All posts in Member Writing & Art

July 5, 2019

“Wash, Rinse, Dry… Repeat” by Zee Mink

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

Lie, then smile with penitent lips, as you continue to cheat Wash with repentance. Rinse with remorse, Dry tears of regret Repeat It is your anemic nature, your compulsive rogue swagger Coffee break room champion, scalawag bragger My own weakness, craving your wayward arms My insanity, always falling for your charlatan charms I am the princess of poor personal choices Never listening to the warnings of my inner voices My logical head knows, my deceiving heart excuses The blatant deception, the revolving heart abuses I tell myself to walk. NO RUN away and never look back He’ll change, this is the last time he’ll jump the loyalty track Truth be known, I am the genuine liar, the authentic phony I could have a steak, instead I feast on cheap baloney My table is set, same old menu, no wisdom served today Eating with a spoon of shame, digesting familiar foul play Zee writes from…

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July 2, 2019

Keith Kennedy: Feeling the Angst

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

Too Busy for Suicide I’m awfully sorry to be awfulIt was the camera – you see it, in the corner I was afraid that if I didn’t fall in lineThey’d make me wear a rose-colored shirtThey’d make me kill my family So I said what they wanted to hearI told them of your discretions, making sureNot to elaborate too far, so theyDidn’t find out what horrible things you’ve doneTo my ass, in my mouth, while the others watchedThey are sorry, too, for doing what they had to. When Pink was Heart I craved your body like a mindNo matter where the dead birds fellI changed my course to walk behindI stared at skin ’till I grew blind And when you dressed I felt the flames …

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July 1, 2019

“Broken” by Susi Bocks

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

What a freakish awakening this morning. My guts felt heavy, as if they contained weighted stuff like rebar with concrete. I felt sick but unable to purge because it would hurt more coming back up. “Why risk more injury?” I thought to myself. It was going to be an enormous challenge to make it through this day if this beginning was any indication. I pulled back the covers unmajestically to expose my left leg draped over the side, deftly anchored in between the mattress and box spring to help me propel upwards. It was not an easy feat. All the while, creepy flashbacks kept jutting into the brain space behind my eyes: struggling, hands, choking, bright lights, and a sense of foreboding as thick as pudding – a feeling of being under the control of another but not knowing who…

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July 1, 2019

Breaking News at The Fictional Cafe

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, News

We’d like a few moments of your time to share some special Barista News with you. Even though we’re 100 percent volunteer, non-commercial, and free for everyone to submit and read, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people working hard to bring Fictional Cafe to you. So we want to introduce several people who are making, and have helped make, Fictional Cafe what it is today. Every creative work submitted to FC is juried by two or three baristas. In the beginning, six years ago, all of that work fell on two baristas’ shoulders – Jack’s and Caitlin’s. What’s truly wonderful is that we have attracted talented people in all of our creative categories who have a voice in choosing what we publish. They all appear on our Baristas page. The people you’re about to meet…

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June 29, 2019

Hiding out in Bathrooms by Julia Hwang

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

I. Shame eating + the sterility of bleach = A well-balanced breakfast? I stuff Kit Kat wrappers in with feminine waste and wipe my hands of chocolate on too tight pants II. Scream and smash and scream some more and throw the vase’s remains against the door Icy water surges and deafens I recoil into a pool of red How shocking! That a hand holds this much blood That our pain could clog a drain III. DON’T DO IT Whoops too late I POP and SQUEEZE and SCRATCHwatching tiny pricks of blood bloom across my face I am bumpy, bitter ugliness I refuse to recognize her I dab away tears with salicylic acid I bury her with clay IV. I am grown I am a woman yet still, I hide out in bathroomsscarfing down deli meats wiping at my nose, sloppily I am a girl eavesdropping on whispers and giggles avoiding conference calls and confrontation drowning out crying babies, sirens wailing catching a breath always ashamed still alone Julia Hwang is an emerging poet writing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work, which tends to be narrative, women-focused,…

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June 27, 2019

“The Age of Light” – Reprising Our Interview with First-Time (And Very Successful!) Author Whitney Scharer

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Book Reviews, Interviews, Member Writing & Art, Writing

A little over a year ago, we published an interview with Whitney Scharer, whose novel had landed her a million-dollar book deal. Only problem was, we had to wait another year to read her book. At the time, we wrote: “Barista Rachael Allen meets the novelist everyone will be talking about. Whitney Scharer and her fierce protagonist are set to take the literary world by storm! At this time next year, Whitney Scharer’s debut novel, The Age of Light, will stare up at you from your nightstand. The book will not stare at you so much as, potentially, display a woman staring into the distance, anonymously cropped at the neck, with scenic Paris blurred behind her. As much as she hopes for something different, Scharer says wryly, audiences are familiar with this kind of book…

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June 25, 2019

Charles Rammelkamp: History, Politics, and People

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

The Crud My mother called him “the crud,” my brother’s friend Alan. I’m not sure what she had against him, besides his lack of ambition – she was a schoolteacher, after all – Alan destined to work in one of the steel factories after graduating from high school – at least until the steel factories all closed. The Crud loved cars. He could tell you the make and model and year of anything with four wheels and an engine, sported decals of hotrods and muscle cars all over his school folders. He did speak vaguely of “joining the service,” as his older brother had, then having all his teeth pulled, dentures installed in their place, the stubby twisted teeth in his mouth, a source of private anguish. When my brother mentioned…

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June 19, 2019

A Suspension of Disbelief: Lydia Kinney’s Art

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Fine Art, Member Writing & Art

Lydia Kinney lives and works in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014 with a BFA in Painting. Lydia’s work focuses on spatial abstractions, forming tensions of interior/exterior environments. Subjects include windows and pillars into other planes, disintegrating color fields, formally ambiguous confetti, and plays of texture. The Artist’s Statement “My paintings function with haphazard visual structure and a focus on material. The composition is pivoted on stained substrates and poured surfaces. I push the compositions to balance a suspension of disbelief and a tangible acknowledgment of a made object. The dichotomy of drawn and painted treatments takes advantage of the depth and atmosphere implied by wet, amorphous forms and planes. “Rigid lines and shapes encounter these surfaces, holding up, constraining, destabilizing, and contradicting their preceding natural flow. The…

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June 17, 2019

Kyla Houbolt: A Natural Poetic Eye

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

What the Bears Do If this is a dream I will open the eyes of my eyes before life kills us all. I want to see what the bears do. I open the ears of my ears when there is a dear hum or sound of grinding that burns. The bears hear it too. The bears are not dancing. They may surround us with their large smell of hot fur or drop to the ground, lope off into woods we did not know were there until the bears claimed them. We have received from the bears something of fur of the woods of knowing in our blood but what about when blood is gone? What then? Then I will wait for the tiger sure to come. I am not prey. I will follow and not be mazed by that hungry chthonic gaze. It may be that any death should feed somebody, but in my family we burn our dead. Journey For a Monday Monday and suddenly I feel an intense longing for the desert….

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June 13, 2019

The Poetry of Michael Glassman

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

DEATH IN THE DESERT Heat waves frolic along the desert’s endless edge I hear the shuffling of camel’s toes The soft landing of camel dung The smell adding to my woes My knees embedded in sand Awaiting the wrath of the Queen of Hearts The bald ibis watches from his rocky perch I glimmer a glint of silver through shrouded eyes To the camels and ibis it’s no surprise They’ve seen many times how a man dies Heat waves frolic along the desert’s endless edge Having no power to stop their play On a whim of the wind they hold their place The camel and Ibis are rarely seen Betwixt the sand and the dust devil’s space The wind has no say as to what happens next When frolicking ends and attention is paid A man with no head leaves them perplexed To the camel and ibis it’s no surprise They’ve seen many times how a man dies NEWTOWN SCHOOL BUS DRIVER’S…

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