The Picker – John Himmelheber
Tuesday, December 27, 2011 9:37 — 1 Comment
After both are done with work and school, the father meets his son at the club’s driving range, and says to his son: The man in the picker is your target, my boy. Hit him as hard as you can. We haven’t much daylight left. But Father, he moves in slow flowing motions over the berms and around the sand bunkers. I like the way the picker dances, and its disks pluck the balls and comb the grass smooth. I don’t want to hurt the man inside or interrupt the dance. That is nonsense, my boy. He no more dances […]
Want, Have, Need – Eileen Bordy
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 14:21 — 0 Comments
Sarah’s old Toyota labored up the steep highway. Every ten miles or so, she had to pull onto a dusty shoulder to let faster cars pass. Her father had offered to buy her a new car, but this fifteen-year-old, 4-cylinder Corolla was fitting for a grad student, although she was cursing it now as she slid around on the moist vinyl seat waiting for the pickup pulling a horse trailer to go around her. Two meaty horse’s hindquarters were visible above the Dutch door of the trailer, and their feathery tails waved at her mockingly. The air was a bit […]
White Cap – Ric Hoeben
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 13:55 — 2 Comments
Grandma Dorris sat there human with some amount of stillness and the frail. Her summer hat was a delicate lavender, her bathing suit navy. She stared out, deep—past her little grandson on the beach—looking over all the merging foam of the restless ocean, and from time to time, she’d pull her neck back in pain toward the beach house behind and hope to come upon her daughter, bouncing down the sandbank with maybe one more cold mimosa for her. “I want my ‘puter, Mima.†Dorris looked at the screaming child down there in the sand. His blonde hair had become […]
The Alabama Shakes
Friday, December 9, 2011 12:36 — 2 Comments
By now, even subgenres of music have subgenres. The disappearance of a mainstream relevant to many listeners’ tastes necessitates this, I suppose, but who can keep track? So it comes as a relief when someone can say something simple about the music they make: “People misunderstand the word ‘Soul’ and think it’s just a genre of music, but it’s a feeling. When you pour every ounce of feeling into your music, that’s soul music.” That’s drummer Steve Johnson of the Alabama Shakes getting to the point. One could attempt to categorize this band in wordier, pseudo-ethnomusicological terms, but it would […]
My Aunt Yola – Brandon A.M.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011 13:17 — 0 Comments
Aunt Yola let her white neglige slip to the floor. Steve and I had never seen a woman nude before. She was a big lady, a huge, fat cow of a woman, and Uncle Bob had been asleep for hours at that point. And she motioned for us to follow her, but I didn’t know what to do. Steve moved forward. Aunt Yola placed a stale donut in a napkin and left it on the TV tray. She said that it was for me, and it was okay to be scared because the brave were ignorant. She took Steve into […]
And Still I Did Have No Umbrella – Rebecca Bridge
Monday, December 5, 2011 13:12 — 1 Comment
I showed Billy this little thing and I did know
History of Paranoia – Jason Whitmarsh
Thursday, December 1, 2011 13:57 — 1 Comment
The self-administered questionnaire meant to identify Martians produces frequent false positives: the English, rural Canadians, anyone raised without a television. Talking horses. False negatives could be happening just as frequently, it’s hard to know. There’s no other way of identifying the Martians, it’s only this take-home exam with the stamped pre-addressed envelope. Most everyone could be a false negative, and eyeing us, and reading our minds, and nightly detentacling. As with other tests designed by this service, and fairy tales, and much of adult life in general, there have been no true positives.
Cold Cheesecake – Dan Pfaff
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 13:02 — 2 Comments
I say to my wife I want to buy a motorcycle because it makes me feel better knowing I have one. Five years ago I sold mine to a teenager who handed me over three thousand dollars for it. I told myself it was the responsible thing to do. “We’ve been over this. Even if we could afford it, you’d run into a tree and leave me alone to raise the kids. You’re not twenty-five anymore. And even when you were twenty-five you weren’t capable enough to do the things you did then. You were lucky,†she says. “You’d be […]
The answer isn't poetry, but rather language
- Richard Kenney
Book Release and Reading Feb. 6
January 6th, 2016
Hello fellow readers, travelers and Monarchians! Our first book, Traveling Light, written by Seattle author, Jim Brantingham, is now for sale! And we will be throwing a release party for it Feb. 6 at 6pm in Ravenna Third Place Books (on the corner of 65th and 20th NE). Jim will be reading from the book and there will be guest readers accompanying him. Space is limited, so we suggest you come early. Books can be bought through this link here or at Ravenna Third Place Books (which just ordered it’s second wave of books). We are super excited for this release and […]
