) April 2018
Issue #7 - "Shoes"

In the dark, he puts his slippers on the wrong feet; they walk away and he never sees them again.  Sometimes he misses them, wonders if they ever think about him, if they pad around someone else’s kitchen now, dreaming of his rainforest hardwood mornings, his quiet carpeted bedroom nights.  All day long, no matter what he does or how long it takes, he’s only doing it to kill some time while he’s waiting and hoping they’ll find their way back to him.

 

But it’s no use, no use.  They’re lost forever in the great wide world, lost somewhere in the vast asphalt universe, no doubt someone else’s slaves, pacing strange floors at odd hours, bending to foreign biddings.

 

He vows never to forget them, promises himself to remember even their most minute detail, but with each passing hour he can feel them slipping further and further away.

Do It Yourself

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Vol.1 / Lust (Print & e-pub) march 2018

A word to the wise:

it pays to clean your tool
when the job’s finally done
even if you only dip it
in the old paintcan
once in a blue moon
or you’re one of those
six-jobs-a-day
touch up artists;
whether it’s a straight,
long-bristled detail brush
with a customized grip
or a bulky twelve-inch
cement floor roller,
no matter what kind of
medium you’re spreading
—matte, satin, or glossy —
you’ll save yourself a big
headache later on if you
wash it down afterwards.

And you guys with the big

power sprayers: remember
to wipe down your hoses
and flush them out often.
You don’t want them to
get all gummed-up and
rot away from inside;
and pay special attention
to that tricky nozzle area.

Always remember this:

a well-maintained tool will
give you years of service,
but if you don’t scrub it
down between jobs
you’ll pay for it in the end.

Couched

Eunoia Review (Online) March 2018

After he deposits her at the therapist’s office, he goes down to the bookstore cafe and settles in for an afternoon coffee. Before very long, the therapist shows up and she’s with him. They look like a couple, out for an afternoon on the town. They don’t see him right away, and it seems to him that he’s watching two people he’s never met before. He wants to go over and tell them what a lovely couple they make, how he wishes he had a girlfriend as lovely as she, but he tries to keep his mind on his coffee instead, even though it’s so suddenly bitter. A few minutes later, she spots him at his corner table and waves, but doesn’t smile.

Coyote

Cabinet of Heed (Online) February 2018

Coyote only comes to town once or maybe twice during the tundra months, dragging his game leg and leaving an odd print in the deep snow down by the place where the gray silent river turns toward the north. He’s tired of the hard-won slim pickings starvation diet he scratches out from under the hard-packed snow cover. He’s fed up with putting out a full day’s labor for a three-minute reward.

This time when Coyote comes to town he’s looking for a little something extra; something a cold and half-starved beast can take his time sinking his teeth into. He’ll be out there, relaxed and happy, well-dressed, late at night, smiling and coaxing some sweet piece of easy prey into his waiting snare. Few can resist him or, once he turns on the charm, even want to.

Back in the forest, Coyote always had to take whatever he needed by force. There was neither time nor need for either stealth or finesse. Survival suffered no flourish, no filigree. But here, under the protective eaves of balsam and hemlock, inside the sheltering windbreak of the common town, Coyote could afford the luxury of laying-in-wait, the methodical stalk before the inevitable pounce.

It was weeks before the corpses began to accumulate; weeks before his grisly handiwork became apparent; before the bloodstained snowdrifts, driven by wind, gave up their horrible secrets.

There was massive carnage before anyone even knew that Coyote had come to town.

Levels

Months To Years (Online / Print) February 2018

https://issuu.com/renata.k.louwers/docs/mty_winter2018_v7?e=32272359/57942539

 

Half of these people are already half dead he thinks, watching them watch each other stare out the tall plate glass of the hospital’s east pavilion solarium into the rapidly fading mid-March sunset; the other half is already further gone than that, but remain resolutely unwilling or merely incapable of simply accepting facts.

 

He goes down two levels in the oncology elevator and sits silently with the waiters and worriers, sees how long he can hold his breath waiting for a specialist to find and read a chart, to suggest a cure or announce an imminent demise, or to otherwise free him from his tedium and chafe. Here, at least, two levels down, where the truth is at last both known and spoken, there is far less opportunity for being blinded by the false light from above, as there is no such light to be found. Here, at least, everyone knows.

 

There are, he knows, many other rooms; many other even lower levels, most with even far less light. This he knows with certainty. Armed with this awareness, he contents himself with his current level of twilight.

 

 

 

 

 

Poet's Biggest Fear

The Drabble (Online) January 2018

Hanging out with the fictionauts and the prosers, he fears, may have damaged his poetry.

These days, instead of concentrating on linebreaks and imagery, he worries about commas and semicolons; thinks in dependent clauses; ponders parallel constructions and parenthetical prepositional phrases.

When he writes, he no longer recites each phrase aloud to hear it sing.

Instead, he declaims his work from start to finish, paragraph by dreary paragraph, from beginning to end to ensure that it makes sense; conforms to the norms of grammar’s logic.

Sometimes it puts him to sleep.

He’s afraid of writing a nightmare.

Haiku (flute)

Haiku Journal, Issue 56 (Online / Print) January 2018

 

alone on the porch
a man welcomes the morning
Spanish cedar flute

Death Of A Salesman

Coffin Bell (Online) January 2018

In the absence of the bird-thin body
that usually haunted their perch
two crows found tenuous purchase
on the rusted chain-link fence
where the dealer normally dealt.

They muttered and chuffed
a secret revolutionary code
about the day that would come
when all the corners of the world
would be theirs and theirs alone.

Klling That Bitch Again

Coffin Bell (Online) January 2018
--originally published at: Your One Phone Call (October 2016)

Last night in the arcane landscape

of darkness, while my actual body

remained in the safe soft confines

of headboard and fitted sheet,

I drove some wild dirt back road

at 80, dust everywhere, radio loud

 

her beside me on hot red leather

all at once terrible and terrifying.

I knew it was her again. As usual,

I couldn’t see her face but I knew,

when we found ourselves naked,

later, the musty room sun-slatted,

 

it would be her again, urging me

to pay the voodoo priestess, drink

deep from the proffered chalice,

let the ravens circle in and dive,

dive. I knew it would be her again.

When I raised the knife, I knew.

Zombies And Werewolves Need Not Apply

Coffin Bell (online) January 2018

https://coffinbell.com/zombies-and-werewolves-need-not-apply/

 

He’s sick to death of reading about people who spend all their time reading about werewolves and zombies.  He tries to spend at least an hour every day in the bookstore café, having a quiet cup of coffee and writing about whatever else comes into his mind, but—no matter how hard he tries—his fans come in to stand behind him and prod him to wake the sleeping dead, outfit the living with glowing eyes and fangs.

“There must be something more,” he thinks, knowing full well that there isn’t.  He turns to confront them, but it’s clear that resistance is futile.

They unzip his skull and feast on his brain.

Inspiration

One Sentence Poems (Online) December 2017

Twice in a day and a half
he’s almost certain he hears it:
the voice of an angel speaking
from just around the corner
as if from some great distance
seeming almost lost in recitation
almost inaudible
telling some cosmic joke or
posing a celestial riddle,
repeating the words
hoodwink, subterfuge,
flabbergast.

So Much Depends Upon A Red Wig

Of Burgers & Barrooms (Print Anthology from Main Street Rag Bookstore, December 2017)
-- Originally Published by Higginsville Reader (print) May 2001


So Much Depends Upon A Red Wig
 
Ronald hasn’t shown
for several years now
since he came to cut the ribbon
and open the public doors;
has only sent an emissary
once or twice a month:
eighteen wheels and a logo
bearing frozen potatoes
and placemats or paper bags.

Manager Mike pines,
longs for a simple glimpse
of pancake, rubber nose,
or a pair of two-foot long
red plastic shoes.
He watches
his all-expenses-paid
managers’ incentive
Holiday in Cozumel
go south along Main,
turn left into Peking Gardens
while down the block, smirking,
his arch-enemy Wendy
serves Mike’s former regulars
with a vacant and Frosty smile.

Shelter

One Person's Trash (Online & Print) November 2017
-Previous version (Titled "Charlie") in *82 Review, March 2013

Charlie visits the Precious Savior

Bookstore, stocks up on all the latest 

offerings: Ticket To Heaven postcards, 

sticks of incense, The Greatest Hits 

Of The Grateful Faithful, featuring 

the Certain Resurrection Choir.  

He goes for a walk on Water Street, 

his head and headphones buzzing.  

 

Charlie folds himself into a corner,

contemplates nations murdering

nations.  He no longer aims or claims

to be a general; thinks instead about 

suicide, rain, and the sidewalks, running.  

Smoke rises near the airport, insubstantial,

like a ghost rises from a cooling corpse.
Charlie, airborne, cools his heels, thinks about

jets and vapor trails.

 

Back at the shelter, he’s got a fan                                                   

and a paint-by-number Jesus.

At night they find a little harmony:

the fan spins around and 

the room spins around and Jesus, 

pleased, lets Charlie go to sleep.

​

2 Senryu

Failed Haiku: A Journal of English Senryu (Online) November 2017

she could read him like a book—

not surprisingly
all his pages were loose leaves

a conference room:

he can’t believe his own ears
—it’s all doubletalk– 

Rehearsal

Eunoia Review (Online) October 2017

He feeds the ravenous seagulls down beside the lake, shares his lunch hour with people that most other people disregard. He thinks about Richard, living alone in his shack made of watermelon sugar, thinks about Robert risking his life by having his teeth cleaned without the benefit of antibiotics. He thinks about his own heart, murmuring unsteadily in his chest; about the problems of becoming older and colder in a land that rewards youth and warmth; about being fat and lazy in a place that values only fitness and ambition.

 

Today he listens to the radio and watches a freshwater iceberg circling around in the current where the lake flows out into the river, flows north toward Canada, where the iceberg seems particularly unwilling to go but seems equally and inevitably destined to be.

 

When he gets home, before it gets dark, he remembers the seagulls and the iceberg but he only tells her about the iceberg. When he tells her about the iceberg’s apparent indecision about staying in the lake or going with the flow, north to Canada, she tilts her head to one side and wonders about where he finds the time to think about saying such things. When he opens his journal and reads aloud the same words he just used to tell her all about the indecisive iceberg, everything seems to fall into place for her. A look comes over her face: sudden awareness that he’d never say anything out loud he hadn’t already written down (or imagined writing down) to tell her later.

 

He loves her and she has brown hair. He plans to write about her beautiful brown hair at some time in the future, as soon as he can, and come home after work, tell her all about it before it gets dark.

Awaiting Acceptance

Poetry Breakfast (Online) October 2017


I will have coffee and cigarettes on the porch.
I will watch the morning build itself

from fading dark. Men will arrive,
and I will think that this is work

I could do myself, but it will not be
true: there are to be new steps, and I

will only watch. There will be scrap heaps
and sawdust, and I will be busy, inspecting

cobwebs in the joists, pondering errant
commas, watching for the mailman’s van.

Duty

The Drabble (online) August 2017


“Has my time finally come round, brother?” he asked the executioner, who stood by patiently, ax in hand. Because he was hooded and constrained by statute from speaking, the executioner did not reply, but their simultaneous presence at that very spot, standing opposite each other, separated only by the oversized chopping block at the appointed hour, spoke for him.

The prisoner made a low bow. The executioner took full advantage. Soon it was silent and they were both welcomed home.

The executioner’s mother, having lost half her sons, wept.