I have tried to work with Bluehost my server gods here but the site is almost unusable due to no fault of my own. I have been a customer of theirs for over 15 years but I can’t work with a company that cant get a simple site like this to load. I am done giving them hundrends of dollars a year for this nonsense especially when I can do most things on socials. I have created a little free bio webpage for myself and to keep track of my writings and other creative endeavors here.
Also Mucky Mondays is already scheduled here till the site expires in July so you can try and fight this traffic nonsense that bluehost is doing with shared servers here or you can continue reading along with us at the new awesome quickly loading site.
I will lose a lot of stuff when this site goes down, over 15 years of writing about random things, but It’s time to stop feeding bluehost money for services that don’t work.
Thanks to YouTube and the algorithm, I’ve become obsessed with Appalachian folklore. I’ve trailed 14 states without ever having set foot in any of them.I’ve learned the rules of no reply. I’ve dug a little deeper and become familiar with brown mountain lights. I grew up with folktales around campfires while sparks passed between old hearts and new ears. I’ve been watched by eyes in the forest. Ghosts in war paint. But now I know not to wander through the woods between dusk and dawn. The land remembers. Collects impressions like portraits and I’ve left impressions of my own.
Donna Faulkner lives in an old cottage in Rangiora, New Zealand.Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. Her work has been published in The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Takahē: Hua/ Manu,Tarot Poetry NZ, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and others.
He’d been invisible, subhuman even. It’d boiled over last week on a rare day shift when Coleman had paged him. After five years at minimum wage as the night janitor, Donovan hoped against hope, promotion? Nope, a visitor had come to the most lucrative movie studio in the world with dogshit on his shoe and Donovan had been called to scrape it off the carpet – straight out of a Rolling Stones song, the command issued with zero eye contact.
But today, invisibility paid off. It’d been so damn easy. Three bungee cords and an old sheet was all it took, R2 secured in the bed of his beat-up truck. Donovan was sweating despite the chill of the February Los Angeles night blowing through the open windows. He shut the radio, he had no patience for today’s music, the 80s were proving to be as bad as the 70s. A Beatles song ran through his brain as thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel, his eyes darting from speedometer to rear-view mirror.
There were two problems. First, telling Carla. She’d probably yell and try to get him to bring it back. But maybe not. She’d cried when they’d sent Andrea to kindergarten in a Goodwill jumper, a faint stain on the front. The dinginess of their apartment, the nights of boxed mac and cheese. Him, a musician trapped as a custodian, her, a painter trapped as a waitress. They deserved this break.
Second, selling R2. It wouldn’t be like fencing stolen jewelry. But hell, this town was full of eccentric rich guys. He’d find someone. Eduardo worked on a landscape crew in the hills, told him stories over 50 cent Coronas about those people. He’d have to cut him in, but Eddy was good people, it’d be okay.
He drove down his alley past the garbage cans. Yeah, the unit past the garbage cans. He pulled into the tight parking spot and saw the light on in their tiny kitchen. Was Carla up? His watch read 2 am.
She nearly leapt into his arms. He breathed her warmth and took in the smell of her hair. Then pulled back, “Is everything okay? Andrea?”
Carla smiled, “She’s fine. Look.” She pulled something from the front pocket of her flannel shirt.
It was a check from a lawyer’s office, $1500, almost three months’ rent on this dump. He squinted at her. “It’s an advance. They want me to paint their whole office, mural style. It’s a thing now. They love my stuff.” Carla’s words came out staccato. “This girl at work knew someone who knew someone. Sorry I didn’t tell you, I never thought …” She fell into him, her tears wet on his neck. He remembered his secret. His eyes welled up. He shut them and held her tight.
“Donovan?”
He opened his eyes.
Police lights pulsed through their kitchen. In the corner, the strings of his steel guitar glistened red and blue on each rotation.
François Bereaud is a husband, dad, full time math professor, mentor in the San Diego Congolese refugee community, and mediocre hockey player. He is the author of San Diego Stories published by Cowboy Jamboree Press and the novel, A Question of Family published by Stanchion Press. He’s the fiction editor at The Twin Bill.
New one out today. My poem Alone with Frida is in the first issue of Lunar Sea Literary. The challenge. All the authors in this edition were tasked with making something based off this excerpt from Kahlo’s journal “No moon, sun, diamond, hands —
There’s no place for wildlife if animals like these roam the cities. The country is in on the precipice of it’s next riot and the dollar store is out of mouth wash. I used to think about places like Tunisia and Medellin when I thought this life was fair and these words would take me outside of ghettos and the last stop on the A train.
But those dreams leave your head first. There’s a quick first love and then the rest of your life. How much dollar pizza can one stomach take? Are these fair thoughts when you’re sitting in a theater the punks of Portsmouth managed to reclaim? I’m a lucky man. I wrote a book and then I got to see the country.
I brush my teeth on a deserted street and think about my father’s face when I told him I’d quit my union job and was driving 400 miles to read poems for six minutes in Ohio. The shopping cart bum passes in silence. His throat unslit, his eyes greyed by time. What’s the point of locking the car? There’s nothing of our lives anyone would want to steal.
The tears of an empire have dried up. We don’t cry. We’re not curious. Is there a girl in Tunisia who dreams of Los Angeles? American’s don’t even see America. But the sun still hangs over Portsmouth, the babies smile here like they do in every womb, and the single string of a violin sounds sad whether you’re on the rooftops or in the street, the last one to call a city home or the first one on the bus out
Scott Laudati runs Bone Machine with his dog in NYC. He is the author of Play The Devil and Bone Machine. Visit him anywhere @ScottLaudati. X: @ScottLaudat. Instagram: @ScottLaudati. Substack: @ScottLaudati.
