Read Em and Weep--But Don't Use Them as a Tissue
Here are the serviette texts.
(Try saying that three times fast.)
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She Gave
By Tobias Wolff
She gave. He
took. He forgot.
Tobias Wolff
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Kafka Is Missing
By William Haywood Henderson
Kafka is missing. Lent and never
returned? The final place to search:
the glass-front book case atop my
grandmother’s secretary desk. He’s
not in there with Dickens. Not with
the Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Not
with Imaginative Qualities of Actual
Things. But here’s a silverfish. Is it
the one that chewed my Camps in the
Rockies? I look behind
Dante. No Kafka.
No bug.
William Haywood Henderson
(other side)
I now have my grandmother's desk. The writing surface is scratched--each day she sat at the desk, though I don't know what she did there, and her watch left marks. One of her books in the glas-front bookcase was Studies in Creative Writing. She never mentioned any ambitions.
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LightHouse
303-297-1185
By Alexandre Philippe
Can’t write? Call Lighthouse
Award-winning writer?
Call them anyway
7:00 PM – Introduce myself to Mr. Wolff
Reminder: Tell Lighthouse not to mention I never read his work
Who’s afraid of Tobias Wolff anyway?
Two Biased Wolves -- NOGA: What if wolves
could speak?
LAMF!
I should really be writing
MAYBE BLUE WILL HELP
Blue doesn’t help
THERE’S NO SUCH
THING AS
WRITER’S BLOCK
I’m AOP, and this is my napkin
I am writing very slowly
to avoid puncturing
this napkin - -
So far, so good
Int. Tamayo – Night
MunchMunchMunch
BlaBlaBla
Fade Out.
303-297-1185
Lighthouse
W R I T E R S W O R K S H O P !
E O N H V E T E M A E A U H
D E E A A I T B U S
E N L R T A A S H
I L V T T B A P
N Y I E O S G U
G N D U E P
G I S P
L I
L E
E S
we rode in the evening
NO SUCH THING
Note to Self:
Rewrite climax of
‘Shane of the Dead’-
add cavalcade of
zombie horses I kill
Shane (gruesome death
scene) I turn him
into zombie I ‘Shane,
Don’t Come Back!’
__________________
Deconstruct 3:10
To Yuma
I’ll just write tomorrow
NO SUCH THING
Alexandre O. Philippe
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Shut Up
By Nick Arvin
Shut up.
What?
Behind us. Don’t look.
Who?
Joe and friends.
I hate Joe.
Joe hates u.
Joe = the worst.
He has a voice like Elmer Fudd.
Did you hear that?
I can’t believe Joe said that.
Joe hates Bob!
OMG!
But it’s true what he said Bob is a
terrible human being.
Really?
Maybe Joe isn’t so bad.
U think?
The enemy of my enemy!
I’m not sure Bob is so bad myself.
How can you write that? Bob =
inhuman monster!
I once saw him help a baby bird back
to its nest.
He did that so it could grow up and
he could shoot it!
Can you love me if I don’t hate
Bob?
Yes.
R u sure? Is that true? U don’t
look sure.
Listen!
OMG.
My life is over!
How does Joe know?? You told
Joe?
No.
How does Joe know?
I told Bob.
You hate Bob!
Bob isn’t all bad.
Joe hates Bob!
Hate is such a strong word.
Joe just told everyone.
Joe = worst person who ever
lived.
U do love me.
Yes. Yes I do.
Nick Arvin
9-15-2007
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About the job: a disinterview
By Chris Ransick
Kind Sir:
Thanks for your time. Really impressed by the building,
that soft black glass sagging in sorry June sun,
tongued by hot wind from the highway.
Good thing you didn’t hire me.
I’d have made you miserable eventually.
This was covered, I think, in the interview.
Inhaling for so long the cool,
intoxicant breath of air conditioners
has left you doped to comfortable. Beware.
Your shoes could some day catch fire,
leather immolating on the big lot’s pavement
as you stand unlocking your slick grey car.
You might fight the first impulse
to run, the fiber of your trousers lighting up,
your reflection warped by the smoky window
where subordinates watch over lunch
as whoosh
you are lost.
I wish you the best
there in your mauve office,
where you watch cars glint on the ramp
one exit short of Somewhere,
all of them
afraid to go on. I meant
to leave you a card but haven’t got one.
you get my vote, despite the coffee,
for business host of the year.
Get well soon. Sincerely yours.
Chris Ransick
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The Sky Fell Gray
By Ryan Kelly
The sky fell gray with snow. God how he had missed the night of the stuff. It was the first time he had seen snow since the war--two long years ago. Now he was back. Home. At least that is what people told him. “You’re back,” they would say. They, being his friend, his wife, Sammy, his family. “You’re back,” they would say to him over dinners and cocktails, as if he needed reminding. “How does it feel?” “It feels good,” he would reply automatically knowing this was the response they expected, or needed, to hear. But the truth was he didn’t feel back. The truth was he felt absent, isolated and alone. Above all, he felt changed. Irrevocably. Changed. But how? He wondered. How? The question niggled at him, undermining his sense of identity, his sense of self. How is such a small word, he thought, feeling a twinge of pain prick beneath the jagged and purpled scar stretching across his left thigh like a tree root. How did I get like this? The snow slanted silently past the street lamp outside the window, bathing the room in a gray-blue light. He was wondering this when the phone rang.
Ryan Kelly
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Brotherhood
By Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
The razor was too dull to cut, so I scratched a fingernail on the back of my left hand, hoping my big brother would see. He yanked me off the front porch anyway and into the kitchen where he and his friends had found a better way to scar--a curtain pin heated orange on the gas range, and pressed hard onto the tender fold between the thumb and forefinger into the shape of a cross, the symbol of belonging he’d seen on brown chicano fists. He held my arm stiff against the formica counter while I closed my eyes and still saw blue flame. A vodka shot. A cold water blast. Side by side we watched our crucifixes swell with blood. Afterward, we raided vegetable gardens, set pampas plumes alight and busted phone booths until glass dripped from our denim jackets like rain. I picked the scab to keep the scar alive, but my cross faded first, swallowed by pale skin.
Harrison Candaleria Fletcher
9/15/07
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Flag Day
By Michael J. Henry
Flag day means I got a wife
and she’s got a flag vest
and a flag kerchief
and flag Bermuda shorts
and a flag bra & panty set
and a flag like those ones that fly over Perkins.
Stripes are slimming, she says
and I love stars in a deep dark blue sky
she says.
She’s got an awesomely huge & cumbersome
Uncle Sam hat,
she’s got star-shaped sunglasses
striped red & white, and when drunk
she sings “America the Beautiful” like Ethel
Merman, but she doesn’t sound like Ethel Merman.
She’s got a flag piggy bank
from childhood—shake it & you
will hear the tinkling of a few
lost coins. Her favorite
movie is Patton; she adores Evil Knievel.
Our rebellious son has a poster
of Lenin on the wall in his room.
Michael J. Henry
9-15-2007
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Now I Think I Know
By Shari Caudron
My uncle pointed to the white cardboard box sitting next to his desk. "This is something you might be interested in,” he said.
I opened the box.
On top of a stack of yellowing newspapers sat a journal. The first gray page listed stories written in 1920. He—the journal's owner—wrote nine stories in January, six in February, eleven in March. All were rejected an average of four times before eventually being published in Boy’s Life or The Christian Union Herald or, more rarely, The Saturday Evening Post.
I looked at the word count and payments received and did the math.
For every five words of fiction or non-fiction he wrote that year, the writer earned about a penny. Five dollars for 2,500 words.
The writer was my great grandfather.
For the last 20 years, I've also been writing, submitting stories and dealing with rejection that never gets easier. And there have been times—too many—when I've barely made a cent per sentence.
I've often wondered why I'm compelled to do this work.
Now, I think I know.
Shari Candron
September 2007
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I Saw This Owl Once
By Ryan Kelly
Prince:
I saw this owl once. It was at a petting farm south of Ft. Lauderdale. It was one of those places that rescues wild animals, crippled and abused. They had everything there--dogs with no legs, monkeys scalded by hot water, hawks with no beaks. They even had a mountain lion that was fed popcorn and water 'til it nearly died. Everything was on a leash, wild things are better kept that way. But the thing I remember most was this owl. A moon-faced thing that was missing the back half of its body. It got hit by a car and some poor sucker brought it to the vet, who in a fit of ill-placed compassion, stitched it back together and revived it. It just sat there on its leash looking dazed. Every once in a while it would flap what was left of its wings, jagged and torn, and hop around, trying to fly. The funny thing was that it never figured out why it couldn’t fly. And you know what?
Byron:
What?
Prince:
I look at you and see the same thing.
Byron:
Winning is so much sweeter when you’re underestimated.
Ryan Kelly
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