Single Line Short Stories
Untitled No.1
Today my grandmother asked me what my name was.
Untitled No.2
As he left, her tears turned to the rain that filled the Tennessee River.
Untitled No.3
I cut my hair before the chemo did.
Poetry
Him
In thirty years
we never traveled further
than three letters,
two cards.
It was midnight
and the thermometer glowed
crimson, 97°.
Dothan’s skyline simmered
as salt drifts billowed
from distant coastlines.
My skin tingled
from the embrace
of an unknown ghost
as a Chinook and Apache
raced between stars.
And just as I breathed in
the Alabama sky,
my wedged heel met
a colony of fire ants
leading me home.
Growing Up On Watts Bar Lake
You’re going to turn into a fish!
The four of us lived
on lake water
and jet ski gasoline.
We would lie
on weathered banks
while the boys chased dawn
from the no wake zone.
Hydraulic sprays baptized
our bronze shoulders
as summer’s salvation
churned in a
hydroelectric turbine.
But last week
when a bus rumbled past me
I could smell
the gasoline
And saw his jet ski
Belly up
Floating in pink shadows.
Frost in Late November
Clean and crisp
Moving in for
Its first kill
She Still Talks
About that summer
after high school
graduation.
Once, I caught her
tracing the highway
with sad, steady fingers
to the shores
of a distant coastline.
Underneath mounds
of papers, syllabi,
fiction novels,
I thumbed through
wrinkled pages
as grains of sand
escaped folds and creases.
Highway A1A
took us that summer
to the salty air,
the taste of home.
Melt
I never wanted you
to stay,
All you did
was piss and moan.
Wish I could
melt you away.
I couldn’t stand
to hear you play
Rocky Top
on your baritone.
And I hated
that cologne.
There will be hell
to pay-
Stop calling my phone.
I never wanted you to stay,
Wish I could melt you away.