2024, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

Saturday morning is a rockabilly country song

this note left hanging in the air being able to sleep in beside you warm as the house takes on an October tempo. there is a verse or two of coffee and bacon and wrapping my arm around your waist the scent of your hair is sleep and citrus and I would in this moment crawl into your skin for safety and warmth, but the chorus sings for the river the smell of deisel and currents shimmering under moonlight.

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2022, microfiction, Ohio River Valley Literature, the no-scape

upon a salty stack of truck nutz

At a truck stop in Whiteland, Indiana. It’s the usual break stop on our way to Indy for events. This time we were going to work security for a country music concert at Gatebridge Field House. I knew what to expect: the songs all about True Love, Truck Nutz, God, and Country, with an audience that often confused Truck Nutz for Country, Love, as well as God. Even though I always take food with me, I usually buy water or coffee, or both. But this time I splurged on a bag of Combos: cracker and (Real!) Cheddar Cheese, the way God — or Truck Nutz — intended them, unless pretzel is available and it wasn’t. My other options were “Supreme Pizza,” “Buffalo Wing” and — I shit not — “Cool Ranch Dorito” Flavor. What is there to say about a world where a junk chip is so uniquely known that it’s an imitation flavor for other junk foods? The mind doesn’t balk. But maybe it should. All I knew was the world was hyper-real enough without unholy junk food flavors. There was no place in my life for such blasphemy.

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poetry

ad notare 4



my old man was a George Jones fan
No Show they called him and he sang sadness
wrapped in polyester n hair shellac

I hear him sing out when the day’s done
dead awhile but still

as the track parking lot empties
yep that race is (still) on

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