Creative Writing
Short stories and poems.
The world turned upside down
Evanston RoundTable, Feb. 20, 2024 People didn’t notice at first. The steady tug of gravity has been with us so long — since the beginning
Toots and the Brummie
Evanston RoundTable, Nov. 30, 2023 Note: Some of this story is true, some is made up. See the end for clarification. In the spring of
Toots and the Brummie
Note: The travel part of this story is true. I’m not so sure about the Brummie’s tale. In the spring of 1968, a junior year
Look Up
He walked head down, chin tucked low, eyes riveted to the sidewalk, hardly aware of the people—a clutch of teenage girls, a woman talking on her phone, a stony-faced man dragging a shrieking girl—who were making wide circles around him.
Heartless monster??? It happened almost a year ago. Eleven months to the day. Time enough for…what? … shock and grief, yes, regret and shame, certainly. But not to reconcile, he thought bitterly, no, not that. He pulled the note, already fraying at the folds, from his pocket and examined it again.
We’ve been over this SO many times, I just can’t go over it again, I don’t have the strength. Time to start over. And no, not because of the phone business, whoever it was you were texting, Sophie-Ann Bimbo Slut or someone. I don’t care about that, not anymore. I just care about peace of mind, about sleeping again (though not with me, he thought), about that serenity the shrink says we should struggle to find. But I don’t want to struggle, not anymore. It’s over. I’m done. You say it wasn’t your fault. But whose fault was it? You say you need me more than ever, but then you cheat on me. You say it’s time to forgive. But it’s too late for that. Because here’s the thing: YOU NEVER CRIED, NEVER EVER SHED A FUCKING TEAR, NOT ONE DROP! HEARTLESS MONSTER. What more can I say??? I’m so very tired of being sorry.
Ode to Spring Unexpected
Evanston RoundTable, Feb. 23, 2017
O to feel the sun beam down
And bestow on us its warming rays
When usually we wear a frown
That school is closed for more snow days.
Spring in February, such a gift,
It’s like Christmas in July.
Too bad a few are deeply miffed:
Global warning this implies.
Nonetheless, it’s fine to watch
Folks strolling in their shorts and Ts.
Let’s hoist a beer or maybe scotch
‘Cause it’s 70 when it should be 3!
Wandering
In 1967 and ’68 I boarded with an English family while studying history at University College in London. But mostly I traveled. I started out hiking the city, miles and miles a day, for London, with its crazy-quilt streets and magnificent Victorian neighborhoods, was a walker’s paradise. After I had London mapped out I took the train to Manchester to romance a girl I had met the year before in New Orleans, and when that didn’t work out I widened the circle, first to Paris over a long weekend in the fall, then to Germany, Russia and Poland over the long winter break. Swapping traveling for classes was just fine with me, as long as my draft board and my parents didn’t find out. After all, I figured, there’s no better education than wandering free, meeting people and seeing the world.
In March I caught a cheap flight to Chicago to reconnect with my family and re-enroll at the University of Illinois, then flew back to London, packed a backpack, took a train to the south coast, and crossed the English Channel on a boat from New Haven to Dieppe, a four-hour, 90-mile crossing.
Mexbeth
Tamale and tamale and tamale
Creep through my innards like plaster dust
Greasy fajitas and quesadillas
To the last rutted inch of my shrieking guts;
It surges forward – where? – unto eternity I swear.
Thus forsweareth I from ever eating
More chips and salsa
Mole enchilada
I keep repeating:
It is a menu I know so well – Taqueria Diarrhea
Not The Johnsons
Bennie knocked on Pattie’s door.
No answer.
“Hey, Pattie, you there?”
No answer.
“Come on, I know you’re in there. Your mom said so.”
Silence. He knocked again, louder, three bangs, a little brave and brazen, he knew, but he was a boy on a mission. The door rattled on its hinges.
“Pattie! Talk to me!”
“Yeah, what?”
“I want in. Can I come in? I’ve got the study notes,” he said, patting two folded-up pages stuck in his pocket.
No answer.
“Pattie come on. You know I’ll be nice.”
Second Person
Listen to your heart, it beats in threes.
Fast bifurcated threes with the third beat silent.
Thump, thump, _________.
Thump, thump, _________.
Thump, thump, _________.
The missing beat: what goes there?
Is it the heart poised, in recovery,
collecting itself
for another surge,
a tidal bath of blood?
But that’s too mechanical, too metronomical.