Name That Tune

Medical Literary Messenger (Online) February 2020

     She’s already lost most of her hair, but refuses to wear one of those scarves, or a wig, or a hat to try to hide the fact. Her only jewelry is the small plastic catheter where a watch or a bracelet ought to be, unused now for months but still available as a concession to her doctors’ pleas. 
     She pushes the wheelchair’s controller forward like any gangster on the getaway might mash down the car’s accelerator. If the chair had a “Check Engine” light, it would have burned out ages ago, ignored. 
     The chair bee-lines across the almost empty atrium, forcing a few bipedal staffers and patients to alter their courses as she zeroes in on her intended destination: the upright piano occupying the small visitors’ seating area adjacent to Oncology, on the other side of the lobby. 
     Her arrival is simultaneous with that of the thin, elderly man the hospital has hired to come in three times per week to make the rounds from keyboard to keyboard, half an hour each, to make the waiting easier, to help the people forget or remember, whichever best suits their need. 
     He looks at her and smiles; knows exactly what he has to play.

Embers

A Story In 100 Words (Online) February 2020


He thinks he sees her again and he’s mesmerized by her perfection.

He watches her and remembers his perfect past; remembers what it was like for him all those many years ago when, returning home, he’d find the perfect woman there, smiling, standing beside the fireplace, close to the fire, waiting. He can’t always recall her name, but he remembers the fire and her smile; the perfectly soft glow, the welcoming warmth.

These are the benedictions of age, he thinks. Even when the fire burns low, there is memory and imagination; even in an empty room I am never alone.

Paper Thin

Prometheus Dreaming (Online) January 2020

He knew all there was to know
about her. She knew all she
needed to know. There was paper
on the walls between them,
but the walls themselves
did not exist.

On Friday she came by
to borrow a little hot sauce.
She knew he had plenty.
He gave it to her.
He gave it to her good.

She came again on Saturday.
The whole building heard it.

Write What You Know

50-Word Stories (online) January 2020

Write what you know, they say
so he writes the first draft
of the fog and gravel of Route 16
all the way to work at sunrise.

Before the sun goes down
he’s revised the revised revision
until all he really thinks he knows
is what he says he’s written.

No Passport Required

Eleventh Transmission
45 Poems of Protest (Online) December 2019


It won’t happen until
we burn all the flags

erase concepts like
foreigner and enemy

tear down the walls
ignore the borders

and accept that we’re all
in the same small blue boat

a tiny fragile planet
sailing through the void.

It won’t happen until
we look at each other

and say “Welcome home”
instead of “Papers, please.”

Truth Be Told

One Sentence Poems (Online) November 2019

If the Secret Police come knocking
late at night, armed with terror bombs,
their visors reflecting moonlight
into the dim interior of my room,
I will freely surrender, eagerly confess
that just before they arrived
I sent out a song
on the clandestine airwaves;
that the coded lyrics, deciphered
on distant, receptive shores,
will lay all beings bare of arms,
bereft of all supposed defenses.

Two Small Threes by Five

HALIBUT (Online) November 2019

he can’t help himself

—the moon is fully windowed—

syllables, calling

This is how it is for him.  It’s pathetic, and even he knows it’s pathetic.  He wakes up; it’s only just after three so he makes himself go back to sleep, but he’s fully awake by 4:20 and he’s got it stuck in his head: something about two small poems, three lines each, maybe formal haiku, maybe some weird Americanized Kerouacian version, he doesn’t really know, only knows he can’t help thinking Two Small Threes By Five over and over again until finally he gets up to write them.

He thinks about where to start with the writing, and he thinks there’s a harvest moon shining in the window, but at first he doesn’t know this for a fact.  He stops thinking about the writing long enough to Google the phrase harvest moon, which, being a good contemporary poet, he has vowed never to use in his writing, but it’s just so very much there, flooding through the window, shining on his desktop, shining on his keyboard, washing across his office floor, sure enough: a harvest moon, shining on.

After the first three hard-won lines, he hits the auto-set for Shankar and the Sandhya Raga fills the room like moonlight.  He’s out of incense.  He’s afraid he’s out of ideas.  He walks to the kitchen, turns on a light, changes his mind and turns it off again. He makes the coffee by moonlight, steel strings still ringing in the next room, where he has left his head, thinking in threes and contemplating the Raga Of The Harvest Moon while the moon, still, still shines on the keyboard.

This is how it is for him in the morning, every morning, early, and even sometimes all morning long: long before even the first cup of coffee, the first thought repeating, repeated in the moonlight, repeated at the keyboard, repeated at the keyboard in the moonlight. This is how he is.

absolute perfect moon

coffee moon keyboard moon raga moon

haiku moon, release me

Life Of A Poet (Interview)

Poets United (Online) October 2019

"Today we are zooming cross-country to Vermont, to chat with Ron. Lavalette, who blogs at  Scrambled, Not Fried, and Eggs Over Tokyo. I detect a theme here...  Let's dive in!..."

Read the Entire Interview Here

http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2019/10/life-of-poet-ron-lavalette.html

What Basho Knows

Plum Tree Tavern (Online) September 2019

fog is good
but god’s a frog
loves the sun
—leaps—

Not The Warmest Greeting

50-Word Stories (Online) September 2019

 

He was quite sure they’d met before. Her smile, though noncommittal, seemed at least familiar, and somewhat welcoming.

 

It faded, though, as he approached her and sat down beside her on the subway.

 

He knew that he’d mistaken her as soon as she pressed the trigger on the Mace canister.
 

Love Conquers All

Red Wolf Journal (Online) September 2019
(Anthologized)  March 2020

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

“I bought you some
poison blueberries,”
she said. “You can
have them with your
corn flakes in the morning.”
She had always been
everything he’d ever wanted
so all he heard was:
“I bought you some
blueberries for breakfast.”
He ate them the next day
with toast and orange
marmalade and tea.
He went to work and smiled
at customers and colleagues,
sat quietly at his desk
until half-past five, signed out
and, still smiling, headed home
to his Sweetie Pie.

Overheard

Red Wolf Journal (Online) September 2019
(Anthologized) March 2020

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

The first words heard on Monday,
smack in the middle of August,
drifted in, distant and disembodied
from the dock of the smallest cabin
across the lake.
                          An ancient couple,
no doubt celebrating their golden
anniversary with a coffee and a
mutual toast, love-talked so softly
that only their voices’ tenderness
and not the content of their speech
travels across the still, wide water.

Girl Of His Dreams

Potato Soup Journal (Online) August 2019
(10-Word Stories)

He purchased her wedding ring long before they even met.

Oasis

Dreamscapes (Print Anthology)
Cherry House Press / July 2019
(Line/Stanza breaks re-edited to correct print anthology errors)

I dreamed of her, an oasis

standing by a new house

on a hill in the greening spring

holding a small glass harp,

its strings singing, untouched,

brushed only by a breeze;
its sound, lifted and carried

by the blue air, intoxicating.

I woke up before there was light
and stepped outside, tentative,

barefoot, onto the creaking porch,

with only coffee and the railing for balance.
Another autumn folded in around me:

the intemperate air almost ready

to carry snowflakes; the world, swirling
out of one darkness into another;
the moon on the verge of eclipse.

Then, there she was again.  

 

Never Date A Geologist

Dime Show Review  (10-Word Story) (online) July 2019

“I didn’t say stoned,” he told her; “I said petrified.”

Ginsberg's Omelet

Red Wolf Journal (Online) July 2019
RWJ Anthology: "Borrowed Poetry" (Online PDF) August 2019

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

 

This is the egg of the Void, ovoid, egg I have come to know these 20 years on frozen flats, in dreams of egg gone mad, unreachable egg, egg unbeaten by Time, unmapped in the flat gray clouded frypan of Imagination, egg unreal, uneaten eggshell egg—

This is the fork I choose to torture the egg, fork of my mother’s choosing, passing through generations, immigrant fork that travels from Prussia, come to rest on American Formica, Breakfast In America fork, Fork of Manhattan 2019, come to beat the egg for real, to make the mad yellow omelet of  Century XXI, feed the starving mass of men standing and waiting to dig the secret bop-cabala of omelette breakfast staring up from the ooky yolky plate with sizzled bacon beside—

This is the milk of lost aspiration, squeezed from the unwilling tit, small milk, spilled, useless milk propped up by demonic farm subsidies devised by Washington to keep the dirty farmer poor, Milk of the Mother, pilfered mechanically, milk I remember from sour nights on the Plains, drifting toward unrequited Denver, lights whiter than mercury vapor under the odd sad laughing western omelet moon—

O Omelet of my soul, sweet yellow comrade omelet, come to me now, I am starved for your Grace, I await you now in early morning America

 

 

The Wait

Coffee Poems (Print Anthology) June 2019
World Enough Writers

Can I he pointed and of course
her hand replied smiling out
another coffee and otherwise
ignoring his all over her like
every yesterday and today
the same old thing but
what the hell she thought
what the hell her small tips
hung in the grinning balance

Power Outage

Cabinet of Heed (print & e-Pub) June 2019

How unfortunate to be there
when the power goes out
at two separate places
at two different times
on the same day.

It was one thing, the first time,
when the supermarket overheads
and everything else
—except a few quick-witted
smartphone flashlights—
flickered twice and went black,
flashed a blinding warning signal
—a truly brilliant half-second delay—
before leaving the whole sad storefull
frozen in Aisle 7, startled into silence
and forced into terrifying immobility
for a scary seven minutes.

Everyone survived. Everyone
muddled through; made it out alive.
Praise the Lord.

But then,
again, hours later…

Shame, Shame

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Volume 7 / Pride (Print & e-pub) May 2019

 

This was supposed to be something.
This was supposed to be worthwhile;
supposed to be something that
summed up and crowned his works,
glorified everything he’d done so far. 

He wanted to be proud of his work;

wanted to be approached by readers,
wanted to see their heads still spinning,
their hands eager to shake his hand.
He wanted to hear them sing his praise.

No one even seemed to notice. No one

approached him for an autograph or
formed a line for a photo op. No one
betrayed the slightest interest. No one.

He gave up caring. He put down his pen.

 

 

Drought's End

A Story In 100 Words (Online) May 2019

It was almost dark and he pulled into his driveway a happy man.

He had planned to be home in time for lunch, or at least to be at home at lunchtime, home in time for his favorite talking heads to read him the news he’d missed in the morning while he showered so as to make himself presentable at his favorite café, his best black journal open, crying out for him not to allow yet another eight-day lapse without so much as a single penstroke.

It was almost dark and he was happy to have generated three whole sentences.

Still, Only He

The Drabble (Online) April 2019


He watches everything around him
unfolding in super-slow-motion,
but no one else seems to notice
despite the fact that they’ve all
been standing in line for days.

Even though the line never moves,
everyone banters and chatters away
at a normal pace. No one else
seems to notice that everyone’s
clearly frozen, motionless, in place.

The Medium's The Message

Potato Soup Journal (Online) March 2019
(10-Worder)

“Excuse me,” he said, not realizing his fart was inaudible.

Face Rocks

*82 review (Print & ePub) March 2019

She sees faces in the rocks and small stones she finds in the yard, faces staring back at her, smiling or reproachful, young or old. She hands them to me and sometimes I can see them, too. The ones I can see I give names to, first and last, and hand them back to her to see if I got them right. I almost always get them right, or she says, “No, she looks more like a Pearl or a Maude to me.” Then she’d put the smallest ones in her pocket, set the larger ones aside and, later, we’d carry them up to the steps, give them a nice shower from the garden hose, let them bask awhile in the sun before bringing them inside to our box of face rocks.

Sometimes I wonder what became of them after I left. I wonder if she tossed them back into the yard and garden before she moved to the mountains, or gave them away to the kids in the neighborhood, or if she just included the box one day with the other trash, dragged to the curb.

In my office today I have a large water cooler bottle filled with corks. None of them have names, though. I have a tea canister filled with Chinese fortunes, a small galvanized pail overflowing with red plastic coffee scoops, a display case for my hundreds of tin boxes, half a dozen terracotta balls, a sizeable collection of rusty railroad spikes, and about half a million books.

I wish she could be here to see them.

Two Below, Two Twenty-Eight

Six Sentences  (Online) March 2019

He does not envy the window washer, just outside the glass by his favorite street-view café table, her breath immediately vaporizing into massive sub-zero clouds blown away instantly by the wind-chill winds.
 
It's clear, though, that she's completely absorbed by the task; that the frigid conditions (which she had, no doubt, already encountered an uncountable number of times in the past) hardly even register; almost certainly neither distract nor impede.
 
He sits too long, watching and attempting to accurately record her persistent diligence. He's fully aware that he, too, has tasks and chores to complete; activities perhaps not as arduous as arctic window cleaning but which, once completed, should yield as much satisfaction as sparkling café glass on the last day of February in the coldest winter of the last half-century.

He knows he should get up and go about his business, but he takes one last minute to write one last sentence.

Driving away, he already longs to return.

He Da Man

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)
7 Deadly Sins / Volume 6 / Envy  (Print & e-pub) March 2019

                                             
I see all the women who follow him around;
follow him into restaurants and bars;
the ones who never leave before closing time;
the ones he gets to choose from; the one
he chooses: a different one every night.

I’ve seen the tips he leaves the barmaid;

watched him sign the tab, watched him
peel off half a dozen nice crisp twenties
just for good measure; watched the barmaid,
beaming, wishing she were off the clock.

I see him, always chauffeured everywhere,

climbing in and out of his spotless limo,
never having to worry about a schedule;
never opening a door for himself anywhere;
never the tiniest smudge on his tailored suit.

I could go for some of that; I could be

the king of the world on only the tiniest bit.
I could be in heaven if I could only have
the merest fraction of what he’s got;
one day like his day, once or twice a year.

If only, if only, if only.

 

 

Almost There

50-Word Stories (Online) March 2019
Editor's Choice: Story Of The Month

After the hospital, the bookstore café beckons. The geezers have already gathered. Although they still do not offer him a seat at their tables, when he comes in this time, limping, they shoot him a longer glance than usual, which seems, he imagines, to confirm the likelihood of imminent inclusion.

Blood Test

Potato Soup Journal (Online) March 2019
(10-Word Flash Fiction)-
Anthologized (Print & Kindle) May 2020

She was undeniably hot-blooded.
He had it all over him.

Dejaburger

Potato Soup Journal (online) February 2019

Everybody else in line is impatient except him.

He just stands there, smiling, behind the ancient lady and her elderly son who reads and re-reads the billboard menu to her, explaining the items as he goes, trying his best to understand them himself.

He tells her the burgers are all the same size, but you can order one, two, or three of them all on the same bun; that “large / medium / small ” refers to the size of the drinks and the side of fries, not the burgers themselves.

Everyone in line can see that the old lady’s almost blind, but adamant, too, because she keeps insisting she just wants a burger with some fries and a soda; doesn’t want to order a combo because, “A combo’s too fancy, and it sounds like a rip-off,” she says.

Everybody in line is scowling and muttering curses under their breath, watching their lunch breaks slip away.

Not him, though; he just smiles at them both and thinks about how much he misses his mother.

On Second Thought

Pure Slush Books (Anthology)

7 Deadly Sins / Volume 5 / Wrath (Print & e-pub) February 2019

I had to bite my tongue. I
had to bite my tongue and
count to ten. Slowly. I had to
take a few deep breaths and
count to ten eight times.
It was all I could do. I barely
managed to zip my lip, keep
my cool—
.............—no, wait a minute;
that’s not how it happened.
I had no real cool to keep;
I guess I let my unzipped lip
remain unzipped; I guess
I bit my tongue to no avail,
bit my tongue and squeezed
the trigger, counting the rounds
and the bodies as they fell. 

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.