Original Short Fiction: The Letter My Father Never Wrote Me
Sean MurphyI'm grateful to the excellent literary magazine Palooka for giving a home to my very short piece "The Letter My Father Never Wrote Me." If you like what you see,…
The Whiteness of the Whale: Remembering The White Album (Revisited)
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar…
Poem: To the ones that got away
Gratitude to Gyroscope for publishing this one (2017). To the ones that got away It wasn’t me, it was you. Accept this affirmation as the tardy alibi of an…
Something More Than a Superhero: Appreciating Stan Lee
Anyone who has written with some modest degree of success eventually, inevitably, is asked how they got started, who inspired them. My typical, and not untruthful answer, is that Stephen…
Poem: Joey Kocur’s Fist
Gratitude for Sport Literate for publishing this one (2016). Joey Kocur’s Fist Imagine a piano pounded to the point where its ivory bones are chipped. The black keys leaking…
Born In The U.S.A. or, Every Day Is Veterans Day (Revisited)
I. Personal Remember when Born in the U.S.A. was ubiquitous? The album and the song. Bruce was already big, but he wasn’t over the top. Born in the U.S.A. put…
You Want To See Something Really Scary?* 10 Horrific Scenes for Halloween
First off, a confession of sorts: scary movies don't scare me. Or, to put it less bluntly, as a one-time horror movie aficionado, I quickly outgrew the ways gore supplanted…
The Fall Classic: 30 Years Ago
I don’t believe what I just saw! No one else in the room could believe it, either. Kirk Gibson had, before our eyes and on television, done something so improbable,…
Mail Bombs, MAGA hats, and The Genius of the Crowd
Charles Bukowski has long been an easy target, especially for the insufferable and self-appointed insiders of the literary scene. Sure, the macho posturing (although this dude at least knew how…
Bill Buckner, Mookie Wilson and Me (Revisited)
I've never been able to appreciate the aesthetic perfection (that is to say, the perfection of baseball's most imperfect play; it's most jarringly incongruous moment) because it was too painful.…