My short story will be published - Visit by the Demings / Poem: Defiant Lover

I was practicing how I would feel if my short story were rejected from an online magazine. I'd say to the guy, Thanks anyway, but I would feel really terrible. That's why I stopped trying to publish my work.... too many rejections. Of course, that doesn't mean you're a bad writer or that your story is no good...it just means you haven't found 'the right fit' for your work.

I'd written a story a couple years ago that I really liked. Then a friend of mine, Phil Nerges of Toms River, NJ, sent some friends a link of a place where he'd just been published. I immediately wrote him back congratulating him and telling him I didn't have the guts to send my work anywhere.

Then I went upstairs to find the last short story I wrote. I entered the title "A Woman of Stature" into my own 'search engine' and NOTHING came up.

Well, I tried it again this afternoon, but instead of entering the title, I entered the name of the main character into the search engine: Kip Sugarman.

Sure enough, the entire 12 page story came up, and before I lost my nerve, I mailed it to The Final Draft, the online mag.

Three hours later, they accepted it! The editor, Bob Rothberg, said he wanted a bio, etc., and I wrote him back saying, "I'll get it to you later on tonite after 'Kip Sugarman' goes to work.

The story is loosely based on Scott and a romance he has with a lovely widow. Do not ask me how I thought of that idea. And I'd forgotten the name of the story. The name is A Woman of Substance.

Before Scott left for work I asked him to come over and photograph me for the online mag. Here's the photo, she said shyly.



Look who came to visit this afternoon - Baby Grace. I got out the roly-poly ball for her to play with.


Dan and I watched the baby while Nicole went to the Giant to pick up some soy-based pizza. At 20 weeks old, the baby didn't even know Mama was gone. I told Dan that when he was a little under 2 and I would try to leave home, he would hang onto the bottom of my leg and ride it until I got out the door, you little.....



Les trois....

DEFIANT LOVER

Time for us, Sciatica,

to sit down and have a talk

here, let me push aside the papers and clothes and letters that

line my bed so you can have a seat beside me

is that want you want?

How many ways d o you want to conquer me?

I’ve lost a week of life

Halloween will go on without me

I’ve already ordered my absentee ballot

You’ve proved that pain has many different colors

the agony usually shooting in deep purple like a

missile up my groin

I will not shout rape when I stand on my feet

for your little exercise ends

when I take my seat

I’ve become a watcher in the shadows

people come in

I sit and watch

mumbling out some words in my Dilaudid twilight zone

I like what it does to me when I close my eyes for sleep:

pretty dreams that hearken back to Keats poetry

of nightingales waiting outside for me

beaks open

dunking their wee feet in my birdbath

waiting for me to come outside on the porch

I undermine you, Sciatica, your grip is twice as tight

but friends in other worlds are nibbling me free

and soon I shall walk in glory across my yard

among my trees and grasses

feet pounding the ground.