Tag Archives: American prose

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

Does Anyone Remember the Creepy Lawn Jockey from Season 2 of the X Files?

I go back and watch shows with an obsession. I don’t know why. Lately I’ve been going back and watching Mulder and Scully. Sometimes I miss the skepticism and paranoia of my childhood. An odd turn of nostalgia at that, being a child raised in a world in which the infrastructure was crumbling and being repaired with Hubba Bubba and Brillo Cream caked prayers.

But you miss little things the first time through, watching for the plot. Like Lawn jockeys; just an odd transition shot that had nothing to do with the plot. The lawn jockey was about establishing tone, true; the Caucasian face paint was starting to chip off and was meant to make us think about zombies. But you could argue that it was almost a non-essential shot. A little extra little taste from the director. A little wink and a nod, darkly funny. Lawn jockeys could make any trailer a royal compound, right? Like adding Greek columns to an old row house and turning it into a bed and breakfast.

It reminds me of the first time I drove back by the house I grew up in and saw that the new owner buried wagon wheels at the end of the driveway/ Like they rolled up from after some long journey, wrapped in gingham and a dream, and dug the foundation themselves, when all they did was buy a 40 year old ranch style house and paint over all the memories in western kitsch. The unknowns and barely knowns have been painted over with a new, thick paint of certainty. The color is a colorless gray, and reflects nothing.

Underneath, all the old memories rest on the drywall and frame, preserved like fossils against elements and the passage of time.

[Day book 2026 / Spring 3.21.26

Follow this blog on Mastodon or the Fediverse to receive updates directly in your feed.

Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

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

1,709 posts
0 followers

Fediverse Followers

Standard
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]

Follow this blog on Mastodon or the Fediverse to receive updates directly in your feed.

Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

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

1,709 posts
0 followers

Fediverse Followers

Standard
2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, prose, the no-scape, winter

Daybook 2026 // Winter 1.26.26

Sweater weather

The Monday after Winter Storm Fern. I have no interest in digging out or in finding my way into the world, except as a larger obligation and the realization that I will, at some point, have need. This is not to say I have turned my back on the world; rather, it picks up right where I leave it. That may be the most difficult lesson regarding time: when two friends part, the friendship begins to operate on a sort of half-life: the amount of time required for the friendship to metabolize itself in the absence of fresh interactions, whether in person or at a distance, depends entirely on the amount of toxins sticking to things. I have lost lives to my inability to understand the nature of half-life. Thus, I have learned that I must, at intervals, return to people and things I wish to nurture within myself.

I woke up this morning from dreams that left a trail like footprints disappearing in the snow. Hunkering down is good for my mind, but not necessarily for my body, since the body is meant to move. I will go out later and shovel off the porch and sidewalk, more out of the need to move than out of future necessity. In this instance, the two have a symbiotic relationship. As with all mechanical things, however, a certain amount of resistance must be overcome. I am thinking about the nature of steam and steam pumps. A steam pump operates because the resistance between steam pressure and water pressure is never equal. In order for a steam water pump to push water, the level of steam pressure must exceed the level of water pressure… the pounds per square inch that one pushes against the force of the other. There is a constant working for stasis, for balance, that, if the machinery operates correctly, is never really achieved. Because if the steam psi is balanced perfectly against liquid psi, the pump doesn’t move, energy is not produced, and work is not done. The machinery locks up.

Thus, it could be argued that it is only through resistance that we know we are alive.

These steam engine metaphors will not leave me. But maybe it’s only the broken heart that knows it’s alive.

Standard