Memoirous

A piece called "Fourth of July Anarchy (Foster Beach" has been included in After Hours , a journal of Chicago writing and art. They had a booth at Chicago Book Expo where I picked up a card about how to submit. Attending book and publishing fairs is a great way to find out what journals are looking for and a chance to thumb through the journal to see if your work is a good fit. What's so exciting about this particular submission is that it is my first published "poem." Actually it is a prose poem or it could even be described as a lyrical flash memoir. Composed after hiking up to Foster Beach for the 4th of July fireworks. We went for the show that goes off above the Saddle & Cycle Club and encountered something radically different. All around us revelers were setting off their own fireworks, creating chaos and anarchy. I think the situation would have brought on PDS for a wartime vet. There were no safeguards in effect. Generally everyone and anyone was ...

Where Foster Beach becomes Omaha Beach, where the shock and awe of Baghdad rocks Lakeshore Drive, where everyone in the city not only owns a gun but an arsenal of fireworks. Where the sky lights up and the buildings reverberate the chest-thumping KABOOM, where all night long m80s punctuate the city soundscape, and the pop-pop-pop of Blackcats compete with infrequent gunfire. Where Roman candles sizzle and burst setting off car alarms and where children chase falling sparks as if they’re fireflies. Where screamin’ meemies spin and whistle while overhead pinwheels of color blossom and dissolve into a shower of stars, once alive but now extinguished, leaving behind contrails of vapor. We shake the numbness from our ears. Where even the moon smolders behind a haze of red, green, and yellow and sulfur clouds hang suspended, making the apparitions below seem as if they are moving in slow motion. Where each concussive blast answers with yet another explosion, louder than the last. Where ...