Freezing Morning Photos - Joe Dautcher's Farm Market - She will Never Walk Again - Cold - 13 Ways of Looking at the Morning Sun - When the Cornbread Fails to Rise - Impossible not to cry - My Drug Paraphernalia - Sorrow in the Morning - Her Son Pietro

 When I saw Matt Fuhrer at the Giant I told him about these shoes I bought at Faherty's in Southampton PA. Told him about the pads Nick F put on to make em fit well.

Custom-made, said Matt.

When I saw Matt at the Giant I raced after him and said, Were your eyelashes frozen like when you lived in Iowa.

I'd wrin an article about him for Patch and that was a quote.

 View of my windowsill this morning.

In the center is a mama stork and baby, given to me when Ralph Nelms was dying of ALS.

 I forced these forsythia from my backyard bush. The blooms fall into the sink looking like yellow stars.

 World map. Blindfold yourself, twirl around, and pick a spot. Then, go there.

 Frozen flower pot from Symphony Manor. It had rolled into the street, so when I left, I took it home, like a stray cat no one wanted.

 HP Laptop, which decides, each and every day, whether to work or not.

 Our writers and poets gave a reading at The Upper Moreland Library on Dec 9, 2018.

Took two hours of concentrated effort to clean out my upstairs office. It used to be my son Dan's bedroom and was painted blue.

Mom arranged for a friend of hers to paint the room yellow. She used to be so active!

To do list for today:

Write short story
Paint
Send Judy Diaz a note before Mailman Dante arrives.

Work on Compass

Am drinking Earl Grey Tea now.

I'm not particularly fond of it are you?

Thother night, I kept writing poetry. YOU, Dear Reader, are the first to read these!

UNCLE JOE DAUTCHER'S FARM MARKET

On my upstairs bulletin board
their business card. Ellen and I
stopped by one hot summer morning.

Hiring? I asked.
Sure, said a portly woman.
Can you cook?

You tell me what to do,
and I'll do it, said I,
mopping my brow.

I wasn't fast enough
and Dautcher's went under
the wrecking ball.

Not another condo
on smothered farm land.
The pumpkins were large
as tiny planets,
the tomatoes cuddly
as baby does,
and the cinnamon buns
were weighed on the scale
and packaged in boxes
white as the winter sky.

Sure, they made a fortune,
and now they have time
for themselves. Sitting now
on the rocking chairs
on the porch, with Uncle Joe
calling, "Babe, how bout
some of them cinnamon buns?"

Just a sec, she says, going
into the house. "Always wanted
to hire this woman."

Is that them calling now?

https://flashfictionmagazine.com/submissions/
1000  words
I'll submit my short story here


SHE WILL NEVER WALK AGAIN

At her retirement home
she's now confined to a wheel chair
what's left of her, anyway,
a marionette without a brain


Might it happen to you or me?
They say life is sacred.
Music will comfort her.
Play the Appassionata Sonata
loud and clear. Her mysterious
plaque-filled brain will shrink
some more until she's as hollow
as a pumpkin shell.


http://lynxhousepress.org/category/blue-lynx-prize/


Ariel Chart, Page & Spine, West Texas Literary Review, Oddball Magazine, The Paragon Journal, The Literary Hatchet, The Stray Branch, Trigger Fish Critical Review, Foliate Oak Review, Better Than Starbucks!, Anapest Journal, Mused, Apricity Magazine, The Write Launch, The Stray Branch, Scryptic Magazine, Ann Arbor Review, The McKinley Review.

The above is how a writer finds places to submit.


COLD

A celebratory air prevailed
on this coldest of nights
so far.
After snuffling down my
Tomaterkraut Soup
I paced the living room
imagining frozen pipes
bursting open
loud as firecrackers

Or my beloved lone maple
weeping and giving up the ghost
on my backyard porch.

The weather doesn't care
Squirrel or hopping toad
or trapped vagrant in the woods
Tumble from the forces
of the unforgiving Almighty.

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE MORNING SUN

Based on the Wallace Stevens poem Thirteen Ways of
Looking at a Blackbird

What's this! My eyes are blinded by the morning glare.
The sun's big as a cheese ball at a New Year's Eve soiree
No one's invited me to.

Visit the man next door who will open with great tenacity
and vigor a glass jar of sauerkraut. The morning glare
is reflected in his hazel eyes and glass door.

Stumble blindly home and give half-assed wave to the
Irishman up the street as he drives by.

Check in dining room mirror to see if I'm changed
in the twinkling of an eye from staring at the sun.

Will I go blind? Or will all go well? I look into Beatriz's
Australian Mate Tea, I've flooded with honey for flavor
and a natural cure for - not pleurisy, nor inflammation
of the bronchial tubes - but a tickle in the back
of my throat.

We cannot throw out the sun but we can water the
philodendron with Austrailian Mate Tea and the
desiccated orchid beside it.

One last look behooves me.
Icarus is falling, falling.
A huge waxen feather has
fallen in my front yard.

The thirteenth way of
looking at a blackbird.

***
WHEN THE CORNBREAD FAILS TO RISE

When I was first married, cooking became my passion.
The Joy of Cooking became my bible. In my stained copy
which resides on a cookbook shelf in the kitchen, you can
see all the things I've made over the years.

Cakes, not so much, but breads of all kind including
Anadama Bread which included Indian Head Cornmeal.

Mastering the art of kneading and proofing and baking
took longer than I thought and my disappointment ran
deep as The Mississippi.

Success finally as sweet as honey.

Whatever was wrong with this second batch of cornbread?
Tasty enough, but flat as The Flat Earth Society.

Took me two days and a dozen units of insulin
pumped into the best place on my body to inject
where it's riding on my bloodstream, red as
the cardinal chirping in my back yard.

IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO CRY

Best to cry while watching sad movies
or televised opera, brought to you by
The Toll Brothers family fortunes.

Hide your eyes when the starving children
with their chicken bone bodies appear
on the Nightly News.

Hide your eyes when the Imposter Presidente
like a cruel Chinese landlord from the Middle Dynasty
holds us all in thrall like dustbin serfs

Hide your eyes in your pillow and sob yourself
to sleep in this world filled with chaos and misery.



MY DRUG PARAPHERNALIA

On this moon-cold night
I tiptoe downstairs
in the dark
to get a refill of
pretzels and peanuts
and view that stunning
corner of my kitchen table

Keep it out of sight
shouted my sister Donna
it's not for public consumption

There it is
keeping me alive
presided over by a doctor
who keeps me alive
insulin
my precious insulin
more precious than
heroin or that new one
fentanyl

Come morning
I will shoot up
yet again
after a hot breakfast
of oatmeal and fruit
and gulps of views
out the window.

Hello again,
Ms. Cardinal
of the duller
fevvvers.



SORROW IN THE MORNING

Leave it to the NY Times
to show photos of The
Eagles of the Desert
paid men, neon green
vests, and water bottles,
who scour the borders
for immigrants who
have disappeared

"The desert is like a lion
stalking the strong and
the weak," remarked an
eagle, before they
found his dead brother.

"My brother disappeared
two months ago, seeking
to join his wife in
San Diego"

Hundreds have been found
in the six years of their
search, the workers
smell them, their decay,
the cries of
Agua Agua scorching
their ears

Cockroaches
roasting in the sun.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/13/us/california-border-deaths.html



HER SON PIETRO

The other five are fine
This one has that famous
condition bipolar disorder
The Famous own it
Virginia Woolf
Kay Redfield Jamison
Walter Cronkite's daughter
Kathy

She moans about her Pietro
His brain detonated before
kindy-garten. What's to be
done, she cries into her
pillow.

Should she pump medication
into his Diet Pepsi?

***
When I worked as a psychotherapist at the now defunct Bristol-Bensalem, my client Sheila had a sister w paranoid schizophrenia. Brilliant, as was the late Sheila. The sister's husband put an antipsychotic medication in her drinks.

Did the sister know? Your thoughts, Reader?

How bout a nice picture for you?



The poet Mary Oliver, who died earlier this month at age 83.

As I've mentioned before, I read some poems on YouTube.

Read em here.