Leftovers
Trying something different today. Here are three small pieces I tried and failed to flesh out into something bigger but liked too much just to leave in a drafts folder.
Arguing With Myself
That undiluted dose hit me like a freight train. It slammed into me like a tsunami. That shit felt AMAZING. It felt like the euphoria of dying.
Toxic Guy
Guy got laid. Guy was never alone. Guy never got cheated on. Guy never pined away. Guy never had to hide drunken tears in a latrine shower. Guy was always smiling. He always had a girl on his arm.
Jody Chapter One
...barracks ethics made her off limits and as much as Pierce disliked the machine gunner from New Jersey and liked the little dark haired girl from California he couldn't act on it. He wasn’t a Blue Falcon, he wasn’t Jody. Normally...
The Night Jim Struck Out
Turns out even twenty-two years old, three thousand miles from home, drunk in the parking lot of a foreign motel I’m not that guy.
"How do you like the weather?"
I get it now. I understand why New Englanders flee south.
Copenhagen
I was a redneck kid with redneck friends and it’s hard to sneak a cigarette in High School but it’s easy to sneak a dip. Shop teacher didn’t even pretend not to notice. Smokeless tobacco ruled the high school bleachers. I started, like all St Tammany Parish kids do, with Skoal Bandits
A Purpose
I was staring at that stack of journals, knowing I needed to write something for the first of the year and wondering if I could find some inspiration in Memaw’s words.
"He Who Doesn't Believe...
...doesn't receive."
A Black Dog at Night
He makes a circuit counter clockwise around the perimeter of the yard, checking the tree where he saw a squirrel, the rock wall where he heard a chipmunk, and under the shed where he knows the rabbits live.
Fathers, Sons, Soldiers, and Poetry
We both hid a part of ourselves behind a soldier’s body armor and camo paint and when that didn’t work we retreated behind the smile of a beer drinking buddy.
El Paso
After thirty years how it all ended doesn’t matter. Those missed signals, my idiot roommate, Lorrie’s unrequited crush, a strange new soldier, and the United States Army don’t mean a fucking thing...