March 23, 2021

“Real Estate,” A Novel Excerpt by Kathryn Holzman

A few passages from my novel, Real Estate, published by Propertius Press in November 2020. Excerpt #1 Santa Clara Valley, 1962 On a cloudless Saturday afternoon in May 1962, Harriet Jackson rode her brother’s battered blue Schwinn bicycle along Mariani Avenue, alert for passing cars. She inhaled the delicate spring scent of newly budding manzanita blooms, delighted that her mother had sent her to the store for a quart of milk. As she pedaled, she sang “Johnny Angel,” mouthing the words as sung on her favorite 45 by Shelly Fabares. Harriet let the breeze carry the lead but provided the chorus’s echo under her breath. The popular song complemented the sense of possibility in the crisp morning air. The rotation of her bike tires provided the backbeat. Together we will see how lovely heaven will be. She tilted the bike automatically into…

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March 15, 2021

“In the Hotel Room with Arles,” by Jeffrey Boldt

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

1. I first met Arlene Henson in law school. She’d been a teacher for twenty years and was in her early forties—which made her nearly twenty years older than me, and most of the rest of our class. But Arlene was still youthful and fun, and I never thought of her age as a significant factor in our friendship. Her face had the gentle and patient look which you’d want to see on your favorite teacher, but it was also quick to flash into an ironic smile and even a dismissive, almost-cynical laugh. Arlene was recently divorced from a Geography professor and she was attending law school on her share of the sale of their house in Milwaukee. She’d been a collegiate swimmer, and still did triathlons; she often came to class in tight fitting athletic outfits which hugged her trim figure and still drew plenty of attention from young men half her…

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March 11, 2021

“Thirty Years in a White Haze,” A Memoir Excerpt

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Dan Egan, with Eric Wilbur, has written a memoir which is true to its title: Dan’s three decades as an athlete in general and specifically one of the founders of the sport of extreme skiing. Thirty Years in a White Haze is his story as told to Eric. It is also the story of growing up in the Egan family and in particular becoming a world-class extreme skier alongside his brother John. We learn how they came to develop skiing abilities far beyond those of the average skier and to become extreme skiing stars in many of the legendary Warren Miller’s ski movies, ultimately arriving at the podium of the US Skiing & Snowboarding Hall of Fame in 2016. This excerpt is the book’s Prologue, and describes what is perhaps his most challenging and life-threatening…

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March 8, 2021

“She Is Going to Do Something Nutty,” by Raymond Abbott

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

He told the police sergeant, as he knew he would, that he would leave right away and help however he might. The address he wrote down was familiar to him. It was in the Flats, an old Holyoke neighborhood or section of the city once inhabited by many different ethnic groups, although now almost exclusively Puerto Rican. He shoved the paper with the address in his coat pocket and found his little black bag with the oils and other implements for giving what once was called the last rites of the church, but were now termed the sacrament of the sick, and headed off in the direction of the Flats. Sixty-six Center Street. He’d been there before, he was sure. Only the week before, the adjoining block had burned up. It was another of those…

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March 3, 2021

Bhuwan Thapaliya – Seven Poems from Kathmandu

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

I’m sick of not seeing you He poured himself a glass of her thoughts two years after she won a scholarship to heaven to pursue her PhD in life after death and sat down beside her antique gramophone with his senses straining in the dark. “I’m sick of not seeing you, I’m seeing only the back of an African Wild Elephant and the wide open jaws of the vultures. Helpless days of confinement, a stultifying inertia and no knowledge of what comes next. “Where are your eyes in the sky, Grand Ma?” he sighed. Where are the bald eagles? Where are the rhododendrons? Where? Where? Where? He stammered and cried. What type of poem am I? “What type of poem am I?” I am as formless as the clouds, and as elegiac as the silence, in the itinerary of the noise. I am not a classic written by the author,…

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February 22, 2021

“To Your Inner Slavery,” Poetry by Selma Haitembu

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

To Your Inner Slavery You try really hard not to show it I will not relent to evade my notions, Nor my ideas, hence the color of my skin Spoke before I could raise my head To your foot, beneath the very grounds I lay scythed by your scorn I will not relent in shame My mother, I wore as pride Ride me into the dangers of your color Your ignorance and frivolous abuse Your amusement related to mine Rooted from two different aspects I worry not where you are from Your stench has no beginning I worry only what you would do next To know, to finally see my color My mind in this brown skin bag Has gears twisted in complex turns I deserve to be here as well, it will show And below me you will fall soon Your hate of me will beg to exist,…

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February 16, 2021

“Soliloquy in Blue,” A Short Story by Johan Alexander

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Did she say something? Did I say something? Her brow illuminates under the streetlights and pulses with the beat of the windshield wipers. She won’t look at me: her eyes flash sequins at the sidewalk. Droplets floating, floating: translucent globes hanging in space. Then they burst apart. She shakes her hair and I can no longer see her eyes. Rain: I yawn through the misty rhythm. My eyes close continuously. Headlights and streetlights mix in the distance and through the murk I wonder when things started to go off course. We had danced together, squeezing particles of music from our sweatshirts. Then we ate at the Greasy Spoon, where she said it. The air between us is a stale sponge unable to soak up all these discarded feelings. Damp inside the car and heavy on my eyelids. I try to blink. The tires below us slime their way through the night. She sits in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. What`s the point? She glances over, a quick reflex of her neck, surprised. I realize I have mumbled my thoughts aloud. Beads of sweat wander across my hairline. I keep my face forward. She turns away. Again. I roll down my window an inch. I open my mouth. A few raindrops land on my tongue. …

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February 14, 2021

Laura Carter – Poems of Sensations and Memories

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

I pull away from the bruise. There is no bruise. It’s been said that language itself is a bruise, a collection of things to be feared. There is no bruise. I put off the pain. The pain returns. The body burns, as if in a fire, largely having been heated in winter by the obsolete feeling of the no. There is no no. I pull away from the no. The no, not having been part of the story, can’t really comment on anything. There are no people. There are people. Someone lights the proper way forward, as if in modernity, and I pull away from that. Why go? Someone on the other side of the ocean would pen a marinade and drink it down for dinner. I eat. There is no food. I see. There is no sight. I put away the bruise. Then, all…

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February 11, 2021

“Walking to Rhode Island,” A Story by Stephen Brayton

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

The call came in just after 1 a.m. “Hey, I got a question for you,” the male voice said. “Am I right that it’s not OK to walk to Rhode Island on Route 1?” O’Connell on dispatch managed to get out “What?” before the guy continued. “Walking on Route 1 .. I didn’t think it was allowed and just wanted to check.” The voice sounded semi-sober; O’Connell had heard plenty worse. But sober or not, who would think of walking to Rhode Island on Route 1, aka Boston-Providence Highway? A four-lane divided highway lined with shopping malls, office buildings and car dealers. It had to be at least 30 miles to the Rhode Island line. Sure, there were stretches in Grenville with sidewalks; but had he ever seen anyone on them? And going south through Norwood, Walpole . . . Sidewalks? He had no idea. Still, the guy had asked. “Well, I don’t know there’s any law against it,” answered O’Connell. “Why are you headed to Rhode Island? Kind…

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February 3, 2021

“Requiem of a Thursday,” by Luca Agostini

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Steffan looks up at me, a cone of light following his gaze. He is wearing a miner’s headlamp and I can’t shield my eyes in time. I have already drunk too much and the Ketamine is starting to kick in. The music thudding from behind the closed door of the narrow bathroom seems that much further, dripping through the concrete walls of the 1960s East Berlin Platte where the party is. I rub my eyes, the cone of light still fixed on me. Is it gone? Yes, the cone has moved. I am relieved as Steffan’s earnest, slanted face looks up at me as if emerging from the black depths of an ocean, his face ghostly and shimmering in the light. I want to lean forward, to break the surface of the blackness around him, but I…

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