Catching the tall cylinders of wood on the
back of the chair, a skein of thin wool was
held in place so I could wind it into a ball
suitable for knitting a sweater, or socks,
hat, or mittens. Why didn’t any stores
have knitting-ready spheres rather than
coils of yarn? What if my chair’s back
didn’t have tall projections above the seat?
Round and round the fibers changed from
long strands to what resembled a child’s
plaything. Ready. I can begin. Begin.
This long-sentenced piece is what
pleases a literary editor who sees words
in run-on, and it’s designed to extend
as a skein. For me? I usually write
with a period placed
after a short line
as if I were
typing
dot.com.
– Lois Greene Stone
Note: This piece was originally published in June 2016 by The Lake and reprinted in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Scarlet Leaf Review.…
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She wasn’t afraid of the painting, at least not in the visceral heart-pounding way in which she feared the lurking darkness in her closet at night or the alien scuttle of centipedes. Rather, the discord between the painted hands and the rest of the figure haunted her, an unphysical conjunction that she felt rather than understood. Fear would have driven her away; she was not a brave girl. Instead, the unpleasant power the painting had over Helen drew her to it repeatedly. To her family, this was a relief, as they would not have understood her fear. Infatuation they could expect; the painting was the lens through which the family saw their history, the assembly of wood, paint, canvas, and varnish as much a family member as the person it depicted.…
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My grandfather died by suicide in 1966. Fifty-two years later, I met him for the first time.
Until then, I had pieced him together with bits of information collected here and there over time, discussed in hushed tones and select company. Until then, he’d been three things: angry, intoxicated, suicidal. After all, that’s what took his life.
After I finished my basement, my father brought over a box of my grandfather’s war memorabilia, in case I wanted to display some alongside my own items.
An embroidered shoulder patch read, “U.S. Air Force.” My grandfather was a mechanic, crawling into the belly of planes, making emergency repairs in a cramped darkness. He didn’t just know B-17’s and B-25’s. He flew in them – 103 combat missions.
There was an eyepiece he peered through to confirm bomber hits as a gunner in the Pacific during World War II.…
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Grammatically speaking, love is complex and must be handled carefully. As a verb, love can be used in both the active and passive voice, but I most often use it in the active voice, especially if a man’s name is the subject of the sentence, as in John loves me. In this sentence, John is doing the loving and “me” is the recipient of the love–a comforting notion when I’m feeling lonely. Love is also best used in the present tense because if I use the past tense, as in John (or Chris or Mike) loved me, this reminds me that the man in question no longer cares about me, leading to anger and disappointment. If I do speak of a man’s love for me in the past, I usually use the passive voice so that I can easily omit the agent, as in I was loved.…
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He started baling hay at 5:00 that morning, then he and his boys branded cows at 8:00, breakfast missed, again. He’d heft the heifers and throw them down, while a son hit the cow with the hot iron, The Bar Double B, the hair sizzling, smelling like what his Sunday school teacher must have meant by fires of hell, “mephitis” she called it, in her prim voice, all nose and lavender perfume.
After tending the herd, the latter part of the day was spent stringing barbed wire between the post oaks. No lunch, again. Only one torn thumbnail on his left hand; only one burn on his right palm. Not bad for a day’s work. But the sons were off to the city for “real work,” they said, in a bank or insurance job. …
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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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