![Profile avatar image for rlove327](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images.prod.theprose.com/user-70023-square-1571509915.png)
Potholder: A Love Story
Once upon Ye Olde English heath, as the door to her cottage swung open, Hildegard smelled burning. Her husband’s boot had crossed the threshold, he would expect dinner, and he would not want it to be burned.
Hildegard rushed to the hearth. She grabbed the dangling pot of stew and instantly, agonizingly, the metal seared her palms.
“Zounds!” she cried.
“Woman!” her husband remonstrated.
“Zounds, it hurts!”
“Hold thy foul tongue!” her husband roared. “Thou wilt not blaspheme in my house!” (For zounds, dear reader, derived from God’s wounds, a reference to the crucifixion of Christ, and to employ the torture of one’s Lord and Savior as an epithet was as shocking to a pious old Englishman as the lyrics of NWA would prove to his descendants' erstwhile colonists 400 years after.)
“But it hurts!” Hildegard cried. “Thy stew burneth, and the metal hath proved too hot for my tender hands!”
“Stow thy pitiful excuses!” her husband retorted. “Find thyself a godlier path, or never again look me in the face!”
Hildegard departed. She wept even after she treated her second degree burns at the home of a crone who practiced homeopathic medicine, for Hildegard loved her husband, for some reason, or at least loved having a roof over her head to escape the goddamned English rain. To keep her husband roof husband, she needed aid, so Hildegard set out to a person who could set her on a godly path.
“Woman, why dost thou weep?” the Archbishop of Canterbury asked.
“Forgive me bishop,” Hildegard answered. “I hath displeased my husband.”
“How?”
“With an ill word.”
“What ill word did thee speakest?”
Hildegard hesitated. “I said, Zounds, your bishopness.”
“Jesus,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury, “that’s fucking awful word. Why wouldst thou say such a thing?”
“I burned my hands, your bishopness. On a pot. Heaven help me, if I don’t find a safer way to hold a pot, I might blaspheme again, and my husband will disown me. Is there any hope for such a disgraced wench as me?”
“Let us pray.”
And Hildegard and the Archbishop knelt and prayed, and, i dunno, burned frankincense or something, and lo, the Holy Ghost sent them down a dove, which carried in its beak a thickly woven fabric, and they gave thanks to the Lord.
“Almighty God,” asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, “what wouldst You, in Your Infinite Wisdom, have us call this thickly woven fabric with which to hold pots?”
The candles flared, the stones of the cathedral shook, the Archbishop wet himself, and a voice from the heavens boomed, “A potholder.”
And so Hildegard carried the potholder home, and gave knowledge of it unto other women, and prepared many delicious stews without burning her hands, which meant she never again said the unforgiveable zounds, which meant her husband loved her, five times a week whether she were in the mood or not, and she bore many children and had a roof over her head to protect her from the goddamned English rain, and they all lived happilyish ever after until the plague destroyed their bodies and minds.
The End.
They call her fickle
Listen,
the muse sings to the
pulling of weeds, to the
piling of bricks, to the
scrubbing of plates.
The muse sings to the
earthbound, to the occupied,
to souls in revolt against
menial days. Silent cries
beckon loudest, prayers and
invocations be damned:
the muse will not be summoned
and scorns intention. She
cares nothing for your plans,
laughs at your blank page,
pisses on your offerings.
She will not bless self-anointed
poets who ransack corpses
for metaphors.
So move forward. Live.
Be about your business, turn
the grindstone, then breathe.
Breathe. Listen.
The muse sings to those
hungriest for song.
Brushing Sand
Answer number one: it was beautiful, and then it was dust, and then it was both.
I remember seeing the rover for the first time. I almost didn’t want to touch it, like it was holy, a bone from a saint. Then I stepped back and saw my bootprint next to it, and I knew, fully, where we were.
The four of us had studied Mars exhaustively for years and viewed every image, still or moving, dozens or hundreds of times. We had felt the sand that first sample-return drone recovered: a box of precious nothingness, 10 centimeters square, every grain analyzed and formulated by celebrated scientists. They learned so little from it. But what we felt, we chosen four who immersed tentative fingers within it, let it rest in the grooves of our fingerprints...
Full story newly published by NewMyths here: https://sites.google.com/newmyths.com/newmyths-com-issue-66/issue-66-stories/brushing-sand
Years ago, the early draft of this story appeared for a brief time on Prose. The response was favorable, and also included some criticism that helped me realize the story could be better. After a great deal of reworking, I am very proud to share the final, published version with my Prose friends. Thanks to all who commented on that early draft, but especially to TheWolfeDen, whose challenge inspired the story, and JD4, whose criticism was sharpest and therefore the most helpful.
Firelight
“I suppose I did
love her,” Braelyn said.
A log crackled, spit
glowing flecks against
the dark. She might have
had more to say, but
not to us.
I sat with Ashley in
tree-broken moonlight
watching her sister,
drinking. Ashley leaned
close, shared my jacket
while the fire fell. We
cooked nothing and told
no stories. We sat with
Braelyn, watching embers
fade to ash.
March 11, 2024
Servant of the Servants of God
The angry ground stopped the prelate’s quill. He had no means of protecting himself and hugged his scroll to the lectern while the earth shook. Each seated man leapt from his chair except Pope Formosus, whose long-dead corpse slid to the basilica’s stone—an indignity that wrenched the prelate’s heart, but His Holiness would denounce any man who rushed to Formosus. The violent shaking jolted the former Pope over the floor, leaving putrid smudges of black on the marble.
A roar impelled the prelate to turn, and he saw fragments explode from the last of the nave’s roof, smashing against the pews and the floor. Then blocks of wall ripped free until whole sections tumbled onto debris...
Full story available here: https://sites.google.com/view/sundial-magazine/short-stories/servant-of-the-servants-of-god - Many thanks to the Ashley Murphy of Sundial Magazine for publishing the piece. Hope you enjoy it, everyone - the Cadaver Synod is far too crazy a tale for me to have made up.
Character is Everything
"Do you swear in your writing?" is not really the apt question. It is more illuminating to ask, "Do my characters swear?"
Some do. Some don't.
My story "Rideshare" follows an angry, shallow, and lonely young corporate type . Here he is, drunkenly offering his Uber driver money to hang out with him:
“Look… Luis—glad your fucking nametag’s there—Luis, Bill Murray is the coolest guy in the world. Hands down. There’s this night out in LA, Bill Murray is going to a club or a movie or wherever the fuck a Bill Murray goes, and he takes this cab and the driver says he plays the saxophone, but Bill Murray talks to him and learns that he never gets the time to play. So Bill Murray says, drive to your apartment and get your fucking saxophone, and then they drove to a parking lot someplace and Bill Murray pays this guy for a whole night so he can just listen to him fucking play the saxophone on the hood of the cab. Now I’m not as cool as fucking Bill Murray, but I got some cash, man. How much you make in a night?”
He's glib. He's boastful. He makes a show of how impressive and manly he is because he tries, desperately, not to reveal what he really feels. (Full story here: https://www.sleetmagazine.com/selected/love_v13n2.html) He swears the way a child would, peppering his speech with an excess of profanity that does not make him as tough as he thinks. The Uber driver never swears once. He is a family man, empathetic and grounded. They are different people; if they are to be real, they need to talk differently.
By way of contrast, here's William Mumler in my yet-unpublished novel, justifying his practice of photographing people with deceased spirits:
Mumler watched the flame, coming forth steadily from the brass.
“Jonah told as destined. He gave the people the message they needed from the Lord,” Mumler said. “The Almighty knows all: my sins, your sins, what will become of us, what would become of Jonah and the Ninevites. Though He knew He would spare the city, He suffered Jonah to spread the message of its destruction. A small untruth in service of a greater truth.”
He appealed to Guay’s unmoving face. “Prophets must serve the truth. That is what I have learned. One cannot choose to be a prophet, Mr. Guay. One cannot choose even the details of the message. The truth chooses the prophet. There are spirits, manifesting in this new age. We must serve that truth, or we will be swallowed.”
If a profane syllable left that man's tongue, his entire character would crumble like a clay-footed statue. In a moment of crisis that could destroy everything he holds dear, my Mumler might use the word "damn," though if anyone heard, he would feel shame.
The character, the narrative, the style determine the language I use in my writing. I am perfectly content to write an academic analysis, or to drop an f-bomb if it makes a joke funnier. I'll write that businessman out on a bender or that photographer who reads his Bible nightly. My task is to write them true.
Coda
Cockroaches survived, and some people, who are cockroaches plus presumption, but not much else. Grass burned or grew unnibbled; forests decayed; oceans lolled to and fro, breakerless.
Twelve months after, a crab came to shore. The news reported that, and then another, another, so it could not be a fluke, and so the people came. These survivors tented on beaches for weeks or months, and if they were very good or very lucky or prayed enough to their gods, a crab might scuttle ashore. The watchers would hush. They would hoist the few children to see. They would gaze on the claws and bead eyes, weep, remember the world.
7-Eleven Cighartha
Buddha downed his Big Gulp in
two mighty sips as I, cretinous
creature of line end, dug madly
for crumpled bills and change,
change, and the Buddha said,
“The trouble with you is,”
and he snapped into his
Slim Jim for dramatic emphasis,
no doubt, leaving me—
who had so recently struggled,
cosmically, with forces so great as
Starbucks and the Arizona Iced
Tea Company and their warring armies of
flavors—leaving me
to madlib his profundity with troubles
(stupidity, sloth, an
indifferent God, parking violations)
too many to name, hanging
on his words while the
register ceased to ring and the
Slurpees ceased to melt, until,
“the trouble with you is,
you think you have time,”
the Buddha said, smiling
beatifically, paunch sagging free,
“motherfucker, time has you.”