#commuterlit

As the U.S. remembers their fallen, I am reminded of a day years ago that made the war in Vietnam real to me. I was a teenager and a ball tournament near the border let me mingle with Americans.

At the beer garden after the games, I met a young man a few years my senior. We talked about the war and he showed me his draft card. His status teetered on the very edge of the draft lottery, which ended…

South of Oromocto Depths

I’m happy and grateful to have a reprint of my maple syrup imbued, tres Canadien, playoff beard of a short story, “South of Oromocto Depths”, appear in Toronto’s CommuterLit. Editor Nancy Kay Clark has been generous with her coveted space once again and this will be my eighth appearance in this respected (and entertaining) literary ezine.

The short fiction, which first appeared in Literally…

I wrote a short story called, “Fairchild, McGowan and the Detective” . It appears in Work Literary Magazine and it’s a fiction that draws from some of my past BOSSES and my experiences with them.

Like most of what I write – the characters are hybrids of many people, real and imagined.

One of the comments I received from the Niume Readsaudience where I placed a link was, “Thanks for honoring…

My first story published by the online literary magazine, CommuterLit!

THE AUTOMATED doors slide shut. The train rumbles away, into a dark tunnel, travelling the bowels of the city.

A second before, a suited man stared through the glass pane at a woman and sly smile. They had just met. Trapped inside, she disappeared along with his hopes, of Harlequin romance, of adventure. Now, he stares, but into the worn, dirty tracks or across to the pale green walls and pillars of the station. Not at advertisements. Or people. But emptiness.

He lost love. A quickened beat and tingling heart. Blinked and she was gone; shut his eyes for a mere moment; an infinitesimal piece of time. A single speck of sand in an hourglass. That’s how long it took for an opportunity to slip away.

The idea for this piece came to me while I was driving along the 401 in Souwesto, daughter in the back seat watching her movie player, wife in the passenger seat playing Spell Tower on her iPad. For some reason, it manifested itself as an idea for a poem, which is something I haven't written in basically decades. So that was strange. I pulled over to the side of the road and asked my wife to switch me seats so I could get it all down. I wrote it out in my notebook basically as it appears on the website today. 

I have decided I should open myself up to the possibility of writing more poems or to producing poetry-like writing. It was once a huge part of my life and I published chapbooks, did poetry readings, sought refuge from a welling up of powerful emotions by wordsmithing my... sorry, I shouldn't poke fun. At myself.