Baseball Time, by Donald Hall

Donald Hall's inimitable essay on the suspension of linear time via the game of baseball, which first appeared in Southern Humanities Review in 1986 and which I narrated for the same publication in 2018.

Nostalgic Cheap Motel (Parts I-III)

Flash fiction which first appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of Matador Review.

Excerpt: He disappeared into the bathroom of Nostalgic Cheap Motel, locking the door and checking it twice. Retrieved the gun metal tweezers from his Dopp kit and assumed the position in front of the mirror. Tiptoes, leaning now, over the sink, far in. Close enough for a Narcissus kiss. He plunged the tweezers into the crater over his right cheek, fishing for whiskers that just weren't there. Nostalgic Cheap Motel asked what he was doing.

'None of your business. Go away. You're not even supposed to be able to be in here with me. It's against the rules.'

'What rules?'

'The rules posted on the door! The placard. The statement on the innkeeper's liability and the addendum about the strong box and the fire exits and weekly rate and the fine print about staying the fuck out of the bathroom while I pluck my biggest pockmark.'

'I'm not the innkeeper.'

The Chimney Effect

Fiction which first appeared in the Winter 2016 issue of Midwestern Gothic.

Excerpt: She began telling me about herself. 'You know our ancestors were the first people to walk on the Moon. It had nothing to do with Neil Armstrong or NASA. Nothing at all. Your great great great great great grandmothers were the first. It took hundreds of generations of trial and error to get there. Many, many members of our family died on that quest, but they finally made it. They had colonies up there. Agriculture. Farms. They farmed beans on the moon. They had a thriving steel industry. Lakes, rivers, waterfalls. Luscious jungles and hot springs. And all of it—ALL of it—unknown to the citizens of the Earth. Those colonies respected their people, respected their ideas. For six decades they thrived on the Moon with respect for one another. Then Neil and Buzz had to come and screw it all up.'

The wheelchair got stuck in a minuscule ditch. I kneeled next to her to extricate it, lacerating my knee on an unseen rock. She leaned close to my ear and whispered, 'I'm never giving that land to your father.'

Ka-dy Comes Home

Documentary short. Official selection: Detroit Free Press Film Festival (2016), National Black Film Festival (2017). Light-heavyweight boxer Ka-Dy King comes home to Detroit to visit the abandoned Kronk gym and reconnect with his boxing family.

Jerry, Hung Up on the Rocks Near Wheeler

Fiction which first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of SHANTIH Journal.

Excerpt: Oh, the Mighty Pine River! Life was a lot simpler then. There were no investments to worry about and no golf to learn. No gym membership fees and no lines to wait in. No buttons to push and a summer's worth of cigarettes to steal from the old man's stash in the glove box of the Dodge Dynasty. A warm hiss of memory flooded over him in temporarily soothing waves. He might have stayed like that forever but when he couldn't remember the fourth magic ingredient of the carp bait he and his friends used to make he decided to sail back and find out. 'What on earth was it? Peanut butter, beef tallow, granola, and...aw hell." He pulled a little six-inch souvenir model of a lake freighter out of the shopping bag and set it on a parking lot crack. Then he climbed aboard and headed downriver.

Another Winter Under Water

Fiction which first appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of the Magnitizdat Literary

Excerpt: Claudia pulled her beloved saddlehorn from her pocket and handed it to Mama Julie. She was excited. She'd only just been handed down the knife and had yet to be in a situation where it was needed. Mama Julie opened the blade and sliced through the top layer, from head to toe. She began unwrapping.

The girls hovered in this deep woods operating theatre as the wrappings came off and Mama Julie held the purple infant up for examination. Two cherubic feet were still detectable but the legs had fused together into a single, gelatinous mass. The arms were crossed tightly and fused to the chest. The hairless head had the vaguest face visible: the mere suggestion of eyes; a shadow where a mouth once was. Mama Julie knew she had bad news and conjured up one of Great Grandma's dicta: when you've got bad news, deliver it quick.

Suite: Billy Gutz

Video literature which first appeared in issue 17.4 of Iron Horse Literary Review