Preparing for and Orienting Yourself to the Real World of Publishing 
by Don Schaeffer
(this was a blog post not accepted by a client)

Publishing books, especially artistic books, poetry, and novels, is a deeply romantic dreamy idea for most writers. There are probably hundreds of millions of writers in the world, all dreaming of publication. Many fantasize about fame, fortune and a life of art. They dream that publication will lead to immortality. At the same time, the publishing industry exists amid  the maelstrom of economics which does not treat the arts kindly, especially the written arts. Poetry, as the anonymous poet says, is 

the least/ valuable of arts/ the most futile/ form of prayer.

In 2013, Polls on the subject reported that more than 80 percent of Americans would like to be writers. In 2011 329,259 books were published in the United States and 2.2 million books were published in the world. If you look at writers as a profession, an estimated 180,000 people (Forbes estimates 145,000) are said to be employed as writers in the United States, with an average estimated salary of $65,000 per year. To track writers in this way seems to make writing a much more established profession than it really is. But, there are many with writing as a profession. The government counts 58,000 reporters in the United States, 127,200 editors, 62,000 broadcast announcers, 320,000 public relations writers, and 49,500 technical writers. Half of these people have a half-finished novel in their desk drawer as well.

The Hard Road of Book Publication.

Much has been written about the death of poetry. There are arguments about the extent to which poetry is actually read. Some say that the audience for poetry is gradually extinguishing. A survey of public participation in the arts between 1992 and 2012 found that readership of poetry declined from 17 percent of readers in 199 to 6.7 percent of readers in 2012. Some actually argue that more people are reading poetry than ever, but the audiences are invisible and not measurable by the marketplace.

Even popular-style fiction has a long row to hoe before success.  Of  the 18 most popular and best earning fiction books, the average number of rejections by publishers was 83 (according to figures gathered by Forbes). Even when published only a small percentage of books sell more than 500 copies. Only 2 percent of books sold more than 5,000 copies.

Levels and Kinds of Publication.

One of the most important general principles of publication is that one way or another the artist will have to pay to get an audience. I may not be a direct payment, but in some ways, it may be.

Of course, there are more efficient ways to get published. There are ways for writers to compromise with their dreams, much shorter routes to getting things in print.  At the most basic level, there is self-publication and there is the real possibility of getting a short publication in the newspaper "letter to the editor" section.

There are many online forums and poetry or writing groups who "workshop" your writing. Members of the group can number in the hundreds. Members read and critique submissions. As far as poetry goes, many of the workshops are organized a monthly juried contest called the Inter Board Poetry Contest or IBPC. Many writers circulate their work through their own blogs, email lists, YouTube videos, or podcasts. The internet provides many ways that writers can reach for fame with little investment.

Self-publication is a definite disappointment to the ego of the ambitious writer. But it is a way of creating a book which can then be sold. If you properly register your book with the ISBN system, many bookstores will agree to stock your book and pay the author for any profit on sales. You can print your book through self-help systems online or through the Amazon Create Space system. There are still many local printers who will create books for a nominal price. Some will offer help in composition and graphics. You may also opt to do everything yourself.

Value-added printers are a recent addition to the hierarchy of publication. These companies will create books in any number you wish. They handle the technicalities of registering your book and seeing to the positioning of the book with online sellers. They often also advertise and publicize your book and list it with their own inventory. Generally, if you want to sell the books, you have to buy the books yourself or make some similar agreement to procure your book. You, therefore, own the complete rights to the book and market it any way you like. These finished books are attractive and, except for the name of the publisher, can't be distinguished from any other published book. Many companies who call themselves "publishers" are really value-added printers.

Publishing in Annuals, Magazines, e-zines, or periodicals is the way many authors publish what the write. Often, publishing in periodicals resembles a form of value-added printing since the periodicals almost always want authors to purchase a subscription or even pay a fee for inclusion. The publishers of periodicals will often also publish short books, sometimes called chapbooks.

Many writers get their start in conventional publishing through small independent publishers. Small presses are abundant in the U.S. and they take more risks on unknown authors than large publishers. You will need some kind of writing track record before a small press will consider your work, but they do accept unsolicited writing (which major publishers usually do not). They can be very good, very helpful, but print runs are very small and promotions may not help much to sell what you have written. Publishing your book with a small press can be a stepping stone to recognition by larger publishers.

Major Publishers receive thousands of manuscripts to fit very few marketing spots. They tend to want established writers  with recognizable names. Authors are often obligated to find advocates on a personal basis to receive any attention from them. Some hire literary agents to use personal influence to gain entry to the editorial offices. Major publishers are part of an elite society that does not accept many who do not have a pedigree.

Major publishers handle their authors by making a contract that gives the publisher the right to distribute the book while the author retains the copyright. If the author has submitted an outline for the book, he or she may receive an "advance payment" to cover the costs of completing the boo. The publisher generally has a lot of control of how the book looks and the process of selling and marketing the product.

Nov 10, 2016

By Ruth Hill

Ruth is a poet with a lot of interest in nature.

Trump and his voters are deplorable. I am very depressed about it. The media covered NOTHING about the Republican gerrymandering that took place to get majorities in each district. It said NOTHING about closing 15 polling stations in democratic areas of North Carolina. Podesta’s campaign strategy was all wrong for defeating Trump. Hillary did not argue logical arguments from a position of strength and confidence. Hillary unfortunately projects the expectation of rejection, because she has been rejected twice before, in marriage and primaries. In order to win, PERSONALITY counts. A lot of people found her unlikable for her mean lecture style and not her emails. Bernie drew large crowds because they were using modern social media better. Also his personality was great, everybody’s favorite grandpa. But he used two catch phrases people were frightened of: revolution and free college (how will it be paid for?). Democratic superdelegates stacked for Hilary 4-8 years ago have to be ELIMINATED. Republican obstructionism must be made illegal  Both parties must groom new blood more acceptable to concerned citizenry. High schoolers must be taught to resist negative campaign style, so they are not so easily deceived. Above all the “Christian evangelist caliphate” of the rural areas that is teaching there is no separation of church and state, that church should rule the state, must have the historical persecution reasons for the US secular constitution explained to them. There is lots of work to do. The country is falling apart at the party seam.

Friend's Impression of a Waterfall

Yucky Words

by Don Schaeffer
This is a blog post I worked really hard on then it was rejected. I figure no one else is going to buy it but I think it's pretty good.



Ok, let's start at the beginning. Looking for the ugliest anything, where do we start? What is ugly? It may be easier to define for vision, for human faces than for words. Human beings are very visual creatures. There are many more articles and thoughtful pieces written about ugly visual things than ugly sounds. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," writes the ancient Greek commentator. Shakespeare echoes centuries later with "Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye."
Getting Things Straight:
The word "ugly" itself stems from the old Norse "uggligr," meaning dreadful or fearful. Fear and immorality are somehow touched by the word "ugly" because of the deep connection the medieval church made between morality and physical beauty. Giving children a "pretty name" was giving them the gift of moral regeneracy. "No ugly woman," writes the 19th century poet in Noctes Ambrosionae, "ever yet a wrote a truly beautiful poem the length of her little finger."
Bringing us down to earth:
One thing that makes a word ugly is that the word is harmful or frightening. Many feel that curses are ugly. They often denote ugly acts, socially unappealing acts, or behaviors that disrupt the normal and peaceful flow of social life. Thus words like "bowels" or "crotch" (or some of the epithets that stand for these) are considered ugly, rude and disruptive. Even the "F" word that stands for sexual acts that need to be done in private is considered ugly by many.
Sometimes ugliness brings us down to earth, when we prefer to be in an ideal and undisturbed place. Sir Edward Sullivan wrote in 1894, "beauty attracts attention, and ugliness repels it." Ugliness is earthiness. Ugly people are thought to be closer to the physical side of life. In Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien depicts the Orcs, those ugliest of creatures, as artificial creatures, magically formed out of mud. And of course the bible depicts the human race as being formed in much the same way, separating humanity from heaven.
The Guttural:
There is something ugly about words that make noises in the throat, as compared to words that slip breathlessly through the lips. We don't want to be reminded of the presence of the body when we speak. We especially don't want to be reminded of fluids that gurgle around in our throats. Guttural languages like German and Dutch are judged by many as the most ugly because they contain many of those sounds. Guttural sounds are defined as strange, unpleasant and disagreeable utterances. The English language has inherited many guttural-sounding words from the Nordic languages as well as more pleasant words from Latin-based languages.
That gets us closer to ugly words. The deeply non-logical way the human brain works on language is demonstrated by irony. Many words largely judged as ugly actually denote constructive, even beautiful things. The component parts of the word suggest earthy things or things better left secret.
Many gross words are onomatopoeic. They stir up a synesthetic reaction. The sounds of the word bring up body parts and unpleasant actions that have nothing to do with the actual meaning. The origin of words is sometimes lost so far back in time that the meaning changes from something ugly to something high-reaching. There are words that have little meaning beyond what the sound does to the imagination.
An ugly words list:
Anybody can draw up their own list.
1. allophonics.

• The word "pulchritude" is often described as an ugly word, even though it denotes "physical beauty." Somehow, the sound of the word reminds many of obesity. There is a hip and thigh quality about it. Commenting in "Sesquiotica" a blogger writes, "It [the word] brings to the eyes broken patterns of pulp, mulch, rude, pull...In sound it tosses in a couple of the allophonic effects in English that non-English speakers are apt to find unpleasant or vulgar..."

2. The heavy body.

• "Gestational" brings us quickly down to earth. It denotes the nutritional part of carrying a fetus. However, many see it as connoting a cold, secret side of pregnancy that still, even in this day and age, remain private. Writing in "The Australian," Melinda Tankard Reist described the word as representing "The objectification of women's bodies and commodification of childbirth." She reminds us of passages in the novel Dune depicting "axlotl tanks" which are women who are lobotomized and whose bodies are used as "gestational carriers for clones."
• "Regurgitate" and its more prosaic version, "vomit" are also among the ugliest words in the English language. No word takes us closer to the bodily functions that should be hidden than these words that denote the undoing of eating. These words are unpleasant because they are shameful as are so many unpleasant words.

The kinky and comic.

• The word "quark" is kinky, rather than strictly ugly in the opinion of most. James Joyce used the word in Finnegan's Wake in a scurrilous 13 line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Trisdan legend. "Three quarks for Master Mark/ Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/ and sure any he has it's all beside the mark." The word was adopted by theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann during the time when a group of theoretical physics were inventing kinky names for subatomic particles. It was also used as the name of a rather unattractive Star Trek Ferengi character, who is a kind of swindler.
• A lot of people don't like the word "mooch." To mooch is to get things from others without paying for them. It's not quite stealing, more like finagling. "Mooch" has a comic kind of nastiness about it. When people feel it's ugly, it appears to inherit its ugliness from the annoying person and actions it designates. A mooch is a creature of the comedic, vaudville stage. Who remembers Cab Calloway and his theme song about "Minnie the Moocher?" We laughed.
• A pugilist is simply a boxer. The word dates back to the 1640s. There are many ugly things associated with the word, like a "pug," an ugly little dog. Many people vote that word into the ugly list. The classic fist fighter was far more brutal than they are today. According to the classics, these fighters used to break each other's ribs, gouge out each other's eyes, then stand over the loser, laughing. That's pretty ugly all right.

The Finale:
In his blog, "Words Going Wild," Jim Bernhard, quotes the poetry of the infamous "Bard of Buffalo Bayou" who gave us a full and quick dose of ugly words when he attempted to write the ugliest verse in the English language.

Vomit, smegma, phlegm, and pus, all pasty in a sac,/ Schmeared with a fetid spatula upon a plump kakkak,/ Discharge a kumquat ointment on the scab of that smallpox,/ Then honk in moist cacaphony in the jazz of some jukebox./ The curdled veggie, full of snotty sap--just masticate; / If kooky, flatulent, don’t gripe or puke—regurgitate./ A gargoyle with no boobs is feisty, pregnant and phlegmatic,/ For routine slaughter, kudos for a pustule plutocratic./ A gutted, Brobdingnagian, crepuscular quahog/ Has so much sticktoitniveness, you can crunch it in a blog./ A bunion on a rural juror’s crotch is treachery,/ Pulchritude and privilege fructify with synergy./ My spouse’s fiscal tax will leave my gusset with a gash./ Tell me what aasvogel means, I’ll give you a chunk of cash!"

Slough Straw

by Ruth Hill

“SLOUGH STRAW” won the Writers Rising Up! 2012 shared 1st Prize, and won the Inland Empire California Writers’ Club Fall 2012 2^nd Prize of $50, judged by Gayle Brandeis, and was published online in IECWC “Fresh Ink.”

This is my photo the poet says inspired her.

 

There is nothing delicate or pretty
about the way hay rides in the ditch
sour grass and shadowy, hiding things at night

Hardy cohabitant, maker of air

Succumbed to snow? No.
The scorching wind pummels it without winning
The drenching rain leaves nothing
but spots of wet and dry mold
It stands in spine­binding cold

Herbicides turn it red, apparently dead
embarrassed, but it browns up again
and resumes healing the damaged earth

And still it stands,
witness only to its own existence
as if its only purpose were to protect its young

New growth unaware of its prelude provider
fights for space up through its smothering guardian
the flexing bright green babies so unlike
their ancient battered predecessors

...and the little grass says, “Look how beautiful I am!”
Does it listen to what the straw has to say?
Or does it say, “You are old and wasted, man or m’am.”

...but in its DNA,
is everything the straw wanted to say.

Beauty and Joy ...(to Don Schaeffer)

by Ruth Hill

This was written as a special compliment to me. Thanks Ruth.

He captures beauty and joy

with eleven technical lenses

sees life in an unfurled bud

as in rotting leaves and dried flowers

likes naughty squirrels and polite birds

can find composition with garden urns

black twigs lacing blue sky

sea sparkles reflected on hulls

waning light on a single seagull

He invites viewers to ride along

inside his camera on his daily walks

inside his mind on a windy day

All Wild

by Ruth Hill



Ruth was born and educated in upstate New York, and traveled North America extensively. She now lives and writes in Northern British Columbia. She is a Certified Design Engineer, lifelong dedicated tutor, and enjoys spoken word. She has won 1st prizes in Gulf Coast Ethnic & Jazz Poetry, Heart Poetry, Lucidity, Poets for Human Rights, and Writers Rising Up. Over 250 of her poems have won awards or publication in the US, Canada, UK, and Israel. She enjoys email from other poets.




 
Though many love the topiary, boxwood,
I prefer a garden long overgrown
and spread into the wild,
wild interbreeding to reclaim ancestral ties
open pollinating freely
unconcerned with who is better
wind laying all down equally
rain drunk by all equally
verdant and effusive
floribundant and intrusive
hills all willy-nilly silly frilly
with montage-collage portages
orange lilies poking up through burgundy rhubarb
blue flax and michaelmas by wild goldenrod
for  "there is no blue without the yellow”
michaelmas not blue nor purple nor mauve nor pewter
pincushions not lemon or lime but hued over time
milkweed and thistles fluffing wildly like bubble machines
aromas of leaf mold, sweet earth and wild orchids
textures heaped up like thrift store clearance
colors not edited by more ‘educated’ eyes
burden of fleas and chiggers and bees and flies
candied nectar leaking from necks
thick alkaline poison protects
the soft and stiff and harsh and hardy
climbing all over each other in gorgeous orgy
oblivious, intertwined, without prejudice
strolled through, it and its creator
all wild
all mine

Jim Edwards The Forest

 

Jim Edwards, MFA is a Winnipeg artist who works in colored pencil. He appeared in this blog before.

 

 

 

 

You Taste Great

by GuyKettelhack

 



Guy is a unique poet and artist with a psychoanalytic perspective on things. Each of his poems is accompanied by one of his strange drawings. They remind me of Dr. Seuss but they are definitely for adults.

I love licking you,
you taste great.
If you were on a menu,
I’d keep picking you,
clean my plate.

Full Size Rendering

 

by Jim Edwards (1968)

 

 

Jim is an artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has been spending the last few years making miniatures in colored pencil because his home is so chock full of paintings. This one is full sized (18 X 24 inches). Find some of his work at http://fineartamerica.com/featured/bluetop-sky-jim-edwards.html.

 

 

Drawings by My Granddaughter, Hannah Zoe (age 7)

Portrait of her grandfather

(from a Skype conversation)

A Dead Criminal

by Tom Prime

 

Here is our post beatnik poet again, the wonderfully bitter young man. He's been here before.

I felt this strangeness
Coming out, like wintry frozen
Rivers, ribbons on my old guitar—when

I met her in the park; it was the sense,
Hanging like a dead criminal, that love

Would punch me in the nose—blood would

Flow gently in scintillating leaf shadow tree light
Out all over the dried dead earth, and

Flowers, like one sided mirrors, would grow.

Magic for Children

(I wrote this as a ghost-writer for a magician's website. He didn't like it and wanted a re-write. I think it's pretty good.)

Magicians and clowns are among the most popular childrens birthday party entertainment. Both are about magic. They draw the imaginations of children outside the day-to-day world. Some guesses are that there are some seven magicians for every 100,000 people in the world. Membership in the International Magicians Society numbers 41,000 world wide. This is a large population of people. Magic is a very popular pursuit. The International Magicians Society even offers a doctor of magic degree which members can earn by passing a practical examination.

A magician flirts with the unknown and illogical. These are experiences that children love. Children love dream worlds and fairy tales about magical things outside the possible. Stimulating that part of a child's imagination brings them wonder. Children are first learning how things work. When they see their common sense violated, they push their imaginations outward. It is not enough to explain magic as illusion and distraction. Magic is a flirtation with the unknown and impossible. As far as the audience is concerned, this is as close to mystery as we can come. As in dreams, mystery is best explored with humor. Children will laugh while they wonder.

Childrens magicians are fun. The magician likes to bring the magic really close to the audience. The birthday child will be the star of the show. A good magician will puzzle and bamboozle right up close. Magic is comic performance. It is hucksterism. But no one should forget that magic derives from mystery. We never want to admit it, but the children and the adults in the audience always hope that the impossible really happens. The audience helps the magician and the magician brings the audience the wonder that they all wish for. Nobody really wants to know how it's done.

The best magicians are raised in the craft. It's entertainment with a bit of gypsy-ism in it. Many come from families of magicians. Many develop an interest at a very early age and master their craft over a lifetime. Amateurs can buy many magic tricks in stores and master them quickly, but a true professional can show the audience something new and will do it with a flair that brings their audiences to their feet. Like circus performers, magicians bring a slightly off-beat quality to their appearances. We like to think of them as coming from a different, maybe exotic place. Many professional magicians really do meet this expectation. They are kind and funny and loving but they appear not to live among us but to come from a place where they obtain secret wisdom.

We laugh. We are told that they distract us and toy with us. They hypnotize us. But we want them to be so much more. And they are. They entertain us by reaching beyond our ordinary logical experience.

Hannah's Tooth Fairy

Huzzah

by Anna Yin


Anna is a brave poet with Chinese origin, who writes in English and Chinese. She lives in Toronto Canada.  Anna is well recognized for her poetic commentaries on current events in Toronto. She is the recipient of several prizes. I am proud to be her internet colleague.  According to Anna, this poem was written about me.--Don Schaeffer
.

.
Every few days or so,
he sends his short poems.
New and ink-dripping,
rarely making a ripple…
Occasionally I open them, seldom reply.
I suppose he sends each to many of us-
the various busy and lonely souls.
.
Now snow is here;
the trail is quiet.
I spread a few biscuits around.
No bird at all.
No bird—
only us!

Farm House

 

by Josh Koubek

 

 

Twenty-Thirteen

by Josh Koubek

Josh is an occasional poet as well as a gourmet cook and bike rider.


I never used to believe in numerology.
Then I wrecked my
motorcycle and I lost
my job.
But when I met
you I knew I was
right all along.

Skyscraper City

by Marc Schaeffer quoting his daughter, Hannah

Marc is my son and Hannah my first granddaughter (age 5).

Hannah and I walked to her school today (half an hour or so). She sang for the first 20 minutes -- a song about how when she lived in "Sky Scraper City" (a place she often talks about as her second country) she was a grown up, grew old and died.. and then someone came.. and picked her up.. and.. placed her in her Mother's belly. That she was "reborn". (Her words). Gave me shivers.. it was a beautiful song.

Klingon Medicine

by Joshua Koubek

 

 



korjax

magok

 

Josh is a dyed in the wool Trekie who owns a tv remote in the shape of a phaser. His fascination with future science is demonstrated in this short piece.

 

When a Klingon warrior is seriously wounded in battle, say a vital organ has been compromised, a special piece of armor is applied over the wound. It's called a korjax. Depending on the nature of the wound and its location, the soretek, a Klingon healer will select the appropriate korjax to treat the wound.

The korjax is more than just armor. It is a functional medical device which has been inoculated with eggs and larva of the magok. The magok are similar to gok, the live worms eaten at traditional Klingon victory feasts. While the gok are harvested from the viscera of slain enemies, the magok act as tiny surgeons, eating away dead tissue and secreting an antiseptic mucus. What's more, after the the larva feed they emerge from the wound, at which time they are consumed by the ailing warrior.

The magok provide not only sustenance but also contain psychotropic and anesthetic compounds assisting the warriors journey to recovery.

A Southern Town

by Tom Prime

Tom has appeared here before. He is a latter day beat poet, brimming with energy, searching for regeneracy, self-defense, and self-destruction. This is one of his shorter works. Tom is a magic, mystical free spirit. His writing reflects that.

I grew up in a southern town. My cat meows at the bathroom door. He meows and he meows but I won’t let him through, because he wants to eat the paint that’s chipping off the wall. The paint is chipping off the wall, because I shower in hot water and the hot water seeps into the skin of the walls. There’s no internal fan in my apartment. I have a portable one, but it isn’t plugged in. I use it in the summer, when the days are too hot and the air eats at your skin like old age or hydrochloric acid.

 

I grew up in the south of the city of Detroit and the air was molten lava, maybe that’s just what I wanted it to be. I’ve seen some terrible things. I’ve done bad things. I’ve seen the end of the world in the eyes of hopeless people drifting off to sleep in their little dune buggies in space; their little dune buggies that ran away from the molten lava faces. I guess I pre-ambled a bit; it was only because of my inherent negativity. I wish that I could be more uplifting, like a carnival wheel that keeps on spinning, spinning on through the effervescent night.

I killed a small fortune of aliens from mars. No I am not, as some would call, crazy. I am an overweight butterfly, floating across the great expanse of the ocean. The ocean is wild like the butterfly but it is inherently capricious like a power hungry lover, drifting in the mire of discontent. I want to guarantee to everyone that the product that I am selling is worth buying.

I collected the words from the thoughts from the migrations of the birds from the supercilious men with their political smirks. I told them what to think. I made it clear to them that I was a diversion. I would help them run away from who they were, by being me. I was the mess that coagulated like too much fat from a cheeseburger, or the way my cat licks water loudly and my refrigerators hums like an overweight maid with haemorrhoids.

   

The Guest: A Story

http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/attachment.php?aid=1324

Everything is Fine: A short-short story (in process)

Generally nice, feeling he was, thinking he was a negotiator who could obtain any reasonable agreement and could find any likeable compromise, Joseph really didn't know who he was. His true identity, how he was actually seen in the world, was kept a secret from him.

Joseph lived a very quiet life. He slept alone, awoke in fuzzy fantasies which stretched out from his dreams. The day was loaded with rituals and appetites. The knife edges of give and take rarely penetrated even the outside of the outer armor boundary layers.

Joseph thought about how he cleans everything up, as if he were not there. Everything spent on Joseph, he would pay back,. He would drink little and take only one plate, cleaned after each meal with water that would have flowed anyway. He was a healthy being, demanding nothing of the future. When I say goodbye, Joseph thought. I will not leave a residue, nothing added or taken. All my body products will be returned to the earth. The products of my brain are stored in atoms easily reprogrammed or written on paper which melts in the rain.

 Joseph couldn't speak in the fog. It lubricated space, stuffing space. Voices couldn't vibrate this air. Doorbells couldn't ring. The telephone sat uselessly with all it's gay little red lights un-winking. Joseph felt the containment of his space. He was free but so cold. Freedom was cold, all his pathways were trod in the snow.

Joseph dared to wish for winter to be over. Even though he didn't want to wish away any precious hours. It's just that in the spring he could walk. His vision could stretch itself over human-populated streets and he could hope for sound.

Far away were the warm warrens where voices were breathed, breath intermingled with breath, friendliness continuously tested, results instantaneously fed back, voices made sense or no sense, but the real acts of living and dying took place. Joseph knew the people there. He had been there to see them although he was not one of them for many years.  He couldn't remember when.

They have big cheeks. They want to stuff as many pleasures into the years as their cheeks can hold. They spend hours in the malls and streets laughing, their eyes sitting in that strange dark background that comes from paint and their hair delicate and clean, caught and moved by every breeze. They often keep their mouths open letting everybody see their pure pink tongues. So much fun, they are immersed in funny things and baubles. The groups of friends who know everybody, assume success and never get turned away. Forever, they will buy things that make no sense and sip the manufactured pleasure of seeing everyone notice. They will live forever. They will pack to the brightest avenues forever.

But Joseph knew how he was forever making nightmares out of the grit in the deepest basement bedroom of his heart. Even when he wanted to make fun, the fun he created made nightmares.
Joseph rolled out of bed. His room crowded with books but not books worthy of respect, junk books picked up at crumbled used book stores and thrift bargains from church basements. He rarely read books.

He made his way through corridors of  piles organized around his stuffed chairs. Piles became shrines in powder and cobweb. Joseph remembered the symbollism and made subtle but appropriate genuflections as he passed them.

Then he reached the exit. Joseph wore worn khaki pants and a thin jacket over a dark brown t-shirt. He reached over to a hook on the wall and pulled off a gray padded winter coat, slipped it on, opened the heavy door and went outside. The ground was speckled with dry snow. The wind came in blasts which threw the snow up over his face in waves.

Joseph was a gray man with an unkempt look. No one ever sampled his breath but nobody trusted it. Everyone wondered about his nights. Everyone imagined his bed was tossed and marked with dark bands. But even Joseph, who sleeps alone and eats alone and whose speech is unpracticed, even Joseph, in private, constructed wistful images of love.

Joseph made his way to the nearby Zellers Cafe. He had no friends there but the waitresses were sympathetic. This was about the only social life he needed. A word of recognition coupled with comfort food for an hour satisfied something very basic.

Joseph  was a regular at houses of social prostitution. He found them in many nearby businesses. He could enjoy them not tainted with the nuisance of immorality.  Many people made their living that way. In fact, there was a time, Joseph would admit that he would look for things to photocopy just so he could spend time with the engaging staff at the nearby stationary store.
  
Joseph was relieved when he left home. He needed to get away from the house where he spent so much of his life. The house was haunted by persons who were still living. Alone crouched under the couch, bounced against the damaged doors. Joseph kept heairng the voices of accidents.

He returned to the house just before noon, sat on the chair up against the kitchen table. He cried.

African Violet at Last

Review of Four Stories and Their Poems

 by David Fraser

 

In Four Stories and Their Poems, Don Schaeffer depicts three characters, Jacob, Morely and Moshe, who are searching through the remnants of their lives and their ideas. Jacob in the story, “When Marcie Died”, is attempting to define death. He knows of death, since in a lifetime it has been all around him, but he doesn’t know it in terms of his perception and his identity. Like all of us, once we know death, it’s too late to communicate it to anyone.

There is a sense of loneliness in his characters in each story. Jacob feels the need for people to join together, to be voices together, to have eyes to witness and share together. We see Jacob’s trapped existence, living with cats who are oblivious, who live their own lives in and around him as he goes about the routine of rising, brushing his aging teeth, and taking a daily shower. He is “a strange non-participating man, speaking an odd idiosyncratic language” and as an aged man, he becomes a person without a voice where “the routes to sunshine are cut off because he speaks.”

The poems between the stories thematically enhance the mood and message of each preceding story.

“small and selfish/. . ./I sit and wait/not knowing what to do.”

–        “The Creaking”

 

“When you refuse and disagree,/the light of the world/diminishes . . .”   

                         – “Social Media”

 

In the story, “Two Dreams” we find a sense of alienation with the character, Moshe. He is “half visible” shuffling “among creatures with raised eyes and straight determined looks.”  He is a ghost “not speaking up, not saying hello,” and “not knowing how to make his voice call up his visibility.” Moshe “never felt a hero in his own house” because of a career “marred by personal flaws.” He walks among shadows and he, himself is a shadow in a hollow world from which he has withdrawn.

The poems echo the alienation and the coldness of the world around him.

 

“They had dinner in the plastic cafeteria,

fitted to look like Acapulco,

which they would never see”

 

- “Wednesday Night Out”

 

and

 

“He cooperated with less than a whole heart,

half visible because

he couldn’t  take it for granted.

So the world never fully paid him.”

 

-          “Moshe”

 

 

Morely, a character in “The Complete Introvert”, likes to roll his eyes inside himself much to the annoyance of his wife, Jodi. The world he sees is full of tunnels; tunnels connecting buildings, connecting the natural world through its root system, tunnels inside his body, tunnels through his mother’s house, and through the air which are the passageways of escape.

In the poem “Quantum Foam” passageways or tunnels are the archetypal entrance ways and exits for birth and death.

In a sense the musings of Morely, the introvert, touch on metaphoric imagery. With tunnels we can’t help thinking of worm holes through space and time, liminal spaces and thresholds that go beyond the mundane existence of eating supper and doing dishes.

In the final story, “The Inverse Performer”, Moshe Goldberg rents an old theatre for three nights and pays each audience member a hundred dollars to listen, or if not listen, be present so he can affirm his existence with the dramatic presentation of his ideas. There is a fourth wall, that wall that separates the audience from the actor and the play that is not broken in this contrived scenario. The audience is a vague presence in the dark, separated from a mostly darkened stage and separated from the artist who is on the stage philosophizing metaphysically about existence and the great questions of life. The set-up for the three nights is as if quantum theory gets discussed by the right brain and the results are surreal as in a Samuel Beckett play.

Each story stands on its own, but each also layers on the others ii its tone of sadness and alienation, and the poems structurally bind the prose together in their concise glue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unexpected Flower

"Between":short short story

http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/Thread-Between-Short-short-story

The Mourning Words: Short short story

by Don Schaeffer


http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/Thread-The-Mourning-Words-Short-short-story?pid=85154#pid85154

Bears in Heckscher Park

Spring Horse

by Ruth Hill

 

 Ruth was raised in upstate New York. She sailed BC for five years, then settled in northern BC. Her writings were selected by The Litchfield Review, Level 4 Press, Ocean Magazine, Hastings International Poetry, Utmost Christian Writers, Lucidity, Georgia Poetry Society's Langston Hughes Award, Tom Howard Poetry, Word Catalyst, MODOC Forum, Senior Poets Laureate, Peace River Anthology, Dancing Poetry, and Arc Poetry. Ruth enjoys email from other writers.

 

I once found a spring,

which I saved, in case
I ever saw a crippled spring horse.

 

I did find a three-legged spring horse,
which I trailered home to fix.

 

I saved a thrown-away mop,

and shaped a new mane and flying tail.

 

I painted its saddle red.

 

Some movers threw it down,

and broke its little plastic leg.

 

On a woodsy walk I found a stump,

and carved it to fit inside the leg.

 

I took the horse off its stand to glue,

and left it outside to dry.

 

Someone saw a horse without a stand,

and threw the horse away.

 

Eventually I gave up finding

a replacement horse.

 

Upon moving to the nursing home,
I found again that little lonely spring.

 

This time its hopefulness eluded me.

 

 

Browns Road Hill

Moshe the Invisible

short story by Don Schaeffer

 

 

The kids gathered in Caroline's family living room for snacks. They lolled around on the rug and chairs. The girls challenged the boys to leg wrestling contests. It was chilly out in the late autumn. There were no leaves on the trees. But the room was warm. It was soaked in joy. It was taken for granted. All who were there, Kathy and Neil, Caroline and Nolan and Pete and unrecognized others invited didn't care about the climate.

When David arrived it was an accident. He rang the bell in ignorance. Caroline answered politely, greeting him. She didn't ask for his invitation.

Neil saw David enter and everyone heard him say, “Oh no.” This was the end of their joy. They all felt the cold from the inside of David's half visible body.

David never took it for granted. It was not granted. Not taking it for granted was David’s transgression.

When Moshe awoke from this dream the world around his bed shimmered in late summer moonlight. Ceres was not in the bed. He was in the guest room bed. He came to that awareness. Moshe had mixed feelings about sleeping alone. Maybe those feelings triggered the dream, maybe recollection.

He couldn't remember how he ended up where he was, tabulated into a household unit, counted along with the true residents of New York. He lived then among the creatures with raised eyes and straight determined walks. Then he met Ceres, a woman not a fantasy and lived as the estranged visions washed away in the years. But he was still only half visible because he couldn't take it for granted. He cooperated in the reality of the town and the country and the world but with obvious reluctance. Since he didn't do so with a whole heart, the world never fully paid him.

   Not speaking up, not saying hello, slipping half-seen in and out of shops and down streets, not knowing how to make his voice call up his visibility. He walked among those who chatter, those in fashion, those with noses pointed straight ahead, with human faces so completely recognizable as to declare themselves universal, flesh solid, uniquely real. They all took this for granted. Moshe did so with reservations. The slight hesitation in his mind, in his fingers, although not really articulate-able, was noticed. Moshe was the ghost of the town. Its walls were hollow, not quite owned by him.

It took Moshe ten years of graduate school to earn his Ph.D. He thought it exceptional considering his poor memory for names.

 

Moshe worked as a TSR. Telephone sales representative was his profession. Not what he planned and worked for. Failure was frightening and refreshing as he came down.

At Re-Tel Corporation International selling telephone donations for minor charities that needed that kind of help he was part of a troop of telephone headset wearers, long evening hours bent over a monitor that spit his script out at him as well as bits of history. Selling was frightening, a flow of human voices giving and not giving, under the hot light of chance. Moshe always thought that chance was the language of God. He tried to measure his regeneracy by his sales, a gambler's preoccupation, watching waves of numbers on display, flowing through the hours and minutes, envy and embarrassment.

Moshe sold for half-legitimate mortgage banks, credit card companies, low legitimacy financial schemes, absurd mail order offers with hidden clauses that had to be read quickly. He sold memberships and subscriptions, contract deals. Ten years of pretense fell to earth and ten years of raw labor of the heart.

Legally, the shift had to end by 9. It was completely night and the late autumn had shifted into cold as the would-be, might-have-been Moshe made his way to the glass bus shelter. He did feel like a citizen tonight, one among many. Those in the shelter, slightly hand-me-down and raw, everyday human products shared a metal bench or stood against the glass looking for buses. The wind managed to get under the plate glass and made him shiver. He feared a mild form of fear because of the shadows around him.

Moshe always saw himself as young, the youngest and most helpless in the room, even with his bald head, his graying sideburns and his old man beard. Apparent seniority and sophistication hid him and he rode around in his face and body like rajah in a tent atop an elephant.

 

On Wednesday evening when Moshe had off, while he waited for the fright of his next shift, he and Ceres went to the nearby casino. They had dinner in the plastic cafeteria, fitted to look like Acapulco, which he would never see in reality. They kept their expenses for gambling down to ten dollars. Each of them sat at a 25 cent slot and watched the flow of spinning fruit and diamonds. Here was Moshe’s hall of prayer. The slot machine was his prayer wheel, the word of God suspended in time directly viewable in wins and losses. He saw the hills and valleys of the hidden holy world.

 

                                                    

Free Life Drawing Class

Ten Minute Sketches

Tiny Bird

A Du Maurier:

by Tom Prime

This is micro fiction by a poet who has been in here with his distinctive style several times. Warning, he is very sad.






Back on the highway, when I’d hitchhiked with Nicole and October ate the last bits of meat left on the bones of summer, the sky was a smoke grey. The smudge of the sky held nothing but charcoal. It smudged out all the sunlight. The wispy quality of autumn clung to our hair and rosy knuckles. I’d wanted to quit smoking a week earlier, and had tried. I’d thrown a package of Drum rolling tobacco disdainfully into a puddle and in the cold wind where transport trucks clattered with angry pistons and the air smelled of diesel, we had watched as the reddish tobacco stuck out haphazardly like a lost toupee. I hadn’t smoked in a week and the dust and the carcinogens were beginning to expunge themselves in my yellowy spit. Our noses ran on annoyingly like late night television. She seemed to me to be my left arm. I had dreamt the night we’d slept in the semi-trailer of a transport truck that a car had torn off her right arm in a midnight accident, leaking like a slit open pomegranate with beads of blood through red and black plaid. A red middle-class pseudo-sports car pulled up. We got used to these new faces. He was as bored and drained by the fat leech of impending winter as we were. He offered me a smoke and I pretended to acquiesce, in hopes of eluding myself. I lit the cigarette with the push in electric lighter. A Du Maurier, I always thought that they tasted the way urine smells after drinking a Colt 45. I smoked it anyway. It was a sickly dizziness that deadened my face with a cadaverous ghostliness. The smoke like a serpent slipped down my throat into my veins and I felt emptied, nothing mattered then. I thought of Nicole as the smoke rose, then I inhaled.