“Can you identify the man
“Who robbed you with a gun?”
Asked the policeman tending to
The violated one.
“He wore a mask and purple hoodie
“And walked a funny way,”
Said the victim, mimicking
The unusual sashay.
A line-up then was organized
With hoodied lookalikes,
Six masked clones all covered up—
The victim just said, “Yikes!
“But I’d recognize him anywhere
“If I could see that gait.
So they marched them out and in again,
And the victim blurted, “Wait!
“That’s the Robbin’ Hoodie there!
“That walk he cannot hide.”
Now the perp has lots of time
To reinvent his stride.
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Jim confesses:"This poem was inspired by watching the news and seeing security footage of criminals. It struck me how difficult it must be to ID people caught on camera when so many are dressed similarly—particularly in this pandemic era with the prevalence of masks."
JIM GEORGE is a writer-artist-songwriter-singer-musician-sound collagist. His fiction, poems and artwork have appeared in The Five-Two, Otoliths, The MOON, Dream Noir, The Sea Letter, The Ear, What Are Birds, Lotus-eater, Pennsylvania Bards Southeast Poetry Review, ANON, Hock Spit Slurp, Queen Mob's Tea House, and others; his nonfiction has been published in Playboy, Cinema Retro, Best Classic Bands, and Guitar World; and his songs have been used in television and film. He has authored two books--Jim Shorts, a collection of stories, poems, and line drawings, and My Mind’s Eyeful, an illustrated children’s book, both available as PDFs. More information at: https://byjimgeorge.wordpress.com/.
My name is Ella Watson; I was hanged
By a group of men who thought they had the right
To take the law into their grasping hands.
They said I rustled cattle but I bought them
In October from a man named Engerman.
I paid good money and I had my brand.
I also bought my moccasins, which fell
When Bothwell, Sun, and others put the rope
Around my neck and left me there to choke.
I was twenty-eight years old the day I died.
They put the story out in all the papers,
They called me rustler, strumpet, virago,
And said I traded favors for slick calves.
To justify the hanging of a woman
They called me Cattle Kate and made me cheap.
My name’s Frank Jameson; my wife and I
Picked up the moccasins that lay two days
Upon the ground beneath the strangled corpse.
We heard the stories of the witnesses,
How Bothwell, Conner, Durbin, Sun, McLean,
And Galbraith took the pair down to the river
And hanged them from a pine tree side by side.
We knew that Bothwell wanted both their homesteads
And filed false claims on other land nearby.
We heard how all four witnesses had vanished,
How all six men walked free without a trial,
And Bothwell ended up with both their claims.
My name is Owen Wister; I have friends,
Wyoming cattlemen, the very best.
I met a man, a friend of theirs, who helped
To lynch the man and woman in July.
I hope they let him off, he seemed a good
And solid citizen; the sheriff said
It’s only the wayward classes that complain.
My name is Ella Watson; I was hanged
By men who said my cattle were not mine.
They wanted all the Sweetwater to themselves,
So they rubbed us out and called me Cattle Kate.
Carmen and Steve Mendelson and John's YouTube video reading of "Emma Watson":
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John confesses:"The hanging of Ella Watson on the Sweetwater River in 1889, like the killing of Nate Champion in 1892, was carried out by powerful cattlemen who accused the victims of rustling and then conducted a smear campaign in the newspapers. The injustice demands to be written about."
JOHN D. NESBITT is the author of many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He writes mostly on subjects of the American West, present and past. His contemporary poem "Prairie Center" won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Poem in 2019. He has won many awards for his short fiction and novels. He lives in Wyoming and has a good horse named Pearl. See his website at www.johndnesbitt.com.
MY EYES ARE BLUE, HIS ARE BROWN, BUT THEY'RE THE SAME
Domestic calls are the worst, especially violent ones.
Maybe because I’d witnessed so many in my own home
when I was too young to do anything but cry with my siblings
and hope our father didn’t pull the trigger
on the gun he held at our mother’s temple,
or glide the blade of a knife across her throat
while straddling her chest, pinning her to the floor.
When the fear in my gut would sour and the bitter bile
of helplessness would coat my tongue.
And even though the walls of the housing projects
we lived in were no more than glorified cardboard,
rarely did neighbors call the law.
And if they did another kind of fear would threaten
to shake the bones of my skeleton loose
as I gazed up at giant men in blue,
wearing badges and guns and grim faces.
And now here I am one of those giants in blue
with a badge on my chest and a gun on my hip
and I’m sure a grim look on my face
as I gaze down at a trembling little boy
with skin the color of whiskey
whose tears glaze shiny streaks down his cheeks
while a sliver of snot sneaks from one nostril.
Our eyes are locked on one another
and even though mine are blue and his are brown
they’re the same
because I know the helplessness and fear and pain.
I reach down and pick up the boy
and feel the quaking of his body
in my arms while my partner
gives me a What the fuck you doing? look
that I ignore and I whisper to the boy,
“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.
Someday it’ll be okay.”
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Terry confesses:" wrote this poem at a time when police are being demonized, assaulted and killed at an alarming rate across this nation. I wrote it to show that beneath the badge and uniform beats the heart of a human being that feels and cares for those they serve. I wrote this poem because I lived it."
TERRY DAWLEY grew up in the housing projects of Erie, Pennsylvania. He served as a police officer and retired after being shot numerous times in the line of duty. His work has been published in Pithead Chapel, Soft Cartel, Heart of Flesh literary journal and numerous others.
AN OPEN LETTER FROM A FUNERAL DIRECTOR TO THE ANTI-VAXXERS
I thank you all! Business is booming,
cases rising like Hurricane Katrina
from so many refusing to wear masks,
claiming they’re immortal, or the virus
is a hoax, so a big shout-out to the crew at FOX,
from Murdoch down to good ole Tuck.
Don’t go blaming me: I haven’t
infected anyone, just taken advantage
of imbeciles who had no problem
taking the flu seriously enough
to get vaccinated, but Covid?
If their god, Donald, tells them
it’s nothing to worry about,
they’ll believe any crap
that flim-flam artist shovels at them.
When I was a kid, I loved Bugs Bunny.
“What a maroon!” he’d smirk
after befuddling Elmer Fudd.
Now, enough maroons get wheeled
in here for me to send our kids
to the most expensive colleges.
And Marie can go on the shopping spree
of a lifetime: but online, no way I’ll let her
into a brick and mortar Nieman-Marcus.
Fools believe it’s safe to mingle; I know better.
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Bob confesses:"It struck me that mortuaries must be making out like bandits, during the pandemic. So this poem was my paean to human idiocy and fecklessness. If you don't believe in Covid, Covid believes in you. And if you think the government shouldn't tell you what to do, sometimes the government, like Mom, knows best."
ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Aldrich Press). Forthcoming from Apprentice House is Go Play Outside, which chronicles Cooperman's lifelong one-way love affair with basketball. Also just available is the chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells from Finishing Line Press.
Go for a #10 business size
and roll your pen from jaw to fluke.
I think a humpback is easy to draw
with the spine along the fold
but you could choose the Killer.
To say this oil spill is a killer
is apt though BP likes to downsize
catastrophe—make six or seven folds
on warnings and shove them in a pocket. A fluke
is a barb, a harpoon that will draw
blood, a different kind of spill. Draw
the dorsal fin of the killer
whale before you do the fluke.
It’s a sharper angle of size
on the envelope flap you unfold.
Cut a blowhole in the fold
of a #10 on the crease. Now draw
the mouth that seems to smile. A ten size
death is decimate—gulf bleeds to sea—a killer
reduction. An oil spill is not a fluke
in a business without precautions. A fluke
slapped on the sea can be S.O.S. As waves fold
dispersants into gasoline, and petroleum in pelican eggs, the killer
changes form. Bluefin in cardiac arrest. Now draw
the blind eye. We were too in love with tank size,
reads our epitaph. Evolution makes a killer fold: shrimp without eyes.
I can’t draw a breath in the size of all our dying. Survival is a fluke.
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Amy confesses:"The title of my poem was an unclaimed article title from a writing site — essentially, questions typed into search engines. The odd title would lead well to a poem. Since I like whales and care about the oceans, and at the time I started this the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had just happened, I decided to try making an envelope whale, and writing a sestina. I could play with “killer” and “fluke” and “breath” really easily. The paper whale was a success—a photo appears on my website—but the poem was not. I set it aside for about ten years, and recently looked at it. If I reduced it by one of the words/stanzas, taking it from a sestina to a quintina, and added a few marine life deformities caused by the oil spill, then I could arrive at my poem."
AMY HOLMAN is a poet, literary consultant, and artist staying put in Brooklyn, New York. Her poems have recently appeared in Gargoyle, Blueline, BigCityLit, Live Nude Poems, and Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, the 2019 anthology from great weather for MEDIA. She is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, published in 2010 with Somondoco Press, and four chapbooks. She teaches workshops occasionally through The Hudson Valley Writers Center, and was an instructor for Environmental Creative Writing at the Tarrytown Arts Camp in July.
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Bruce confesses:"This poem began with having watched some Bogart film, years ago, something about "Fleming," and, more recently, winnowing through old papers, trying to shred whatever I could, came upon something that was almost a poem and felt as though it could be turned into one. Sort of a cold case. It's not always clear whodunnit."
Recent work by BRUCE ROBINSON appears or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, Maintenant, Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Evening Street Review, and Seventh Quarry. He last appeared in The Five-Two at the tail end of 2019.
As a child the teeter-totter taught me
that people are not to be trusted / and I
still count my change / I still lock my car /
I double-check the meter reading
when my electric bill arrives / and
the mileage on my wife's odometer /
there was a day on a riverboat in the
Amazon basin when I'm pretty sure a
Dutchman at the poker table slid one of
my chips away while I turned my head
to sneeze and it ruined our vacation /
the contractor we hired to build our house
used some mismatched brick but convinced
the duplicitous court the result was beautiful /
and my wife swears she never told the guy who
organizes our golf league about my problem
in the bedroom but he's taken to looking at me
with a faint smile / God knows I never planned
to set him right but there are some things a man
should not be expected to tolerate / so it's not
really my fault he allowed himself to be lifted
into the air on the big kid's teeter-totter when I
decided to slip off / and let that be a lesson to him /
if he survives.
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Tom confesses:"The Tetter-totter has been in the back of my mind since I was a young boy on a playground that was grade-school hell. I've never forgiven my classmates for the torments that were meted out on the monkey bars, the swing sets and, most wickedly, the see-saw, where innocents like me could be abandoned in mid-air. This here is payback, you bastards."
TOM BARLOW is an Ohio writer. Other works of his may be found in anthologies including Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and periodicals including Pulp Modern, Heater, Plots With Guns, Mystery Weekly, Needle, Thuglit, Mystery Tribune, Switchblade, and Tough. His noir crime short story collection Odds of Survival is available on Amazon.
A man-eating stegosaurus?
“Pull the other leg,” I hear you say,
“There were no men on Earth
in the Late Jurassic. What's more,
the stegosaurus was a herbivore
so, it’s fake news.”
Not so! It’s a 21st century classic.
And who said anything
about the Late Jurassic?
It’s funny too that you
should mention legs.
In May this year, a middle-aged man
was found dead inside the hind leg
of a statue of a stegosaurus
in Santa Coloma de Gramenet,
a satellite town of Barcelona.
A mafia killing? A creative variation
on cementing the victim
into the foundations of a building?
But no – it seems the man
was photographing the inside
of the dinosaur’s mouth
when his phone slipped
down the statue’s throat,
and then down the back leg.
Attempting to retrieve the phone,
he climbed into the beast
through a small door in its belly.
Trapped headfirst down the leg,
he couldn’t wriggle out,
and unable to punch a hole
in the metal, he suffocated.
He’d been missing for two days
before his family decided
to call the police.
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Tony confesses:"The report of this incident in the Spanish press struck me as epitomizing the kind of tragicomic deaths that occur from people’s obsession with using their cell phones to photograph anything and everything, particularly themselves. This has led to an increasing number of so-called “selficides”."
TONY DAWSON has lived in Seville since 1989 having had a career in higher education both in the UK and Spain. Some published poems in English include "Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle" in Critical Survey, "Embers" by Shoestring Press, "Chance Encounter" online at the londongrip.co.uk, several poems online in the Syndic Literary Journal. "Bitte Experience" is due out in summer 2021 in Chiron Review and "Sex Drive" and "An App for Ancient Swingers" in the November edition of Home Planet News. He has also published a number of poems online in Spanish.
I always liked the Joe Mantegna character in Levinson’s Liberty Heights.
That’s exactly how my dad was, a family man.
Only, he didn’t go quietly to federal prison, like in the movie,
but jumped the $80,000 bail, fled to Montreal,
then lived his life out in Tel Aviv.
For years the FBI never had a clue
what became of “The Lord,” as my dad was called,
a slick dresser in his tailor-made suits:
Julius Salsbury cut a real aristocratic figure.
Dad even insisted I wear dresses to school, a little lady.
He ran his gambling operation out of the Oasis Cabaret
on The Block, Baltimore’s red-light district,
even though we lived near the Pimlico racetrack.
Daddy loved the horse races!
The FBI was always locking him up.
I remember visiting him at the Jessup prison
when I was just a child.
But fifteen years behind bars? No way.
He left Baltimore hidden in a horse van,
that August night in 1970,
buried under a pile of hay!
The feds never knew where he went,
figured he might have fled to Cuba.
I visited him every year in Israel,
always looking over my shoulder,
until he died from bone cancer in 1994.
Mom died a only couple of days later,
both our hearts broken.
Clarinda Harriss's YouTube video reading of "A Daughter Remembers Her Father":
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Charles confesses:"Recently, fifty years after her father absconded to Israel in 1970, facing fifteen years in a federal penitentiary, his daughter, Rochelle, now just a year or two shy of 70, broke her silence about her father’s flight from the feds and told all to the Baltimore Sun. I hadn’t known Julius Salsbury was the prototype for Nate Kurtzman in Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights when I had an opportunity to be an extra in a Yom Kippur synagogue scene in 1998."
CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.
Abelard was a 40-year-old controversial intellectual. Heloise was his 17-year-old student. When their passionate love for each other was discovered by Heloise's uncle, the two were secretly married. To salvage his reputation, Abelard sent Heloise to the Convent of Saint Mary at Argenteuil. Because her uncle believed Abelard was casting off his niece, he took revenge by having Abelard castrated. The pair's subsequent correspondence attests that, through adversities and tragedy, their devotion to each other never faltered. They are now united in side-by-side graves in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
HELOISE'S EPISTLE
Beloved, heal the wounds
you have inflicted. Remember,
I was the one who refused to lie,
rejected wedlock for freedom.
Destroyed myself at your command,
changed open doors for sealed convent
simply to prove you the sole possessor
of my heart, soul, and will.
You who lavish time
on proud disbelievers,
consider your growing debt
to the neglected faithful.
My broken spirit is a weak plantation
sown with tender, ailing plants
that require nourishing sun,
your careful attention.
Treachery robbed me of myself
in robbing me of you.
I fear nothing more than barren silence,
this claustrophobic sentence I am now serving.
Only letters provide a lingering hint
of your long-absent presence,
vague words that can still caress,
despite the malice of others.
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JENNIFER LAGIER has published nineteen books, in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines, taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, helps coordinate Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Her recent books include: Meditations on Seascapes and Cypress (Blue Light Press) and COVID Dissonance (CyberWit).
It’s the way you staggered
off the esplanade toward the
shoreline, sea spray blurring
the distance between us, how
no one else could see you
teetering in the sand but me.
You could have been any
Silicon Valley prick with a
gold-plated money clip,
key fob jigsawed with luxury
car logos, breath boiling
with twenty-year Scotch.
But you threw a punch as if this could never happen to you,
as if taking a little heat after
last call in some gritty beach town
could only happen to renters,
clock-punchers, 9-5 commuters.
And now the water lifts you, sets
you down again. You drift in the
ebb tide facing a cold cottony sky,
a .38 special mushroomed in your
billion-dollar heart as I burn highway
miles in that new Lotus of yours.
Listen, man.
I told you it wasn’t personal.
I just needed it more than you.
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C.W. confesses:"I live in a tourist town with a seedy underbelly. We get a lot of wealthy Silicon Valley visitors who treat it like their own personal playground. Sometimes they stay too late, get too drunk, and come face to face with locals who aren't too impressed with their status. Things can get ugly, or worse."
C.W. BLACKWELL is an American crime fiction author and poet. His recent poetry has appeared in Close to the Bone's 4.4 Series, Versification, Punk Noir, and Dead Fern Press. His upcoming poetry book, River Street Rhapsody, will appear in April 2022.
Nobody will identify the glitter of the buried axe in the darkness of the split mind. Nobody ever sees it wielded in the sunlight again. Instead the split mind sheathes it completely. Never mind the calluses on the hands of those who swing it. The hostility of
wood in even feminine hands. And when medication makes the split mind lose control of the facial muscles, the family is as far from blaming the sharp blade embedded in the mind as they are from accounting for the disappearance of the calluses on their own hands.
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Richard confesses:"Poe's 'I...buried the axe in her brain' has always made a deep impression on me. I was probably also trying to account for my family's hand in the institutionalization of my uncle from adolescence to his late seventies for schizophrenia."
RICHARD KRAUSE has had two collections of fiction published titled Studies in Insignificance (Livingston Press, 2003) and The Horror of the Ordinary (Unsolicited Press, 2019). A third collection, “Crawl Space" & Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability, will be published by Unsolicited press in 2021. He also has had two collections of epigrams published, Optical Biases (EyeCorner Press in Denmark, 2012) and Eye Exams (Propertius Press, 2019). His prose poems have recently appeared in Poesis, Shot Glass Journal, Menacing Hedge, Poemeleon, and in Triggerfish Critical Review. Krause lived for nine years in Japan and currently lives in Kentucky where he is retired from teaching at a community college.
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David confesses:"This poem is based on a true crime that impacted me not just in the senseless, horror of the murder but the community’s inept social media responses. New York State describes a child under the age of 18 who does not attend school, or behaves in a way that is dangerous or out of control, or often disobeys his or her parents, guardians or other authorities, as a Person In Need of Supervision or ‘PINS’.”"
DAVID CRANMER is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine. His writing has appeared in publications including Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. He's a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found physically in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter, and he can be found virtually on Twitter @BEATtoaPULP.
I HAVE TO WARN YOU
(On the death of Andrew Brown Jr., April 21, 2021)
Just a routine raid in the land of the free
Some sorry joker who sold one too many bags
Or waited a day too long to fix that tail light
Or was just unlucky enough to be driving while black
The network anchor, mindful of our feelings,
Warns the clip they are airing might be disturbing.
But all we see is seven guardians of the law
Protecting themselves against a known bad guy.
And editing thank God has cleaned up the language
So that all we hear besides the patter of bullets
Like the one that spiraled into the back of his head
Is beep and beep and beep as the deal goes down.
So thanks to the sensitive suits at CNN
For considering, as you did, my tender ears.
God knows what lifelong trauma I might have incurred
Had I been forced to endure an uncivil word.
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Tad confesses:"While this poem responds overtly to the “justified” killing of a black man by sheriff’s deputies, it reacts equally to the absurdity (or hypocrisy) of a media protocol that follows the tabloid principle “If it bleeds it leads” while bleeping out epithets every teenager knows. As if the real offense here was not the killing but the chance that snowflake viewers might feel assaulted by language."
TAD TULEJA is a Texas-based folklorist with interests in the Hollywood Western, honor cultures, and the mythology of violence. He has edited books on American vernacular traditions and military culture and has received a Puffin Foundation grant for his song cycle “Skein of Arms.” He performs his songs on YouTube under the name Skip Yarrow.
In Fritz Lang’s M
filmed in Germany in 1931
Peter Lorre plays the child murderer.
One by one, children disappear
off the streets. Who is it, taking
these lives? Finally found out,
chased, trapped in this huge cellar,
cornered, he turns on the crowd,
wild eyed, flailing, and accuses them.
You murdered the children!
It’s in German, so I had only
subtitles, but Lorre, trapped, cornered,
raging, is really good at playing evil.
A versatile, talented actor, he
emigrated from Germany, settled
in Hollywood and played many roles.
His one child, Cathy, in 1977
met up with the Hillside Stranglers,
cousins, Kenneth Bianchi and
Angelo Buono, imprisoned for life
after being convicted of killing numerous
women. They intended to kidnap
and kill her but when they learned she
was Lorre’s daughter, so enamored
were these two monsters of Lorre’s films,
if anyone deserved to be called
monsters, these two..they let her go.
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Pete confesses:"I am somewhat of a Peter Lorre fan, and somewhere in the media I learned that Lorre’s daughter, his only child, was taken by these serial killers, and when they learned who she was, being Lorre fans themselves, they let her go. It’s a bit ironic, to me. Also, in one of Lorre’s best films, M, he played a child killer."
PETER MLADINIC's poems have recently appeared in Neologism, Ariel Chart, Adelaide, Home Planet News, Detour Ahead, 433 and other online journals. He lives, with six dogs, in Hobbs, New Mexico.
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Tony confesses:"I am a born pessimist who likes to make light of it by using humor."
TONY DAWSON has lived in Seville since 1989 having had a career in higher education both in the UK and Spain. Some published poems in English: Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle in Critical Survey, Embers as a chapbook by Shoestring Press and Chance Encounter at the londongrip.co.uk online cultural magazine. He has also published several poems at EspacioUlises.com in Spanish.
We’re two of the lucky ones,
our groceries delivered, though
feelings of guilt it’s so easy,
while so many suffer food insecurity:
a polite way of saying they go hungry,
have to risk their health, their lives,
to shop in supermarkets.
But as I said, we’re among the lucky ones,
the ones with money, with credit cards,
the ones who don’t have to venture out,
like mice fearing the cat’s lurking jaws.
The ones who can order cookies,
pecan tarts, ice cream, not just vegetables,
provisions to make stews that last all week,
who can call up the local pizzeria,
the catering service, and pretend nothing
strange and dreadful has occurred,
that hundreds of thousands haven’t died
from Covid, gasping, alone, terrified.
That others haven’t been shot or choked
by the police in that other pandemic,
because they’re Black which, in America,
seems to be a capital offense.
So yes, we don’t have to worry about
being murdered, about empty bellies,
about not having chocolate chip cookies
for three o’clock snack time.
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Bob confesses:"This poem has been simmering for a while, the recognition that my wife and I are lucky, with enough resources to ride out Covid and with the right skin color to avoid being shot by trigger-happy cops, while others aren't nearly as fortunate."
ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is The Ghosts and Bones of Troy (Aldrich Press). Forthcoming from Apprentice House is Go Play Outside, which chronicles Cooperman's lifelong one-way love affair with basketball. Also just available is the chapbook, All Our Fare-Thee-Wells from Finishing Line Press.
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R.J. confesses:"Faced with death, must we follow the first afterlife specter that seeks us out? When acknowledging the grave, if the initial apparition creates suspicion and repulsion, should one blindly follow without serious consideration of this inescapable decision? The wise might delay, hopeful of an alternative offer into the next step."
RENA J. WORLEY is a Word Artist residing in rural Michigan. She began publishing in the Five-Two on May 27, 2019.
A flashing red message light,
One touch of a finger and a voice,
“Boyo was called and moved on this morning. Obit is a bitch.
More later!”
In the background, the sound of the Pipes Calling!
One touch of a finger, and what was, is no more.
“Skilled, but fallen lawyer, dies at 74.”
Then 24 column inches of newsprint devoted mostly to Boyo’s last
few years in practice – when his work was deemed insubstantial,
and his ticket to ride the Steed of Justice was revoked.
Boyo, with bright ginger hair and beard, laser blue eyes and that
smile, Oh, that smile.
Raised in Acadiana, but more Borstal than Bayou
Big man. Big heart. Big Soul and Big Mission – to give voice to
the voiceless and visibility to the invisible thousands.
A Tilter at Windmills that they said couldn’t be toppled.
3000 dead in India, 200,000 sickened from toxic air – Boyo took
aim and the international company toppled;
98 dead in a San Juan fire – Boyo took aim and another company
toppled. And many more, but The Jealous Mistress is easily distracted and The Steed of Justice grew bored with lesser jousts
and left for headier pastures and more coverage.
Boyo continued on alone, as the most daunting foe appeared.
His last years spent in a motel room on a busy highway, as age and illness stole his armour and lance.
But he waged one more battle, One more tilting at the Windmill of the Great Thief Dementia. And having been called and having moved on he had that one last victory.
So, we other Tilters at Windmills gathered in the late afternoon under the oak tree where Boyo loved to weave his tales of Justice and Right over Might!
We burned fifteen copies of the Obituary and as the ashes rose into the air, we raised our glasses in a toast to Boyo and Windmills and Truth! And the Pipes called on.
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Pamela confesses"“Writers chronicle many types of murder. The obituary of a friend made me realize that one of most heinous is to assassinate the reputation of someone who is no longer able to defend the last vestige of their earthly being. So, this is for you Danny. I’ll be seeing you!”
PAMELA EBEL was born in Northern California and raised by southern women; part of the diaspora created by the Great Depression. She returned to her roots at twenty-one, receiving an M.A. from LSU-Baton Rouge and a J.D. from Loyola New Orleans. Her careers have included lawyer, university professor, associate dean, and now fiction writer. She travels between New Orleans, California, Alabama and the Mississippi Delta sharing tales from the crossroads of America. And like the ancient Greeks and the Irish, as a southern writer she knows you can’t out run your blood.
There you are in a bank lobby with a teller as hostage,
a pillowcase heavy with twenties and a sawed-off
in your right hand, while outside the gathered crowd
shouts to the marksmen to take the shot. You
raise your other hand to your forehead to see if you
can feel the heat of a laser sight and mutter
the same stupid prayer you did in grade school
when the principal chose to believe the kid
who you beat up for her licorice and he swung
his paddle like a Louisville Slugger. Back home,
the old man, working on another quart of Thunderbird,
laughed at your red ass while your mother snuffed
her Lucky Strike out on the back of your hand.
You knew even before taking the career aptitude
test in high school that disappointment would
follow you through life like a hungry dog. There
was another, better world, though, you could sense it in
the perfume of the girl who sat beside you in Civics, she
had Jimmy Choos and a thousand-dollar smile.
But she wanted nothing to do with you. Face it, even
if she had granted you entry to her world, you would
have just stolen the silver and, drunken, punched her
father and been banished in disgrace back here, a better
place for someone like you just as your mother foretold
long ago, even though the bullet is on its way now.
Before it hits, you have an instant in which to dodge,
but all you do is close your eyes and wait for that sweet release.
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Tom confesses:"There was this guy in grade school, let's call him Ezra, and he didn't give a damn for any schoolwork but he did rule the playground and he was a head taller than anyone so we elected him class president. I think I knew even then that this would be the highlight of his life; there were hoodlums all around us and they were just waiting to invite him into the gang. But I knew that comeuppance was a long time away for him, and I would have been glad to walk in his shoes right up to the moment things turned ugly. At least, I thought so back then. Now, not so much."
TOM BARLOW is an Ohio writer whose work has appeared in journals including The Stoneboat Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, Harbinger Asylum, Heron Clan, The Remington Review, Your Daily Poem, and many more. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.
