Tag Archives: Ohio River

2026, essay, fiction, Louisville Stories, Ohio River Valley Literature, summer

Beautiful Flowers, Old Trees – A short essay on change

 

Flowers on the west-facing fence line that will not die in spite of the vines.

The backyard is perpetually an overgrown mess. It just is. I have good intentions and we have, in years past, had a pretty decent and thriving garden. Our backyard in the tight little neighborhood where me and my wife live is ringed on two sides by large maple and oak trees: one of which hangs over our house like the Sword of Damocles, the other of which is half dead and both of which share the fence line with our easterly neighbor, Larry and his adult son Matthew, who through sheer attrition has risen to be the Sketchiest Person on the Block.

The other tree is an old oak in the alley behind our house that isn’t really an alley, and at night in July the long overhanging branches are littered with lightening bugs. Because our house is built on what is technically a swamp and this is the lower Ohio River Valley, we get mosquitoes, but don’t spray them because killing the mosquitoes would also kill off the lightening bugs. That tree is largely healthy.

The Rose of Sharon that returned.

After a storm last summer, Matthew hired his then buddies who lived on the other side of him, a rotating collection of tweakers who were either burning shit in the backyard or curating a rotating gallery of meth-fueled art in the same backyard made from “found” electronic devices, to cut down a tree limb the wind had taken down. One of the three conversations I’ve ever had with Larry was to point out that there was nothing to keep them from suing him if they were injured, and that they’d probably win. He only smiled and said “I just got them to sign a piece of paper saying they can’t sue me if they’re dead.”

After they finished cutting it down, the tweakers then tossed it over the fence and into our yard, effectively destroying the fence (that has still not been repaired) and damaging the Rose of Sharon tree, which was one of my favorites. I cut up the log and propped up the fence a bit so the dogs wouldn’t try to wander. It’s not enough.

Every spring I aspire to a yard that is beautiful and practical. I want this more for Amanda than for myself, but for myself, too. She’s got the green thumb and I think if I could clear it all out and clean it up and erect a tall enough fence to keep the tweakers from stealing from our garden, that I might be ok with Matthew and his mini archery and axe throwing range that he sets up too close to the shared fence line. But then spring turns into summer and fall is knocking on the door,  and I end up feeling a little disappointed in myself.

Along the back fence on in the shade of the tree that grows in the alley.

But there’s always little bits of beauty and death around that remind me this season will not last and that there’s always next year.

I’m lousy at a curated garden and I know it. But the tweakers are gone and there aren’t nearly the number of random fires being set in our tightly squeezed little neighborhood.  Transformation is an ongoing process, right? Apathy can be a plan of its own.

 

 

 

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

Three Caballeros in The Pizza Pub

Been a busy last few days. Monday was a good day of getting ready to leave for the Portsmouth reading on Tuesday. Tuesday was a wonderful day. Good trip along side the river way and through the part of the country I used to call my back yard. It reminded me of the Ohio Valley gothic and that I have been carrying it in my head and in my bones and blood most of my life. Driving east from Cincinnati, we rolled out Ohio Route 32, which carries you from Cincinnati to Belpre, across the Ohio from Parkersburg, West Virginia. It’s sometimes called The Appalachian Highway, which, if you know anything about the Appalachian Mountains, means you’re driving headlong into the foothills of the Appalachia the further east you go and until you cross the river into By Gawd West Virginia. It’s 110 Miles from Cincy to Portsmouth, and we made pretty good time.

The reading was amazing and reinforced in me that I am on the road I need to be on. Art flourishes where it is sowed, and encouraged.  Traveling with my fellow caballeros,  Frogg Corpse and Tommy Bays, I remembered how much I like being out on the road with people I can trust. Our reception was welcome and I hope to return in the future. It was in a place called THE LANDING, which is a cool coffee shop, vintage clothing, old vinyl records, and skateboard shop. It’s the sort of place that small towns grow best because it’s a true labor of love and also a necessity for survival.

We were invited to hang out after, but none of us had eaten, so we found a pizza place that was still open, but barely just.

I’m a sucker for classic bar decor. I think about Freddie’s on Broadway in Louisville, the best hole-in-the-wall dive this town ever grew. It never tried to be something it wasn’t. Freddie was in his 90’s, half blind, and mostly deaf. His approach to race relations were unapologetically unaffected by the fact that his girlfriends were women of color, mostly in their late 20s. The bartenders only took cash, though someone had thought to put in an ATM back in a corner where a pinball machine had been once, and probably a knock off version of Asteroids after that. The walls were covered in the old style boxing posters, the kind that were drawn, that all look a little like the carny posters from a television filming set, back when TV was three stations and PBS, when the antenna was correctly bent.

The Pizza Pub in Portsmouth, Ohio is one of those places, in same spectrum as The Landing, that exists out of need and grew a character based on everyone’s grandpa’s unofficial garage bar. The walls were covered bar with mirrors and hangings advertising every beer and liquor that’s been or was since I was in my 20’s… that touch of old school nostalgia with the flair of someone who grew up in the 80’s and remembers when there were two refrigerators in the garage on in the mud room: one with enough food to survive a new ice age another with almost as much beer. But the pizza was really good. They built that place around a brick oven, and gawd bless ‘em for it. It makes all the difference in the world, and don’t ever let any cheap corporate fuck tell you different.

After that, we made our way to a wonderful fire pit and hung out with some of coolest folks you’ll ever meet along the river. The world is remaking itself in small towns along the world’s great wound, the Ohio River. And don’t let anybody try and tell you different on that, either.

To quote wiser people than me: “Never let the bastards win.”

That Ohio Valley Gothic got its hold
before that winter in February
when I made my entrance
two days late and chased from the start
by weak lungs and bad feet
and a heart that bleeds
entirely too easily.

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Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

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

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2025, Autumn, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life

Hot Hotel Coffee Invocations

hot hotel coffee and pipe outside on a crisp morning
keeping company with straw and stars and stripe kitsch 
the colors of October: a canvas stretching 
along the river that frames these days
telling myself it’s a day off, I can breathe a little, drink coffee

going to see old friends soon and buy a few supplies 
every waking is a counting and a reckoning of things needed
every waking is a remembering and planning
every waking is a new realization, a different surprise

that I am closer to the currents of things 
than the day before

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