Today, Aloysius O’Leary picked the wrong pocket. From the tippy-top of the Ferris wheel at the St. Louis World’s Fair, he watched blue-coated coppers weave around fairgoers at the crossroads of Skinker and Ceylon.
With over fifteen-hundred structures and tens of thousands of people, he thought they’d never nab him or his accomplice. No problems all week, but if separated, they’d meet at the Ferris wheel.
Not only could Gertrude pick pockets, but she could steal pearls from a woman’s neck and stickpins from a man’s tie. She was also a wisenheimer, selfish, plain-looking, too tall, but gosh dang-it, he was falling for the dame.
His mishap had occurred on the Pike. The man in a frock coat and silk hat looked like he ate diamonds and shat twenty-four-karat gold-nuggets.…
I lived with a singer once, a number of years ago in that distant valley called youth. She had been the singer for a group called The Savage Blusterbox, and you can get the idea of the sort of music they made from that name. I was the roadie. I had no musical talent. I have no musical talent. Or even much interest. The band’s leader, Jorge, probably thought I took an interest in his music, if not music in general. This was one of many demonstrations of Jorge’s denseness. His stage name was Duneman. He told me it was based on some novel. I don’t know. I’d never heard of the book, and I’m not a big reader. Magazines, a biography now and then. Novels, not really.…
It was the morning glory wreathed around the jersey’s horns that turned you into a vegetarian. The beast stood there in the green pasture like some bovine Ophelia, brown, beautiful and tragic, trailing white flowers, green hearts. How could I ever eat you? you murmured and made a pact with the future never to do so.
I, with my eyes on the traffic lights, missed the scene and the promise, being concerned with the more immediate future by depressing the throttle and heading down the road.
In any case, my convolvulus was not morning glory, but bindweed, not beautiful, being a depressing throttle of a vine itself: smothering, persisting, insisting on its own survival at the expense of everything else. Rather like ourselves, I guess. Which is why I hated it so much, battled with it with a fury, pointlessly ripping its hateful fecundity from the currant bushes, scrabbling, tearing the fleshy spaghetti of its white roots from the reluctant soil only pausing from time to time to dream of sirloin.…
It’s not often that a writer is equally adept at poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and literary criticism, yet Lee Upton has been an exception to the rule for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, her latest novel—Wrongful—only cements that fact, as it’s a thoroughly stirring and imaginative but realistic mystery/character study (in the self-aware vein of Agatha Christie) that exemplifies her many talents.
Per the official synopsis:
When the famous novelist Mira Wallacz goes missing at the festival devoted to celebrating her work, the attendees assume the worst—and some hope for the worst. Ten years after the festival, Geneva Finch, an ideal reader, sets out to discover the truth about what happened to Mira Wallacz. A twisty literary mystery dealing with duplicity, envy, betrayal, and love between an entertainment agent and a self-deprecating former priest, Wrongful explores the many ways we can get everything wrong, time and again, even after we’re certain we discovered the truth.
Peter E. Murphy is the author of a dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and prose including the forthcoming A Tipsy Fairy Tale: A Coming of Age Memoir of Alcohol and Redemption about growing up in Wales and New York City. The founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University based in Atlantic City, he leads writing workshops around the US an in Europe.
I met Peter Murphy at the Murphy Writing Winter Getaway in January 2024. I was lucky enough to be one of thirty-two scholarship recipients for the Getaway’s 30th anniversary and was able to speak with Peter during the photo taken of Peter with the awardees. Fortunately, Mr. Murphy is easygoing and lighthearted and he did not look down his nose when I used the fact that we share the name “Peter” as an introduction.…
Apparently, I was the last person to see David Carver alive. I can’t remember if he froze or starved to death; it’s been too many years.
It would have been late November. We had a storm come in from the south on Thanksgiving, melting most of the early snow into slush and knocking down widow-makers. I took my four-wheeler out, looking for fallen trees blocking paths. I could throw aside any fallen branches I found, but the fallen logs required me to break out my chainsaw.
Past the deer blind, but before the river, a large oak fell onto the trail. My saw is only so long, so cutting where it entered and exited the path took a while. When wrapping the chain from the four-wheeler around the log, I made the mistake of getting on my knees at the wrong spot.…
The plate is what did it. George hated the damn thing ever since him and Hannah got married. She said her aunt told her it was a relic from the Civil War, that her great grandad had it in his pack when he was shot in the nose at Vicksburg. Horseshit. She probably bought it at some flea market and conjured up some make-believe like all them old Kentucky women do. The chipped, porcelain circle – white rim decorated with blue flowers – was a shrine to deception and fabrications. George couldn’t stand it.
Hannah was yelling when he grabbed it. She was starting in on him about drinking when he reached into the cabinet with all the ceramic dishes. He flung that damn plate through the dining room window.…
