election 2020
fiction
edward w pritchard
Silent November summoned darkness
causing Mickey Newbury to drive his car off center stage
crashing into the littered floor of empty auditorium
until secret snow awakened us to pick up the wrecked twisted pieces
of deserted vehicle as spinning tires slowly returned to normalcy
silencing the unlit house lights stage left
Annie says men be nice to the women in your lives
fiction
edward pritchard
Annie Oakley says men be nice to the women in your lives.
Born Phoebe, Annie suffered and fretted as a child and teenager. Many a morning living on the border of Ohio and Indiana in the 19th century she stood with Jupiter to her back and looked West to where cold red Mars drooped in the Western sky and dreamed of a life of freedom as a pistolero. Still Annie never used her marksman skills to do evil like Wild Bill or Doc Holiday.
Two hundred times Annie shot a cigar or cigarette out of her husbands mouth in the Buffalo Bill show and always remained a demur lady. Once it was rumored chief Sitting Bull bowed to the little lady out of respect. Men be kind to the Women in your lives.
I wonder if Phoebe cooked, cleaned and sewed.
What happened to Franny laying on the couch
fiction
edward w pritchard
Sometimes I wonder what happened to Franny Glass laying there on the couch in the old sprawling
Manhattan apartment, and what happen to the painters that same late morning, and did those painters
ever get
their work done of sprucing up the walls of the Manhattan apartment that Bessie and Les Glass rented
so so long ago. Franny was a lovely girl. I remember she would mumble incessantly as she said the
pilgrims prayer over and over laying on the couch with a heating pad and a small book clutched
tightly
into her prayer folded hands. Franny reminded me a bit of W. Glass her older brother, a twin who
died years ago. W glass' eyes would tear up if someone said it looked like rain according to Bessie.
Fainting for the first time late in life's journey
fiction
edward w pritchard
Recently I had the experience of fainting for the first time late in life's journey while sitting utterly alone at a medical test in a still darkened hospital room at 8AM and despite the half dozen or so in panic Doctors and nurses rushing to revive me I experienced a calm serene moment or two similar to being a young child. As perhaps my temporary loss of consciousness being the spirit leaving the body I was later reminded of Saint.John's of the cross' famous poem
I abandoned and forgot myself,following clayton Delaney
fiction
edward w pritchard
One day all of us must follow Clayton Delaney and pass from the Earth. As songwriter Tom T Hall says,
like Clayton, it's OK if at the end when you are suffering and dying it's fine if you finally get religion.
For me , I go out a Pantheist, in the style of Spinoza.
More and more lately, when I wake up early in the morning, I spend a minute or two, listening through an East facing open window, for the sound of the Universe expanding in all directions.
Men from New York in expensive hats
fiction
edward w pritchard
When will the men from New York in expensive hats stand outside the stock exchange with grim looks on their faces? Waiting, waiting for someone to fix things.
Over the last couple of hours the NASDAQ futures stock index took an ominous decline in over night action. Looks to me like there is a lot of hot air in the tech stocks of late.
I prefer women in hats and predict that if the stock market gets itself in a mess this October the ladies in hats will be standing worried right besides the men there in New York Manhattan this fall.
Rioting in an american memory play
fiction
edward w pritchard
I am concerned that this rioting recently occurring in america cities will disrupt the apartment and glass menagerie collection of our casual friend Laura Wingfield of St Louis, Mo. As you may recall the apartment can only be entered by the fire escape and due to Laura's brother not paying a recent electric bill the apartment is temporarily without electricity.
I am worried that Laura will trip and fall in the darkness partially caused because of the electric bill situation and from complications of her bad leg. If I could get over to the St.Louis of the 1940's America I would take an old paint brush and paint a red cross on the door of the Wingfield apartment at the fire escape entrance so the rioters would know that the people living there are one of us; good Americans a little down on their luck.
Perhaps if anyone reading this gets over that way, to St Louis in a memory play of the 1940's written by Tennessee Williams they can help Laura Wingfield, also known as Blue Roses, sign up for disability because of her bad leg and the anxiety caused by her inability to properly entertain gentlemen callers. Although I only know Laura casually I often worry about her and her Mother living there alone in St Louis where nothing ever changes for a poor family living at the top of the fire escape in a dusty old apartment with no electricity and only a glass menagerie collection of horse and unicorn figurines for entertainment.
