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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020
Submitted to Contest #87
“You ever notice how we got people dressing up all the time for stuff like Christmas, those goofy red hats with a white jingle ball on top. Easter, everyone going out in these bonnets all made up with plastic fruit and flowers, rabbits handing out chocolate covered eggs. Valentines, talking candy boxes, mints with writing on them. Halloween, you choose, can be anyone or anything; they got it all covered. But take something real special, like the Fools Day, and people don’t do a thing. I know it’s one of those days wh...
Submitted to Contest #86
The waning days of winter are in many ways, the most torturous. We remember what is to come, we know what we have endured, and yet we find it difficult to believe that our expectations will once again, validate a new reality. The days grow warmer as the sun shakes off its vail of darkness. The trees begin to lose the naked embarrassment of winter, tempered only by the conspiracy of new light that accompanies it. The branches suddenly erupt with a tinged green glow that has seeped through the bark and lies proudly exposed after...
An exert from (UP, UP, and Away) We are called, “The Red Woods.” I can only assume because of the color of our spirits, although I’m not convinced that the veins that have supported me for nearly a thousand years, would consider my girth, red. The description lacks a certain panache. I prefer to think of myself as the confluence of a time and place, that exhibits itself in a curtain of auburn sky that forms just over the rise, as the sun kisses the pale sky, causing it to blush for just an instant, before it disappear...
“Where is everybody?” “What do you mean?” “You are here, sitting in this booth, I can only assume there is a reason. The sign on the road says the Spring Fling was to take place here. The here, being designated by an arrow pointing in this direction. Did I miss something? Wrong day, time, city? “ “No, this is the right place. What were you expecting?” “I guess I was expecting there to be people, cars, noise, music, even clowns as they seem to be everywhere these days. But look, nothing, nada, grass, and an empty...
Daffodils blooming, and in the most unexpected places. Not being indigenous to the coastal region I find anything that offers a glimpse of life before April, suspicious. I begin to look for the source of the deviance, usually a nuclear power facility that has gone awry, or a Cannabis sativa drying facility, that has gone up in smoke. But alas it is just the temperament of the rain forest that brings life to the innocuous observations of a winter now past. I do find it contemplative, that Daffodils should find their way to the ...
One minute we are there, and then we are here. That time it takes to change from a then to a now, is it part of the present or the past? Or is that time, lost for all eternity? The prospect of having missed something, possibly life altering, or even in that moment of careless abandon where you just say to yourself, “to hell with it,” and close your eyes and hope to regain the vision of a calm sea at midnight, won't abandon you. But that time, does not occur, for if it did you would have lost one more physical tie to a wo...
Submitted to Contest #85
I noticed something different today. Perhaps more unusual than different, I see this guy walking by here towards the river, always comin after this mangy looking dog goes by. Didn’t think much of it the first time, but like most things when something keeps happening you get the hint that you maybe should be paying attention. I like to sit on the porch and keep an eye on the street so as it don’t get any funny ideas, like pot holes and such. Not that they bother me much more than the taxes do. Don’t drive anymore.&nb...
“It’s nice here. I like sitting looking at the pond, the Cathedral across the way, the pigeons. That’s one thing about this city, the parks are wonderful. Someone had the foresight to envision that amongst all the madness that we accept as modernism, progress, we would need a place to go to remember.” We would often go to the park and just sit. Every once in a while, something would change, but that was rare. Most of the time what you could count on, and the reason we pursued that place, was that things didn’t change...
Abner Hays was a proponent of the elevator. His creative capitalistic endeavors did not go un-noticed throughout the business communities of the Midwest. The Hays Building, on Hays Boulevard, was an icon of its day. It towered above the other buildings on the main business district of Benton Ohio. What made his building iconic wasn’t simply its height, an anomaly when compared to the building that surrounded it, but its innovations. Buildings were designed for the activities they were proposed to support. As cities ...
“That’s the thing about this city, it will kill you, if you’re not paying attention, just a warning. So many go about life with their head in the clouds, like these brick canyon walls are as magnificent as the red sand stone of Utah’s Arches, without the clarity clean air provides, or the quiet that comes with desolation. But then we aren’t in Utah, so can’t expect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to follow us down the trash laden alley ways and rodent infested subway tunnels. But then I’m used to the decay. Pl...
I love this city; I just can’t live here. But then, that has little to do with appreciating a fix that takes you to a place you can believe in, or one that you can’t forget, if only on a Monday. It is not just the excitement of the city; it is more than that. The lights, the noise, the immediacy that permeates from every crack in the sidewalk; the city, the world, as though taking its final breath. The pulsating waves of fear, hate, euphoria that accompany you on a stroll through a town that is being born, ...
Submitted to Contest #84
Sitting here in the shade of a brick building whose brick has shed its soft alluring demeanor and has taken on the stories of those that have passed; those that live and those that no longer care or need to. When time marches slowly enough past our front door, it allows one of two things to happen. Either we look for detail and appreciate the effort, or we get bored of the sameness, and begin to think of things we have no business thinking about, but for the distraction. Jammie Espiers sat on his stoop overlooking Franklin Avenue and ma...
“Tripoli? This is Blue Sky. Can you hear me?” “Loud and clear, Blue. Long time……heard from you." "What you been up to? Nothing bad, I’m sure. Last time we spoke I hope I didn’t come across as being too inquisitive. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that we live in such different worlds, such different lives, I just can’t envision what it would be like to be there with you, living like you live. Hope you don’t mind if I ask you about your life. Just want to know what it must be like to be fre...
“Does it do any good sitting here. We’ve been coming since the accident. Last Christmas Eve, and now it’s another Christmas Eve and she’s still in there someplace but doesn’t seem like she is ever coming out. We should go back home. We got other’s to think about. It’s Christmas. She won’t know if we are gone or not. They say when she’s ready she’ll come out. Comas they said, don’t have an expiration date. Could be tomorrow, never. We should go.” “You ever pray to her?” “No use in praying.&nbs...
“You’ll have to move to the back of the bus.” “Why do I have to go to the back, when all these other people are sitting up her in the front?” There it was again. Like head ache you get from those newfangled blue headlights, so they can see better at night, but blind everyone else. I’ve been driving a bus for most of the past twenty years. I said most of, because the disease came, and everything shut down. People were told to stay home or die. Course some of the people thought it was a joke of some kind, so they kept taki...
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