The Bookends Review

A white gull cuts across a snowfield
turns up the coast and is gone
sea and sky cry achromatic blues
neatly punctuated
by a full lunar face at the point of exclamation!

– Edward Sheehy…

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Friday, 3:02 p.m.

To: v3ng3ful@lunat1c.com

Subject: Break-up

Dear Vengeance,

I’ll just say it. I’m breaking up with you. I just don’t think things are working out between us.  Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed leaving burning paper bags full of unspeakable things on old high school enemies’ porches–probably more than I should–but I don’t think your way of dealing with problems is good for me. And so, as part of my mid-June resolution, I’m going to be honest with you and come clean.

I’ve been seeing Compassion behind your back. I just feel like he’s been giving me such a positive outcome! He doesn’t make me give people bottles full of urine with an Apple Juice label. He doesn’t make me insult people to their face just because they sat in my seat–in fact, he makes me compliment their faces.…

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I change planes at DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth). Last time I came to Dallas was that November Friday. Then, it was modest, utilitarian Love Field. Now, DFW is a vacuous tomb, a secular temple to all things modern. Curving hallways shout empty expense – highfalutin hotdoggin’. They drift off, out of sight in both directions, melting away like an unbeliever’s prayer. Texans walk by on indoor/outdoor carpet – red river of contrived warmth cutting gorges through glacial glass and stone. These Texans have a different look about them today than they did back on that day.

Now, cool and confident primary industrialists, purveyors of food and fodder, fuel and fiber, they saunter past. Or clump in small knots of small talk. In one corner of the waiting area, a tall blonde woman with dangling earrings chit-chats with two men.…

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I. Ken

I could never tell old Mrs. Lindstom why I was in such a rush. But then, I was used to that – hiding my urges and desires, covering the excitable boy in me with the respectable exterior of a normal forty-year-old man. She waddled between the dahlias and the roses; I tapped my finger against the “CLOSED” sign on my lap. For ten years she’d been coming in, and not once had she bought a thing. Shouldn’t that be illegal in a capitalist country like this?

Unable to bear it any longer, I placed the sign on the counter where she could see it.

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Are you trying to close?”

“Actually, yeah,” I said. “But there’s no rush.”

“Oh, no, but I should really be off now, anyway.…

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I was leery about teaching Lear
wondering what my students
might understand about dynamics
of family life.  Young faces found
dreams and fairy dust appealing but
“Midsummer Night’s Dream”
seemed silly as a Puck, to them,
is a hockey item.  And Hero
definitely would be “Much Ado
About Nothing” since comedy
has four-letter words spouted by
jeans-clad entertainers.  “Hamlet”
tragedy isn’t as terrible as a broken
cell-phone or wondering where is
a wi-fi hookup.  1603.  Sounds like
a zip code with missing numbers.
“O, blood, blood, blood!”, “Othello”
more suited to students television
preferences.  “To be or not to be”
teaching Shakespeare, “that is
the question.”

– Lois Greene Stone

Note: This piece was originally published by The Lake in May 2016 and reprinted by Scarlet Leaf Review in June 2020.…

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Shane looked down at the familiar pattern of scratches on the floor, a lopsided snowflake etched by years of boot heels and chair legs. As he did every week, he found the sooty remnant of blue electrical tape that he’d always treated as center stage, or as a spot close enough to center that the emcee never corrected his placement.

He pulled the rickety wooden chair half an inch forward and eased into it without moving the guitar. As he fixed its tuning and adjusted his capo over the second fret, he looked at the sparse crowd, scanning the foreheads so as not to distract himself with eye contact.

Shane thought through the short set he was about to play, and about whether his voice felt up to it after a long shift taking drink orders.…

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A crescent moon smiles over Big Piney Ridge
frozen above the black cross-stitching of the forest canopy
chilling anatomy of arteries veins and capillaries
endlessly branching from trunk and stem
with roots groping for my boots
through the crusty snow.

– Edward Sheehy…

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