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Anyone who imagines that the Protestant Reformation was a liberal revolution, was about being at liberty, is seriously mistaken. There was not one Protestant reformer that was not reactionary. They were inordinately conservative movements, with conservative motives and impulses. The Puritans in America were anything but about freedom as we might want to understand it … Continue reading Action, Reaction, the Synthetic Fabric of Reform in America

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Some things about Gerrymandering we might need to consider--one of these is that it does not only need to be used to help politicians--it can be drawn to protect groups that might otherwise be displaced by gentrification. Now how can Gerrymandering be used to protect groups who would otherwise be underrepresented? If Gerrymandering were to … Continue reading Some Notes on Gerrymandering

It is not that I liked or did not like the projected image of Donald Trump naked and pregnant being embraced by a naked Putin from behind, but that I appreciated living in a country where that was possible--and I do not believe that anyone in Public Office has the same rights when representing that … Continue reading Naked and Pregnant

Politics in America has become a quagmire? I ask . . . we like to interrogate the truths of our world rather than assert them declaratively. I prefer "we" when I requires more courage or confidence than I can muster at the time. Washington is a swamp, we have liked saying; we have repeated this … Continue reading Where Have You Gone Al Smith?

Is it too dis-respectful to say that thinking about Donald Trump as President is equal to imagining a chimpanzee running around a zoo with a loaded gun? I do not want to be disrespectful; it is just so damn hard not to be when he invites it as he does nearly every time he opens … Continue reading Respect is Spectacle Again?

Dark Age does not mean there is no sunlight, that the sun does not rise and set, that summer never comes, that everything is obscure under clouds and shrouds, terminally gray, as I had said once of ten days in Paris when the sun did not shine. Even in what we once referred to as … Continue reading THE DARK AGES ARE NOW [Notes, notations, notices]

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Totalitarian structures in a society need not only be aligned with Communism, a failure on American Political Science to grapple with this as ideas trickle and seep through the rocks of American ideology (?), American journalism (?), common parlance in America? Yes, and yes, and yes again, only without the gain I would hope understanding … Continue reading 4 or 5 Reasons Why We Live in a Totalitarian Capitalist America

The same people who chant nearly monosyllabically about one person one vote say nothing when it becomes apparent that our Senate does not have enough of a Republican majority to push repeal of Obamacare through. The same framer who gave us the Electoral College, gave us the idea that a 2/3 majority should be necessary … Continue reading How You Talk Out of Both Sides of Your Mouth When You Talk Electoral Politics

Is Chicago indicative? The only thing Chicago is indicative of is what it is indicative of, that there are people capable of what these four were capable of, and that that is Human inhumanity to another human. We are always going to find, to stretch, to force fit one or another accident as a pattern. … Continue reading How Human is Human?

The CEO of EXXON as Secretary of State protecting our interests only brings back in my historical recollection the U.S. Oil companies selling oil from Mexico to Nazis Germany; oil company subsidiaries drilling in the Gulf offshore from Mexico run by U.S. boards of oil companies. Love the idea that oil will not sell us … Continue reading 10 Reasons You Should be Concerned about America’s Political Contemporaneity

I came across a post on Facebook by Occupy Democrats, and it was of a white working class man with a text-over caption that was grossly over-generalized, and if it had been framed for another purpose, any other purpose, contextualizing another non-white male, it would have or could have easily, while remaining as overly generalized … Continue reading Why Even the Solutions to Democratic Party Failures will Fail

State legislature role in determining Electors who gather to Officially select our President only shows us how important State elections are, how significant it is to vote conscientiously for your State Assemblies and State Senate. I am tired of continued mis-representation of the Electoral College or knee-jerk responses from either Democrats or Republicans who express … Continue reading What You Don’t Know About the Electoral College

The Electoral College actually does have everything to do with the election. Once more, there is no reasonable explanation for assuming we live our lives Federally, when in fact most of everything we do is defined, managed, ordered, disseminated by our States. If we are not willing to investigate the form of government we have, … Continue reading When There’s Even More You Have Not Considered About the Electoral College

What I see and hear from many on the Left in repsonse to Trump scares me as much as Trump and his supporters do because of how easily the former are and have been baited by the Right, and how lazily and reflexively these same champions of the Left have been reaching into their bag … Continue reading When You Play Ping Pong with Slogans and Hop Scotch with the Truth for too Long, You Get Trump and Hilary

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The soul of the people and the anti-soul of the governmental administrators are mutually exclusive entities metaphysically as well as being antagonistic players in any drama performed physically in… Source: Soul & Anti-Soul

I read Keillor's commentary piece in the Washington Post tonight (it appeared on Wednesday), and  I wanted it to be funnier, but then decades of systematic under-eduaction and enforced semi-literacy have made his left-leaning readers and listeners a lot less able to handle the once more pristine ironies. I guess he knows his audience, and … Continue reading How Garrison Keillor Remains a Status Quo Mouthpiece in The Washington-Clinton Post

Imagine a very large rectangle drawn on a piece of paper with a line equally dividing it in two; one side Left and the otherside Right, and I mean that politically. Then take a smaller rectangle also equally divided in two, one side Democrat and the other Republican. Then imnagine two lines, one above the … Continue reading When the American Political Party Diagram Shifts Entirely to the Right

It has been American Liberalism as it has transformed itself over the last half century that most vehemently attacked the notion of a capital 'T' Truth, attacked the rhetoric of traditional humanism abandoning us to relativism, situational-ism and topical-ism in our social ethics, government responsibilities, political decisions, fiscal management. We decided to throw the puppy … Continue reading How Trump Happened to You

Go to Michael Moore's Facebook page, that's Michael Moore Public Figure with his photo, and see what he posted for today, and see my comment to his post, which I for the most part agreed with, except his comment on the Electoral College System of voting for President, which in our endemic under-eduction in America, … Continue reading You and Michael Moore Today Are as Mistaken as Every Democrat was Yesterday

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I expect eager listeners. As we say, as I do, with reference to what I write, what I have written here, words on the page to be read, what does reading tell us, writing say, and it does say and tell as we know that chairs sit and tables rest and faucets run. A teller … Continue reading Up Our Asses; or, How to Swing an Election

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He speaks. And what he says . . . to say what he says or to bite his tongue and thereby end all discourse on the facts of Shakespeare--funny coming from one who imagines that facts are not possible to discern? That is not what he imagines, is it? But he does equate facts, facts … Continue reading How Gary Taylor Has Become a Prime Enemy of Western Civilization [a short story]

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There will always be an untotalizable sum in the irreducible individual human being. Every person is a sum greater than his parts, a sum greater than the numerically advantaged institutions, those of… Source: Non Totalizable Me

Prefatory Remarks He says what he says, saying things as he tells people things, the things he thnks he needs to say, things he imagines he should say, what thinking and imagining have in common he has not considered in too long he would say if he remembered, what memory has to do with saying … Continue reading When is the Question? I Think You Know the Answer

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Long time passing with questions that used to beget more trenchant questions. Yes,  I used to say that. I recall how many times I heard offered as a rebuttal: If you question this then you wind up questioning that and that and that. When does it end? I still have no idea what that means, what … Continue reading Where Have All the Questions Gone? prose fiction

An attempt at what others around him have called wisdom, not really knowing, he would think, what they were saying, simply using a word they had heard bandied about by others of the undergraduates who would have congregated in the English Major's Lounge when most of them were still very young, except myself, I say, … Continue reading What You Do Not Know About Conclusions [a tale, short-short fiction]

All Literature is Discourse but not all Discourse is Literary a short story   You know the saying about cognac and brandy, don't you? All cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is cognac.  I guess this is of no never mind, about brandy and cognac, about how all of the latter is the former but … Continue reading How Dylan Became What You Did Not Know He Was

Remember--what is there to remember? To be a member once again, of what, of where, of when, with whom? I genuinely ask, asI have suspected that I might not be doing such. Renewing one's membership--to be a member of society or not to be a member of society? Again, questions beget questions, and so on … Continue reading What is There for You to Remember?

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[A Short Story] 500 years ago this August, on the 9th day, Hieronymus Bosch was buried. Where was he buried? I imagine you ask. I say, I imagine, to you, as I make it up in mind, "I do not know where he was buried. In fact, I am not even sure if he died on the 9th … Continue reading Hieronymus Bosch Comes to Madrid [flash]

[A Short-short Story] A man not so unlike any other man . . . any man who may or may not be like me . . . and I recall realizing that I was exactly like my father in every way that I was different from him . . . different from any other man … Continue reading When You Become Other than Who You Are, and Where

On Tuesday, July 26, 2016, the US Army Corps of Engineers (“USACE”) approved the water crossing permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline, proposed to carry fracked oil from the Bakken fields in North… Source: Coalition Support of Tribal Lawsuits Against US Army Corps Permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline

  A crazy man speaks of his having discovered he was crazy in a world far madder than he, or so he wants you to think, thus believe, know in a way other than how others know the things they say they know for certain, what he says he was, what he says he has … Continue reading [poem]

"The cliche goes that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but even more dangerous than that is more and more knowledge without a corresponding wisdom," she said. Facts are facts never in themselves knowledge, arranged and collected as we often do, inarticulately. Knowledge in itself is never wisdom. Let us live wisely seems another … Continue reading You Can Hurt You A Lot

A man telling a story to another man At a bar in Brooklyn Sometime in the mid eighties or nineties, I think maybe I have conflated the persons Who were the principal actors in this recollection From when I was either three or two decades younger. I convey this in memory of our fathers, Of … Continue reading What is Past is Prologue [Poem]

She . . . I have heard it said in these and in other words that everything we think is all and only words, everything only a word. There are no things except but for words, I have heard and I have said; yes, words, ours, and words more, ours . . . ours of … Continue reading Than All the Books [short fiction]

Looming,  a word, a word I say, not just any word, this word in particular for the thing I name, am naming, what I do and what I am doing not the same thing, time, tense, aspect. Things in themselves only things, nameless things, how do we hold onto to our things, what do our … Continue reading November in My Soul

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From among the allegedly amazing people who follow my blog herein, how many have ordered a copy of my poetry collection, Land's End? Just asking. Because if you follow because you like, that should be appreciated, but then how appreciative should I be when your money is not put where your index presses. Sorry my many nameless … Continue reading A Message to My Followers

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I said He said--what did he say? "In the next revolution, we will have to shoot all the teachers." I paused. I then said, as I had the space to do so, and without hesitation caused by anticipating another speaking in the same space of time within which I went on to add: Why does … Continue reading Pedagogy is Propaganda

In a consumerist society, what is the pedagogic/educational equivalent of consumerism? Failure. In a society where little is made to last so we need to, thus expect to, buy again soon, a significant percentage of students failing is built into our pedagogy. CUNY for years kept its pass rate for its writing test, whether the … Continue reading Failure Meets Our Consumerist Designs

Herein please find the blog for The Falling Leaf Review, published on ISSU. You may find selections of poetry, of fiction, of essays, of commentary and of other literary excursions, if I may borrow from a lit mag I was involved in now nearly twenty years ago. Blog entries are what they are, and sometimes, … Continue reading What We Are

I A conversation between two women, friends, buying coffee with their babies in baby carriages blocking paths they are oblivious to having blocked in the cafe. Do you ever imagine that you have the acumen to understand another person? Why do you call it acumen? I don't get that. Why fix on the word? Because … Continue reading Another Moment in A Woman’s Life [Prose Poem]

You are as close as you will ever be, closer than you can imagine. . . . . and I could lament as my friend Jeremy had lamented, how fate has nothing to do with what I would like to believe I could imagine it does, without either a fair or foul discourse on methods … Continue reading Walking Shadow [A Short Story]

for Hamlet, My Brother, My Likeness; and for my special friend Oscar [and I leave it to you to figure out who Oscar is]   A man would certainly have to have a heart of stone, as Oscar had said, not to laugh at the Devil Himself in Hell. No? This is not it? What … Continue reading The Question [A Short Story]

Abortion is a Woman's Parachute   ONE When I was a boy, a boy not so unlike any other boy, whatever boy it was I knew, we knew, in our blue collar Catholic neighborhood--there were others living there too, no? Of course there were Protestants and Jews--for my parents Jews were not as invisible or … Continue reading A Woman’s Parachute [A Short Story by JVR]

Wire Hangers, Curtain Rods; Queers and Guns by jay V. Ruvolo I looked to the clouds gathering on the horizon . . . --Thomas Sarebbononnato Prologue To tell a story of woe, which story of woe? Whose? To write down what has been suffered, yet to choose by whom might be another mis-step. I trip … Continue reading Curtain Rods

Minutes waning. An oblique flash of moving from one gallery to another in the Rodin museum the last time I was in Paris ten years ago. All of piece together at once, no breaks in time or breath.  For a moment I was there enclosed by all that I had been subsumed by then, or … Continue reading The Afternoon We Spent at the Rodin Museum in Paris with Death [short fiction]

The Publishing Editor of The Review (a contemporary journal of ideas on the model of literary review commentary we have observed since the inception of the genre and form in the 18th century, if you will, as I do . . .) . . . he writes in his editorial post something on the nature of … Continue reading ch 3 Up [Fiction]

IMAGINATION IS ETERNITY I have presented many of Thomas Sarebbononnato's opinions through several blogs, the posts posted, the pages published in the Pages sections I maintain as one or another review I edit, have edited . . . there will be new ones that I will also edit, maintain, run . . .  as I have … Continue reading Imagination is Eternity? [fiction]

Accounting is necessary in business; it is necessary to keep one's economic affairs in order; it has had its affects on the history of writing, the first written documents were warehouse lists, no? This is not true, not accurate? Of course, it is. What do you imagine the rise of the novel would have been … Continue reading ch 3 Layer Cake [Fiction]

  Stars in space are as cells in mitosis, he heard her say, or so I would say he heard her say so as not to be seen  as someone who would say such a thing for himself. Each one formed by related processes, I would go on to say he heard her say, as … Continue reading Such Things as These [prose fiction]

The sun approaching noon, skies clear, a blue, crisp, a blue, pristine . . . sky unspoiled by humidity, dry today, as dry as sand, today, cliche sky, blue, nearly 0% humidity, you know---no clouds to speak of except thin wisps of cirrus . . .  What Ms. Stephens says, she says with pen and … Continue reading The Wake of a Wave Back into the Sea; or, She Wanted Lunch [Fiction]

I What is it that anyone can say about what he sees? Or what he hears? Or what he feels? Things to say about--what can anyone say? Yes, what words are there in the treasure house of words, words and more words, so much cacophony---there are only these words to say, to tell, to speak, … Continue reading The Shadows of the Bare Branches of the Tree on the Wall [A Short Story]

Alone at the shore. The wakes of high tide this morning reaching my feet, how so sitting, the sands, there I am dreaming you, day dreaming as I have, drawn horizons, other orisons, the prayers I le… Source: To Talk or not to Talk [Flash Fiction]

for all those who are befuddled by the fact that we have come to a place in our history where Hilary and Donald are the choices we present for President of the United States; talk about going to hell in a hand cart The Monologic Imagination by Thomas Sarebbononnato Our world has been so much … Continue reading ch 3 The Monologic Imagination [A Short Story]

Up to the Minute [A Short Story] How many minutes? How many minute-waning days? How are our days spent? Mine are spent in the minutes. We live life---I live life in the minutes, not the hours, not the years, not the days---weeks and weekends are absurd as well. Sun up to sun down. What do … Continue reading How Do You Spend Your Day When You Lose Count of the Minutes Passing? prose poem

How many more observations is he required to make---to take? What does it mean to make a mis-take? Ah! To take things the wrong way; which way; all ways. What he sees he says he has seen many times, even if he has seen it only once. There is little to no Truth in journalism … Continue reading Once Upon a Time; or, On the Nature of Diplomacy [prose poem]

Manhattan Puzzle; or, Matryoshka Dream [Short Story]   When I write the way I think a writer writes when he wants to have a narrator tell the story of a man who tells the story of another man telling the story of a man who exposes his sentiments about a bookstore's staff that he finds---why … Continue reading What Else Do You Have to Say to Me?

Ludovico Media I July 4th, 2016; 7:47 AM EST; New York City. Labyrinth and abyss. I have always imagined Alex in A Clockwork Orange singing "London Bridge is Falling Down." I do not think about why I have imagined thus. I have not asked the questions I would need to be able to--I have no … Continue reading Ludovico Media [A Short Story]

Excerpts [ . . . ] . . . and so he says, sipping his coffee this morning, not being able to enter the kitchen to have anything with his coffee, "Waiting for the man to finish putting in new tiles, really on, that is, over the old tiles. I do not know how long … Continue reading Tiles [prose poem]

Raising the finger to God. An interesting attempt at a reversal. However, God uses the index. Do you remember Michelangelo's panel on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, God's finger to Adam's? But then maybe Michelangelo showed us the index the way artists for millennia showed us the wounds in the palms. We know in fact that … Continue reading The Finger [poem]

To kill or not to kill, that might be a question, if not the question. Is it nobler to imagine a world where killing would be unnecessary? How many slings and arrows of fortune should I have to endure? Is it be better to end them by ending their source, or continue to sleepwalk my way through life … Continue reading 1 I Am, therefore I think [Short Story]

Note from the Editor: Pages from a philosophy student's notebook. No name. No age. No gender identification. July 1. The perfect human is the humane one, one who is endowed with the fullest faculties of his or her humanity intact, fully realized in his or her ability to be compassionate and forgiving, fully capable of loving … Continue reading All Too Human [A Short Story]

Everything herein is fiction, not so much because everything herein is a thing made, thus a fiction, but because everything here is written by a fictional self for a fictional audience in a fictional America. No longer me, no longer America, no longer us or We. No matter how much something reads as if it … Continue reading An ABOUT Page [prose poem]

  What is it that fiction should do? Should it do anything other than what it does, incidentally? Is there ever anything incidental about literature, the literary,or even the popular, or pulp, or any part of culture, any conduit, medium, any resulting exchange, reception, framing whatever have we to analyze, all analysis an anal-ization? Are … Continue reading Enabling; or, Ethnic Correctness [Fiction]

The Letter [A Short Story]   A letter is an essay; all letters are kinds of essays. All the modern genres are plastic; all the genres of antiquity are not. They are fixed--what more need I say. The essay and the novel; just when does modernity begin. I have a more acute sense of what … Continue reading How All Letters are Essays, but not All Essays are Letters

. . . and there you are, new nick names by Jean Vincent Renault to you my long lost friend from Grad School---Blazer Jim. How many years has it been? I hear you're married now. I always liked those professorial blazers you used to wear when we were back in Grad school. We should have … Continue reading Cold Leftovers for Lunch the Day after Thanksgiving [prose poem]

I am not this, nor am I that, nor am I then, nor am I now; neither here nor there, but everywhere and nowhere and anywhere outside of these lines on this page—what could be said anywhere that lets you know enough about someone, anyone, everyone is and is not the same, is and is … Continue reading NEW POTENTIAL OLD [fiction]

The moon was my friend, I said, when I was a boy. I am telling you what I said more than what I believed. What I believe or did believe is of no never mind now. I was a boy. What I said is indicative enough--it does indicate, does serve as a sign of something, … Continue reading The Moon is She [Short Fiction]

New Flowers of Evil; or An Ornery Man Speaks of Fleas, Rats, Misogyny and Garbage in the Lawn, as Well as New Home Owners who Destroy Beautiful Gardens and Cut Down Fruit Trees Turning their Fronts into Deserts or Newly Laid Concrete Patches Much, Much Hotter in the Summer Sun Prologue Spleen. Bile. Venting my … Continue reading A Genealogy of Morals[A Short Story]

for Lloyd Craig Blankfein A nose for a witch in a fairy tale . . . and I would like to say something about fairy tales, also about folk tales, are they the same, what do we use to explain them, articulate them, understand them, categorize them, the botany of it, no? Zo-ology? What else or … Continue reading Blood Suckers [Fiction]

Dinner for One i Horizon to horizon, one-hundred and eighty degrees of ocean horizon . . . what then must I say?  How up equals down horizontally; but how vertically, of course, it is another thing; up is up and down is down but not down is up or up is down---get it? I do. … Continue reading Uncertainty is not a Principle [Flash Fiction]

Thank-you, Professor Ginsberg I Infinity or eternity, now that might be a question. Most of us presented with eternal happiness or infinite happiness would choose the latter. Most of us would be mistaken, grossly in error. What is it that we imagine would happen to us if the possibilities presented to us were infinite; wanting … Continue reading Incidentals of a Day[ poem]

A worked-to-death body found floating in a river. A body discarded in water. The culprits had heard something about washing away sins. Ablutions taken in the Ganges she had talked about. A film I saw when I was a boy remains forgotten except for occasional slivers of pictures, still. What can I say that would … Continue reading Misery is for Misers [prose poem]

Impure Blood [A Short Story] Prefatory Remarks by an Authorial Voice More remarks after the fact. Everything before a story is after the story. What is a story--true or fictional? I hesitate to say un-true for fictional story. There are many kinds of fictional forms. I am not going to delineate them here. I understand … Continue reading Impure Blood? [a short story]

The universe is absurd, brother.   God sets it in motion and sits back and laughs. He likes watching us the way we like watching the monkeys in the zoo.   How can you conclude that the universe is absurd if you have concluded that there is a God?   What does the existence of … Continue reading Sisyphus Lives [Flash Fiction]

A whale of a ride, a whale of a good time, a whale of a man, all of them big, better, greater. A whale of a Self--the Self of many selves is Leviathan of a kind, a calling we should be able to know by any other name, how we name the things in our … Continue reading A Whale of a Self; or, the Vocative Mood of a Sub-Sub Librarian [A Short Story]

He does wonder why she has to be the way she is, when she is, how she is this way she is, where she is this way, that way, what way, any way she is, which, as you should know, can only be to up-fucking-set him. She wonders why he has to say what he … Continue reading Unconsciously On Purpose [Flash Fiction]

I The pool loves Narcissus. Echo loves Narcissus. Everybody talks about Echo. No one talks about the Pool. The Pool is unable to echo Narcissus's last words. The Pool cannot speak as Echo can speak, if Echo's punishment could be called an ability. The Pool reflects Narcissus's image, what he sees, what he falls in … Continue reading The Pool, You Know; the Pool [A Short Story]

Her husband only loves her when she is sad and depressed, which she is enough of the times for many others to think that she is a sad and depressed woman. When she is not sad and depressed she does not notice her husband, herself looking to everything or everyone other than he for her … Continue reading How to Map the World with the Life of a Woman

Loomings What should you call me? How should you refer to me? There are masks to wear everywhere in a text. The text is an ocean. The text is fluid. The text has boundaries. The universe is bound yet infinitely expanding. Eternity in an hour? If possible, then eternity in a text is also possible. … Continue reading The Statues in the Museum All Lying Dead [ Fiction]

I Anonymity, she said, He says (something he wishes he understood better than he can, better than he suspects he cannot, would ever want to, perhaps sometimes). He says, I wish I understood you better.  She says, No you don't. You say you do, but you don't, not really, not ever, only words you know I … Continue reading Anonymity, She Said [A Short Story]

Power knows without doubt that it can always get half of the poor to beat the shit out of the rest of the poor. I Now that street thugs have cell phones, they are not going to destroy the new terminals for charging cell phones. What!? They did not have quarters when the cost of … Continue reading Finding a Pay Phone that Works [A Short Story]

I Hark the herald angels sing--did they not blow their trumpets signaling the re-creation of the universe at the Incarnation of the Son of God who is begotten not made before time and creation; all that nativity stuff that I took more seriously than Macy's could or would, but I did not go to church, … Continue reading 7 Death, Angels and the Moon [A Short Story]

I There have been many paintings I could not take my eyes off of, but this one, not simply large, no, it was . . . what was it? It was tremendous, the height, the width . . .  I recall having said nothing as I walked into the gallery where it was hanging, Caravaggio's … Continue reading Caravaggio and I [A Short Story]

  I I am a sick man, I feel sick, I even think I smell sick, you do smell differently when you are sick than when you are not, I am even thinking sick,my thoughts are sick, not that they are twisted, as we have said, used to say, who are we, those I grew … Continue reading [e] Nausea [A Short Story]

Algerian Flowers [A Short Story] For Marguerite Duras PART ONE "Monochrome" I "Black and White Low Light" I see scenes in monochrome. There are many scenes in the world that are not to be recorded in monochrome; there just isn't the contrast for them. There are sets that should only be shot in black and … Continue reading ALGERIAN FLOWERS

She and I. Subject compounded, not the objective. He and she. Myself removed as I am sometimes with a pen. The mirror is another subject; you and I, plurality and singularity, in the mirror is on the glass. Who am I, who are you? Questions I ask in the mirror. Similar is not the same, you understand this … Continue reading Truth is Beauty

Today is the day Christ died; eternal return, cosmos and history, archetypes and their repetition; time is a circle, this way, not a river. I remember the mouse; I recollect the essay; I see the stove in the kitchen. I imagine seeing her seeing the mouse; I think I can recall her having said that … Continue reading [f] Good Friday Recollection [A Short Story]

Good Kosher Pastrami is not in the Palate of the Be-taster Alone. --Jay V. R. American politics has been played as a match of policy ping-pong between entrenched liberal and conservative elites for too long. Both sides have been serving up as an ideal, one or another version of Publius as Populus, the Public in … Continue reading Democracy, Myself and I [Flash Fiction]

Authenticity and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves A short story in the form of a journal entry that would have been made on  July 13th, 20xx, in Madrid, on Gran Via, a few blocks from Plaza D'Esapna, while having espresso; later that day over a bottle of Albarino; and even later than that at the … Continue reading When You See an Opportunity to Get More Pie

I used to judge the intelligence of people by whether or not they liked or understood or got it in some way or accepted its validity, the play, Waiting for Godot. How Well We Know Kosher Pastrami Might Tell Us Something about How Well We Understand the Nature of Politics and an Individual's Relationship to … Continue reading Waiting for Beckett [Flash Fiction

I say what he says sometimes, and here I will say what he says, yet what and how he says what he does has often left many people dis-understanding what he mean,s or what he intends, by what he is saying. He has talked often before of "Honor," as he says, inflecting the word mockingly, … Continue reading Contemporary Honor [prose poem]

A fragment found next to my seat on the bench in the back of the bistro at my table waiting for my glass of Gigondas to come from the waitress from Lyon; a piece of paper that had obviously been torn from another sheet, perhaps in collection with several sheets that would have then been … Continue reading Heart of Darkness [prose poem]

short fiction A fragment of a letter concerning multicultural understanding; or, should it be an enquiry into multicultural understanding, a fragment? Where the rest of this letter is, is not important. How we, the editors, know that it is or was a letter is not something we are going to get into here except to … Continue reading How a Letter Concerning Multicultural Understanding Can Help You Face Banality

                                                                 What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? ---Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Pt II A … Continue reading In Moloch [prose poem]

Most of matter is empty space. --another fun fact from physics   Why he did not name this piece, Human Lives Matter; Black Lives are Human Lives, I cannot say; no, I will not investigate why I did not say as I could have about what he has said, what is herein presented by me for … Continue reading Matter Times the Velocity of Passion [Fiction]

change all to first person   I could entitle this He Wrote a lot of Essays in University; or The Misanthrope Me Speaks of the College Student Himself, but I will not. To title is a form of entitlement, something the author gives to the text? What am I entitled to here or elsewhere in any text … Continue reading Explicit/Implicit [prose poem]

I in the mirror, you in the mirror, who is in the mirror?  I am in the mirror. You are in the mirror. You and I in the mirror, do I ever say we, do you? Who am I in the mirror? Who are you in the mirror? What am I? What are you? Who … Continue reading I Remember Having Recollected that I Had Once Recalled [prose poem]

Editor's Preface i What is narrative that we should be subjected to a narrow proscription of what gets to be called story and what does not get to be called story? Yes, what then is fiction because a story that I tell you is true before I tell it, even if all of it is … Continue reading Abortion is a Woman’s Parachute [A Short Story]

Past Perfect; or, The Reconciliation of Inaccuracies [A Short Story]   I remember you every day. I am remembering you now. I remember you always; I have remembered you since the day we met. Memory engaged in the act of itself for you, I remembered you this morning. I had remembered you in my dreams. … Continue reading Past Perfect; or, The Reconciliation of Inaccuracies [A Short Story]

  Next to is what it says it is, in French, it is a cote de, circumflex over the 'o' indicating an absent 's' after the vowel, which makes the word cognomen with the English 'coast,' which means then "at the coast of,' which is then another way to say "at the side of," every coast … Continue reading Visibility through the Storms [A Short Story]

He said, "I do not know what I think until I write. No truer words have ever been said. Can true be a scaling adjective? Is there truer, the truest? I know there isn't anything like more circular, that's absurd. It does not matter, really, at the moment, if I determine what adjectives are scaling … Continue reading More Circular [A Short Story]

[To read means to read closely, to pay close attention to the text, to follow the text, to be inside the text and outside the text in simultaneity, if that is at all possible to conceive let alone do . . . the text here is a multiple text, and each text is multidimensional, or … Continue reading When You Look Through the Glass Darkly

I needed to come to her. I needed to come to her to talk to her. I needed to come to her to talk to her about why she had called me to talk with me about what she said she had decided without me. It was mostly her saying what she said she needed … Continue reading Rhone Red with Ribs [A Short-short Story]

for Monsieur Camus [The 'G' in Gena's name is a hard 'g' as in 'gate.'] One of the great products of Soviet Civilization--and it was a civilization, be sure of that--and I mean that in all the ways a civilization has good intentions and bad results, as well as good results--yes, one of the great … Continue reading Crocodile Gena [Flash Fiction]