Jack O'Brien

“A Rusted Root” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #218

I stumbled. “Clumsy me,” I muttered. My foot was snagged and twisted by a root in the ground; a firm, unyielding obstacle sending my eager, boy-self careening face down, felled like a tree into the fecund earth. I lay in the autumn leaves, the groundcover about me crunching noisily and lying listlessly about, like toast crumbs around a breakfast plate. A bit of dirt marked my cheek as I turned my face away, glancing around nervously for any sign of bugs, because I had a deep dislike of bugs, even if captured in a jar.  The leaf-crumbs ...

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“Lucky Man” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #161

A little over a year ago I stood on a small knoll in the veteran’s cemetery in Boscawen, N.H. to deliver a eulogy for my father. He’d trekked thousands of miles on his bicycle but was done in by a simple fall in the kitchen when he struck his head on the marble counter. It is complex, the tenuous relationship that exists between fathers and sons, one contingent upon a son’s quest for approval from the father, for the father, a mental calculation of merit, and worthiness of a son. The depth of a father’s love is conditional. A mother’s love h...

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“When Joey Fell” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #140

When Joey fell there were no headlines. The story exists as family history, shared in quiet conversation over several generations. The bones of the story are these. There was an accident. A boy died. During the early years of the Great Depression, John C. and his young wife, Ida Mae, struggled to make ends meet in western Pennsylvania. John sold appliances. Money was scarce for families to buy consumer goods. Many had lost jobs. In the small rural communities around Pittsburgh, livelihoods were connected to the major local industries of co...

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“Boy in the Mirror” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #101

Brad McConnell studied the features of the ten-year old face which peered back at him in the mirror: the tousled brown hair, hazel eyes with bright green flecks like a cat’s, thick wiry eyebrows, wide nose and thin lips. He had the pale, smooth skin of a boy well short of the onset of puberty, his rounded cheeks lacking the angularity which would mark the face of the man he might become. What would he look like as a man in ten, twenty years? Would he resemble his father? He looked past his own image in his mother’s large dressing mirror to t...

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“Resurrection” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #86

“The joys of parents are secret; so are their griefs and fears.”   Francis Bacon            In early June of 1956, when he was 24 years old, my father was electrocuted. As a lineman for the Western Pennsylvania Power Company, he was installing electricity to a new retail grocery store. The fingers of his right hand brushed against a high voltage line which was supposed to be dead. Fourteen hundred volts coursed through his body in an instant and the shock of electrical cu...

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“The Merrow: An Irish Fable” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #83

Liam looked out over the calm sea and prepared his nets for the day ahead; the skies looked promising except for some gray, low hanging clouds far out to sea. “Aye, let this be a good day,” he muttered, “My press is as empty as a scoundrel’s heart.” “Mother,” he looked skyward “could ye see fit to bring me a wee bit of good luck today?” He often spoke thus to his beloved mother who had sung to him as a boy and told wonderful stories of Irish folklore. He was particularly fond of those tales which spoke of the merrow and morgens, enchanted ...

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“George's Place” by Jack O'Brien

 George’s Place “Well, the wind blew, the shit flew, and in walked Cowboy Bob.” Big John let out a small belch and turned back to the bar, looking down at his beer, which has sat untouched for the past fifteen minutes. “Hell’s bells, John. Good to see you, too.” Bob pulled up a barstool, shiny silvery metal with a plastic seat. It scraped with a loud metallic squeal across the concrete floor. The stool creaked under Bob’s considerable weight as he sat down. He hooked the heels of his Tony Lama boots, lizard, gray and badly scuffed, ov...

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“In the Maw of the Ungulates” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #49

           “It is the curse of our life and times that we find ourselves living in the maw of the ungulates.”            “How’s that? Who’s ma?”            “Not ma, my semi-learned friend, not the matriarchal source of your esteemed lineage; rather maw, the interior of your closed mouth, the cud upon which the hooved ungulate spends its days endlessly chewing and chewing.”  ...

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“My Heroes Have Always Been Writers” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #46

The first pages of a writer aren’t written, they’re read. Good writers are good readers. We learn the craft and beauty of the written word by being spirited away in our imagination by storytellers and troubadours. They lie to us and beguile us, enchant us with the rhythm and cadence of phrasing and seduce us with the crisp crackle or mellifluous melt of words in our mouth or soft, dulcet, alliterative tones in our ear. Good writers are magicians who surprise us, acrobats who astound us, monsters who keep us awake at night, bullies who make u...

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“The Merrow / An Irish Fable” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #42

Liam looked out over the calm sea and prepared his nets for the day ahead; the skies looked promising except for some gray, low hanging clouds far out to sea. “Aye, let this be a good day,” he muttered, “My press is as empty as a scoundrel’s heart.” “Mother,” he looked skyward “could ye see fit to bring me a wee bit of good luck today?” He often spoke thus to his beloved mother who had sung to him as a boy and told wonderful stories of Irish folklore. He was particularly fond of those tales which spoke of the merrow and morgens, enchanted m...

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“Stu the Stealthy” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #38

Stu the Stealthy Myron Rosenbaum had always wanted a dog, while his wife Rachel eschewed all pets as a matter of hygiene. “Cats are clean, sure,” she said. “But the smell of the litter box, Ugh. Makes me want to gag! Dogs can be such a nuisance. They want out. They want in. They want out. They want in. Always licking their privates. My God, Myron. And, do not get me started on birds or rodents. If I wanted to sleep with animals, I’d move into the forest.” However, a recent string of robberies in town tilted the scales in Myron’s favor. “A d...

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“Man in a Brown Tweed Cap” by Jack O'Brien

Submitted to Contest #37

Man in a Brown Tweed Cap “Hey, careful there!” I said sharply. I directed my outburst at him, although it was me doing the stumbling. I was carrying several packages from shopping and didn’t see him there, all bent over. Could’ve been tying his shoe, I didn’t notice. He stood up. That’s when I saw him the first time. Honestly, I didn’t see him, just the hat. It was a worn, brown tweed cap like the kind news boys used to wear in old movies. Something flashed on it in the sunshine, a pin or something. He nodded and backed out of my way. Didn...

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