Tag Archives: Story

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.

1,691 posts
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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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2024, prose

Mike Bones’ Bird

[A Mile Post 604 Story]

I killed Mike Bones’ bird tonight.

Mike trotted up while I was smoking my pipe on the wharf. I’d managed to get to work a little early after spending part of the morning at my wife’s family reunion. The Cornett Family, from whichever side of the mountain they are as there were unrelated Cornetts on both sides, is large and reunions are difficult. Amanda and I have been together 12 years and I still don’t understand large family dynamics. My extended family, on both my mom and dad’s sides, has either the good grace or geographic and financial limitations to carry out large scale reunions. I love my wife, though, and my immediate in-laws. Plus, my daughter and her family were there. So I was reflecting on my morning when I saw Mike Bones. He was carrying something in cupped in his hands.

“We were doing Man Over Board Drills,” he said. He showed me an injured whipperwill.
“Matt told me to put it in one of the flower pots.”

I watched him place the bird precariously in one of the cement flower pots built into the wharf wall. He perched it on a branch of the lingering weeds. I pointed out that the bird would probably fall when it tried to fly and that it might stay longer if he placed it in the dirt.

“I want him to be able to dry off, ” Mike answered.

And while we were standing there talking, the bird tried to fly on its broken wing and took a header on the wharf. Mike scooped the bird up and placed it, again carefully, in the same planter.

There was something so gentle about how Mike handled the bird; there was a genuine concern. It made me think about a robin Amanda and I tried to save once. It had fallen out of one of the giant old maple trees behind our house. We picked it up, set it in one of the garden beds to protect it from the cat and dogs, gave it some water and suet. It promptly hopped out of the raised garden bed, trying to fly.

I told Mike Bones that the bird would try and fly, but that it was good he saved it and gave it a fighting chance.

That night after the cruise, I stepped off the Belle to smoke. I walked over near the wall where I last saw the bird. It wasn’t in the planter, but had hopped out in an attempt to fly. This time, it had broken its legs in the fall and was trying to move along the ground using its wings as proxy legs. But every attempt just ended with the bird stuck on its back.

I set it right three times. Each time it ended up on its back. Mike Bones was busy with the deck crew cleaning up the boat. I knew the bird would eat a few bugs but always end up on its back. The injured wing was getting more injured.

Here’s a little known fact: most veterinary offices don’t do anything for injured wild birds that aren’t endangered or raptors. When Amanda and I saved the robin in our backyard we tried calling a few vets and the local humane society. They all told us the same thing. The robin, that I started thinking of as Miss Ida, wouldn’t stay put. She eventually wandered off. I found her the next morning in the tall grass. Dead.

I watched Mike Bones’ bird, stubborn, trying in spite of a broken wing and two broken legs. The weather was warm, and the cruise passengers had mostly dispersed; but there would be more foot traffic for a few more hours. I worried about someone finding the wounded whipperwill and being cruel. I didn’t want Mike Bones to find it, either. He’s not fragile or anything; but it seemed unfair to put the responsibility on him. Small kindnesses is rare. It should be rewarded.

I scooped him up carefully, petted his head with my thumb. I talked to him. He fought me at first but settled down quickly. I walked over to the river by the incorrect mile post sign. I leaned on the concrete pilon, talked to the bird to keep him calm.

Then I snapped his neck.

It was quick. I felt the life leave his body. Then I offered him back to the river.body, packed my pipe, and lit it. Later, when I saw Amanda, the first thing I did was tell her was about the bird.

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