Category Archives: prose

2026, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, Prose Poem

one person’s truth is another’s annihilation

I remember the landscape of my old homeground by the absence of landmarks. Rolling east on the Appalachian Highway, the absence of green space shook my mental map and memory of the place. There used to be great draughts of space between Eastgate and the wild lands of southeast Ohio. It was the escape into a space that still felt unsettled and a little more free, a little more dangerous. The kind of place a person could test themselves and still breathe clean air and see the stars at night. Before the cellphone towers, before fiber optic tentacles and the empty promise of economic recovery. The only lies were the ones people told themselves, the ones from which great and terrible futures are written.


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2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, the no-scape

How Silly Stories Get Started

Once I drank shot for shot with the devil in a biker bar at the corner of US 68 and the edge of the universe. This was our second meeting. He’d stopped in for a piss break and a beer on his way to meet someone else. That guy will wait, he said when he saw me. They always wait for me. He laughed and made some joke about how he was never the one who insisted on meeting at midnight, and how silly the stories got over time. But it gave him a little flair, a little mystery, he said on his 5th shot of Crown Royal Maple. Gotta leave it to those Canucks. I haven’t tasted shit that good since my nephew did that water to wine trick. Now THERE was talent. The devil shook his head and almost snarled. Then he spat on the floor and it burned through like hot acid. Ungrateful punk. 

He smiled again. He had a large toothy smile and dead eyes. He asked me what I wanted. Another shot I said. He laughed. That one’s easy. I don’t stop through here on the regular anymore.  He looked around the nearly empty bar. This place used to be lit. More scraps of furniture than furniture, blood and broken glass every night. He winked. And the women! It was almost too easy.

Almost. He looked at me. So. What do you want?

I didn’t have a ready answer. I said something about wanting an interesting life. He laughed. You’re gonna get that anyway, Kid. When I didn’t have an answer he drank his last shot, left cash for my entire tab and a generous tip on the bar. When you think of something, as he stood up, looking much taller than when he came in, say my name. I’ll find you.  He laughed. And I won’t make you meet me at midnight in the middle of nowhere, either.  He told me he sometimes stopped by to see his third cousin, who lived in a trailer in Aberdeen. He said I might run into him there, too.

[Day book 2026 // Winter 3.18.26]

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Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.

1,691 posts
0 followers

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2026, Day Book, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, the no-scape

It Was One of Those Mornings, I Discovered a Rat had Stolen My Wedding Ring. This was not the First Sign.

I came to understand the world of work on third shift in Winchester, Kentucky temp to permanent (this was the 90s) and with the shift differential I made $5.10 an hour. But gas was still under a dollar a gallon and you could still get six boxes of generic macaroni and cheese, the kind with the packet of powdered cheese food you mixed with butter or milk or, if it was a lean month, warm tap water, and four cans of tuna for $2. I spent the summer before my daughter was born manufacturing 3D Styrofoam deer targets. The entire summer was hot and humid and the air in the rented warehouse space was stifling and always had a slight burnt note.

I worked at the trimming station. The floor supervisor gave me a cheap fish boning knife to cut the unnecessary edges off the pieces after they cooled enough to be removed from the molds. Funny thing: liquid Styrofoam is hot and when poured into a metal mold under compression builds pressure that is only alleviated after the liquid cools.

One of the other temps, a giant, loudmouthed cracker, got his arm broken when he popped the mold too soon. The crowbar he used snapped back, popped so hard the bone at his right elbow was exposed. He came back three nights later, arm in a cast, popping molds and testing physics at the exact same volume, nothing learned.

I drove home exhausted each morning, crawled into bed, and listened to my daughter grow in her mother’s belly. Sometimes I read to her until I fell asleep.

[Day book 2026 // Winter 3.12.26]

Sirens and Other Alarm Systems

I managed to get about 30 minutes of good sleep before the storm rolled in right and proper. Prepare and don’t worry. Of the list of things I can control when the wind rolls through at 80 miles per hour, the wind is not one. I had my clothes for Monday and my boots nearby. There was a flashlight close by. My side of the bed put me between Amanda and the windows. The basement had a little shelf stable food and water, and a working bathroom. There’s lamp oil and wick in the basement for the lamp, plenty of batteries, and a battery-powered radio. So I listened. I listen for leaks and for loud bumps. I listen for the sound an approaching tornado makes. That time in Farmers, Kentucky when the tornado came through and me and the trailer where I was living were left intact, the sound of it lives in a pocket in my ear. Forever.

“I’m glad we have the alert system and sirens,” I told her.

“But?”

“But it makes it hard to hear the weather.”

[Day book 2026: Winter 3.16.26]

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Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.

1,691 posts
0 followers

Fediverse Followers

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