Harry B. Sanderford: Sugar, Them's Ears Not Handles

Harry B. Sanderford: Sugar, Them's Ears Not Handles

NEW RELEASE: Pen 10 Compendium

For the price of a poem or a story, Pen 10 will publish and market your talent.  You get to share links of your other books or projects in the Pen 10 Anthology.  A very reasonable price since you were going to sound your barbaric yawp anyway.  We put you in paper back and eBook format available on Amazon and Kindle devices. We expose you to readers and readers, as you know, buy books.  What can you say in 10 sentences?  100 words? 1 Chapter?  Send submissions to Olive.Rosehips@Yahoo.com.  Include a brief, one paragraph biograpy with your work.

A 100...

The Little Match Girl

by Katie Brown

Her heart beat hard against her. It was bitterly cold and she had little left in the way of warmth. Save her matches. 

Her grandmother had died some years before, she had only the memories of her words and smile. Staring in the window of where the others with money sat feasting, she tried to recall her. 

Looking into the deep velvet, watching a star shower mark the imminent death, she took out her matches. 

Next morning, when they found her amongst the ashes of the dead feasters she was warm and had eaten very well.

*

BIO: Katie Brown ** coming **

Taste by Diane Jardel

Cutting the courgettes 

Snap, snap, snap

Glossy green skill.

Dicing the purple aubergine,

Sweating it with salt

Drain the bitter juice

Eating together

the lemon flavour coming 

punching through

the underlying spice

of mustard and cardamom seeds;

next the earthy taste

of the potato

Embracing the gently sweet taste

Of the spinach

Still with its vital

life giving audacity.

The rice is the tender

and savoury, setting 

off  the moderate heat

pleasure as she swallows it slowly

They dip the fresh

sweet strawberries

into  hot chocolate fondue

laced with brandy

and taste its sensuality;

and bite into the rich tangy

exotic fruit

She looks into his eyes

And asks for water.

*

BIO: DIANE JARDEL - a published author of poems and stories; a vegan gourmet and  I love to capture the wonder of nature on camera.  I am also a writing group addict.

My poem 'The Mirror' is published in 'The Poetic Bond' by Trevor Maynard
I was featured poet of the month for December on www.muttonline.com
I started Fermanagh Creative Writing Group here in Enniskillen and registered it as an educational charity.

I post my stories and poems regularly on Stories Space.

by Diane Jardel

Spittle falls

Mother, you screamed

And raged

And spit fell

From your lips

I cowered before you

helpless

And afraid

I could not run.

One day 

you might 

transform

 my fragile stability

by some miracle.

And I would love you.

*

BIO: DIANE JARDEL - a published author of poems and stories; a vegan gourmet and  I love to capture the wonder of nature on camera.  I am also a writing group addict.

My poem 'The Mirror' is published in 'The Poetic Bond' by Trevor Maynard
I was featured poet of the month for December on www.muttonline.com
I started Fermanagh Creative Writing Group here in Enniskillen and registered it as an educational charity.

I post my stories and poems regularly on Stories Space.

Family by Michelle

“Well, of course my family likes you, dear.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I get the feeling that I’m an outsider; no one talks to me, really.”

“Come on, what gives you that impression?”

“Well, last year at the dinner table while I was telling a story I caught your sisters rolling their eyes.”

“Nah, probably something in the air, of course they like you, it’s nothing.”

“And your mother didn’t have a chair for me at the table; she squeezed your place setting between the neighbor’s daughters.”

“You came in a little late behind a big crowd at the door, just a little oversight, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Everyone laughed a little too hard when I dropped deviled egg on my dress, for like 5 minutes.” 

“Spills can be funny, it’s nothing, dear.”

“SWEETIE, there was a magnet covering my face in the family photo on the fridge!”

*

BIO: Michelle ** coming **

FEATHERS by Rosalind Kim Nazilli

Her last remark. The final slur on his already destroyed character.
He took himself away. For her sake as much as his own.
He lay on the wet sand, stretched star shaped, staring up into a black sky.
As he prayed that something would take him, release him from the torment of his unacceptable love for innocence he felt a soft fluttering against his face.
He reached up, feathers from some invisible bird.
His feet were wet. The tide was in, channelling a moat around him.
The sudden flapping of wings did not scare him. He knew they would come.

*

BIO: Rosalind Kim Nazilli ** coming **

100 WORD FLASH by Andie King

Dad slept in our greenhouse.

It's not as though he lived there, he came in for his meals, to watch telly and to have a wash but it's a small house and we don't have room for another bed.

He couldn't sleep on the floor, we'd keep tripping over him and it wasn't fair to make him sleep on a bunk bed with one of the kids on top. He had his privacy out there anyway.

We were all incredibly shocked when he died. It was very sudden and we still don't understand what happened.

Doctor said it was pneumonia.

*

You lie beneath the snow flocked ground, barely close enough to reach. I dig with bare hands, scrabble until my nails rip from my fingertips; blood soaks into damp, cold earth as I frantically try to find you.

Finally a glimpse of dirty pink satin, a shimmer of glitter and a hint of bone peeks out. Relieved I continue more cautiously, revealing you in fragments then finally lift you out.

Your party frock is ruined so I dress you in something new, purple this time. I kiss each broken bone before laying you back to rest.

Happy Birthday my Angel.

*

Little by little I watched you close yourself off from the world and I did nothing about it.

I saw it coming, I was complicit in it happening and I cover for you every time.

I'm not ignorant of the shoes caked in mud, the clothes that disappear or the car that constantly needs cleaning.

On the news, a local girl is reported missing and you are suddenly engaged, transfixed, studying her friends and family as they hopelessly appeal for information.

A mother always knows. Your mother never tells.

*

BIO: Andie King, a 31 year old wife and mother living in High Wycombe and working as an administrator.  Recently started writing again and loves literature, cookery, cinema and theatre.

Hunted by Jack Holt

They usually hunted in packs, so I was surprised to find one wandering alone amongst the foliage.

I knew it hadn’t seen me, I was too good for that. I raised my rifle, gripped it tightly; I’d only have time for one shot.

They told me nobody had ever slain one before. They said it couldn’t be done, that I’d never make it back alive. But I knew better, knew I was better.

That’s when I heard the rustling to my right, and then again behind me.

I quickly realized my mistake: they didn’t usually hunt in packs. They always did.

BIO: Jack Holt Born and raised in Bristol, England, Jack now lives, breathes and writes almost daily from his bunker deep in the Somerset countryside." Jack Holt can also be found online at  http://jackkholt.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/past-transgressions/ and http://jackkholt.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/hunted/

Past Transgressions by Jack Holt

I offered out my hand and took the map from him.

“Cheers mate, I’m a little bit lost, I reckon,” he said.

I didn’t recognize the man, but part of my cover involved helping the locals, blending in, so I knew I’d better.

“No worries,” I told him.

But as I glanced down, I realized he was lost for a reason. I was rusty, had taken my eyes off him entirely. He knew this.

The second-to-last thing I remember seeing were the pages of that stupid “Bristol Pub Guide.”

The floor racing up at me was the last.

BIO: Jack Holt Born and raised in Bristol, England, Jack now lives, breathes and writes almost daily from his bunker deep in the Somerset countryside." Jack Holt can also be found online at  http://jackkholt.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/past-transgressions/ and http://jackkholt.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/hunted/

Don’t Make a Sound by Jack Holt

Fists strike clumsily at my front door. Again and again and again.

I thought I’d be luckier than this. I switched off the lights, didn’t make a sound. And I know they can’t see me all the way back here. In the kitchen, in the dark, under a bed sheet-covered dining table. Can they somehow sense my presence? Had I made the slightest of sounds?

They’re banging even harder now. Scratching, scrambling, feverishly anticipating, desperate for their prize. But they can bang all they want, I won’t move, won’t open that door.

After all, I don’t even know who Jehovah really is.

*

BIO: Jack Holt Born and raised in Bristol, England, Jack now lives, breathes and writes almost daily from his bunker deep in the Somerset countryside." Jack Holt can also be found online at  http://jackkholt.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/past-transgressions/ and http://jackkholt.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/hunted/

LIVING WELL

The human mathematical equation that would explain the chronic feeling of displacement from which gifted individuals frequently suffer, can be traced back to the improbability of their being born into the families that raised them, the local Milton Junior College text read, Sometimes, in order to provide hope for a genetic trainwreck, a "variable" is born.

Bogart Freely was certain he was the "variable" of his textbook, Genius Rising by John Paul Slumberger, since for many years he was plagued by the persistent feeling that he didn't belong in his life; in a journal entry dated 1/1/69, he made the resolution to do something about it.

Bogart grew up with no father; his mother, Ethel, was a loud opinionated woman who didn't trust Bogart to wash well so she bathed him herself until he was thirteen. He wasn't allowed to have friends over unless Ethel knew the parents; another criterion was that the families had to attend the same church as the Freelys - a small congregation called Living Well which met in a building that was once a 7-Eleven on Burchill Road in Fort Worth, Texas.

The few times Bogart dared to bring a friend over, Ethel embarrassed him with her chastity sermons delivered from their sun yellow kitchen while she made the ritual Sabbath meal of gooey chicken and dumplings. Once she even showed Bogart's only good friend, Gerald, the large rasberry hemangioma at the top of her fat milky thigh which she believed looked exactly like the face of Jesus as it appeared on the Shroud of Turin.

On his 20th birthday, Bogart went to the local Home Depot to purchase the items necessary to carry out his plan with Gerald as his assistant, who by now was well-versed in chemistry and biology. The two would administer the cyanide which would be readily available in the Milton labs since Gerald - often referred to as the "science golden boy" on campus - had successfully requested a series of toxicology experiments on rats. Once the body was transported in a van Gerald would borrow from his father (Bogart didn't have a car and Gerald drove a VW Beetle), then placed in an earthen pit dug the night before, the sodium hydroxide could be mixed with water.

It would be the perfect crime, Ethel's rasberry stigmata and the surrounding tissue digested to the consistency of her chicken and dumplings once she got a good bath; there would be little more than her brittle bones remaining in the deep quiet earth behind Living Well.

BIO: Teresa Cortez of Sugar Land, TX 

RELAX, I SAID

I told him, I did, and I wasn’t coy neither.
I told him straight out.
I said I don’t have time for all that,
I just want it quick and dirty.
It didn’t have to be dirty neither,
just quick.
Give it like you mean it
and you don’t need all the
extra fluff to get it done.
It’s not like he didn’t ever
do it before so I guess
I just expected him to
get it right.
I didn’t say it out loud
but I was thinking in my head:
I know you’re nervous
but just do it the way you do it
when you’re by yourself
and that’s the way to do it best.
But I didn’t want to
make him nervous
about giving it to me
so I just smiled.
He was nervous, too,
a little.
I could tell, nervous
even though he was only
giving me 10 sentences.


BIO: this pen 10 gotcha is the work of Olive Rosehips.  She loves to play with imaginations and big pens... like Waterman's.  What on earth were you thinking just now?  Even more importantly, can you give 10 sentences?

DEAR DAD

I’m not sure I ever began a letter with those words, but I’d like to take a stab at it. 
Can I tell you that I always admired you for your strength, your musical voice and sense of humor?
Can I tell you that I never felt so special than that time you confided in me on the way to Kennedy Airport?
Can I say that I saw your face shine, the first time you saw me in uniform?
Can I tell you that I should have known I could trust you to help me, always?
Can I tell you that I love you?
Well, now it is too late.
I suppose I could have written a letter of which I’d be proud .
Better yet, I could have written a letter to make you proud of me.
Most of all, I just could have written a letter.

BIO: Jim Hunkele

MOTHER'S DAY

An elegant woman with perpetual blonde hair, she had the hint of a British accent giving her the aura of mystique.
The lady would not stand on ceremony. 
Befriending the wealthy, the wretched, the weak and the well off, she was mother to seven, but mothered so many more. 
Always time for a laugh, but never enough time for the cooking, laundry and cleaning, the kitchen floor would shine by the last mop of midnight.
She would answer the phone with a voice that any person would love to hear, soothing, as by an Angel, there were times even I would not recognize it.
Her children were always fed, educated and clothed, in that order, leaving herself last in all things.
Five boys, never an easy task for any woman, she would find the time to mentor “strays”. 
As she grew in years, she would still show her sons up by kicking a field goal or throwing a “double-bull’.
She could deal out punishment with one hand, and wipe a tear with the other.
Attending to so many with little time for herself, she asked for almost nothing, but perhaps, her final request, “Can we go now?”

Bio: Jim Hunkele

You Aint Spose To

She was gone.  I thought on that a long time ago, wondering what would it be like.  I had seen it on tv and heard about it from friends but now this time it was my own mama.  Come to think of it, she wasn’t like tv mama’s and so mine wasn’t like no tv mourning, neither.  She was evil and she never had my back so all I felt was relief at her passing.  It rose up off of me, I almost felt it lift like a dust removed by gravity pulling it upwards.  I think if I was standing back looking at me in the light I would’ve seen it and I would have marveled all the more.  The energy cycle came to claim parts of that person that she left on me so I shook to make sure all of it went.  You can have your person back universe, I thought, I endured her, I honored her and now you can have her back!

Craig remarked about her passing and I told him all about it because I was happy and lighter and wanted to share my new elation with someone.  He looked at me but pulled his face back slowly like he smelled something unpleasant and he let me know, “You aint ‘sposed to say stuff like that when your mom dies.”

Bio:  Olive Rosehips* made that name up.  She does that a lot.  She does it because she thinks it's cute and it's the stuff that writer's do so they can roll eloquent, pretentious things off their tongues like "nom de plume".  So she likes pretending, is that so bad?  *Rhonda Smolarek

DEAR FIVE YEAR OLD SELF

Dear Five Year Old Self,
I miss you in the strangest way possible.  Strange because I do not remember you.  I cannot recall what you liked or what made you scared.  I cannot recollect what your favorite color, or song, or most cherished object was.  I do not remember what made you cry or how often you did so.  I do not remember if you feared monsters or whatever else lives under five year old’s beds.  
I miss you though it feels like I hardly know you.  Or knew you.
I miss you because, since I can’t remember you, I am convinced that times were simpler.  Less complicated. Less convoluted with life and love and the odd uncomfortable mixture of the two.  I miss you because you existed in a time where death and loss and grief were foreign.  I miss you because you lived in a world that was blind to abuse and rape and mis-use and manipulation.  You existed in a space where life was hardly hard and there was a smile at the peak of every day.
I miss you though I hardly know you.  Or knew you.
And I know it is strange to say I miss you because essentially I am saying that I miss me.  But not saying it would not make it any less true.
I miss you.  Because I miss me too.

 
 
 
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bio:
 
Felecia Roberts functions largely as a ghostwriter and often authors under various pseudonyms.  She has received many accolades in following her dreams.  She has a letter writing series that can be found atwww.lettertomyunbornself.com and is working on her first book.

THE GUEST ROOM

by Jeanette Cheeezum

Nina’s head pounded, eyes felt gritty and with a swish of her tongue she swore there was fuzz on her teeth. Had someone slipped something in her drink? They had arrived and set the suitcases in the guest room just in time for drinks to be served. That’s all she remembered.

The bed was empty next to her, maybe Tim had left her to sleep in. She slipped her jeans on and thought if she didn’t get something to eat soon she’d throw up.

No way! The door was locked. “Okay Asshole, let me out of here,” She banged and shouted.

No one came. She looked around, thankful there was a bathroom. This wasn’t funny.

What’s that in the bathtub? She pulled the shower curtain back then froze. Another woman was there. Nina nudged her knee, no response. Maybe she had the same thing to drink. She nudged again. “Hey, wake up.” Nothing…Nina reached out and touched the girl’s face. It was cold, very cold and lifeless. She backed away, nervously rubbing her hands on her jeans.

She needed a joint. No, she needed to get out of here. Where was her purse? It wasn’t visible if it was in the room. She searched through drawers, under the bed and opened the closet.

Her blood curdling screams were stopped when Tim’s body fell at her feet. His eyes bulged and a rope was tight around his neck.

Something shook her once, then twice. Her mother stood over her “You’re going to be late for school if you don’t get up now.”

*

Bio: Jeanette has been published in eleven anthologies and three poetry collections. Her work can be found all over the internet. She loves to write fiction of all types. She has completed four novels and a children’s ebook @ Barnes and Noble. If you would like to view her website go to http://cavalcadeofstars.wordpress.com/

SOMEWHERE SPECIAL

by Salvatore Buttaci

It was supposed to be a getaway celebration, our 10^th wedding anniversary. Turns out the operative word here is “getaway,” so forget “celebration.” We got away all right, so far away we ended up lost.

“Why not go somewhere different this year,” my wife said, weary of the same old Rustic Lodge five minutes from our home, the motel where we had so far spent nine over-nighters since that first July 10when we were pronounced man and wife.

With the help of Mapquestᵎ™ and despite several wrong turns (I have a sense of direction worse than a broken compass), at last we found the Concord Manor Hotel two states away in Pennsylvania.

We were both in a less than good mood, nearly running out of gas, which Diana said was my fault since I was the driver, to which I defended myself by hurling back, “You're the damn navigator whose job is to keep an eye on the controls!”

So I paid for the suite, carried in two matching luggage pieces, sat on the king-size bed and remote-clicked the TV on.

“I'm hungry,” pouting Diana whines, “so don't get too comfortable because those sandwiches we ate in the car hours ago were nowhere enough.”

My question, “Can't we grab a bite at Burger King™ next door?” met with a squinting killer stare, so we hit the unfamiliar highways in search of a five-star steakhouse and, not finding one, got terribly lost, and drove in the darkness for three grueling hours before we miraculously found our way back to the Concord Manor.

“Happy Anniversary, Honey,” I said, but Diana, without turning from the half-wall mirror where she was brushing her teeth, raised her other hand and flipped me the bird.

BIO

Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer who writes everyday. His work has appeared widely. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.

His collection of 164 short-fiction stories, Flashing My Shorts, is available from Amazon.comat http://tinyurl.com/26u8huk His upcoming book, 200 Shorts, will be released in mid-2011.

He lives with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.

NEVER SEEN A NIGHT SO LONG

NEVER SEEN A NIGHT SO LONG

He lies in bed, ears perked to the plaintive cry of a whippoorwill somewhere in the darkness. Not in the sky. No, not there. Maybe hiding behind the blue rhododendron bush, nest-far and lonesome. Like me, he thinks, rising from the double bed, setting on fire a Pall Mall, inhaling a lungful of smoke. Hank’s never seen a night so long. He wonders where 1952 has flown to. He pictures one of those barrels where his grand pappy burned wood scraps back in Alabama. He reminisces and knows too well the pain of that. The way old men sit in rocking chairs and in between gusts of warm breezes say, “Yep,” and wish to God they could either travel back to the young old days or sleep forever in their rockers.

Across the bedroom in his favorite chair, the Gibson Audrey bought him rests against the red velvet needlepoint cushion Audrey left behind. His new wife Billie Jean hates it as much as Hank loves it and won’t let it go. “Audrey loves Hank,” says the needlepoint, and then in large flowing cursive, “FOREVER.”

“It's just a damn guitar!” Billie Jean tells him, the sour taste of jealousy frosting on her lips. “You got a closet full of 'em!” Then she pauses and drives daggers into his heart when she says--he suspects for spite-- “That girl knows as much about forever as that bottle you're pourin' knows how to stitch up a broken heart.”

Let it rest. What's done's done.

Whatever lyrics sing in his head he’ll keep up there. Still, he runs his thumb over his four fingers, itching to pluck the strings, hold down the frets, strum the chords into blues, sing his heart out, release the pain.

Without my guitar I'm nothing. Without me, Gibson's like the tree nobody's in the forest to hear crashin' down. But the two of us together…

Hank pours a full glass from the bottle on the end table. Then he shakes several white painkillers from another bottle, gulps them and chases them down with the lonesome-blues whiskey. Meanwhile, outside his window, stars go on twinkling, despite life without Audrey. The face of the moon hides behind dark clouds. Why should it let the world see its tears? And that old train, she keeps heading down the line, traveling the iron rails, heading for...heading where? He let the cities flash across the stage of his troubled mind. Nashville. Abilene. Birmingham. Chicago with its cold winds. Even New York City with its even colder people looking up at him performing, thinking, Who in hell's this country boy from Alabama think he is 'cept white trash who can toss out a song to make grown men cry?

Where is Audrey? he wonders. Absently now he lifts the guitar, slings the leather strap over his shoulder, and gives in to the six strings. Strumming, he fills the dark room with words that ride the chords like dauntless walkers on a high narrow tightrope. Once, before a preacher, the two of them swore to heaven the knot they tied would never be broken. The world out there could try all it could to pull them apart, but they'd hang strong and let love beat that world back into its corner.What happened? he wonders now, wonders the day long. The night. What made me throw it all away?

“The midnight train is whining low. I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

Now’s he’s searching through the contents of the end-table drawer for a pencil and pad. The Grand Ol’ Opry star finds both, balances the pad on the sound box, jots down the lines, and clamps the pencil horizontally between his teeth. He lets the pad fall against Audrey’s cushion.

“Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves begin to die?”

He repeats the line several times so it melds in perfect time with his plucking and continues.

“That means he’s lost the will to live. I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

When he manages three quatrains, each ending with what he will make the title of his new song, he removes himself from the Gibson. Again it leans against the red velvet lie. Again thoughts of the long-gone Audrey plague him. Once he believed she loved him. Now she expects him to believe she no longer does.

“I’m so lonely I could cry,” he sings. What could say it better? he wonders.

His head throbs with the booze and pills conspiring against him. Still, the duo are not strong enough to calm the agony in his back and the rawness in his heart.

Hank Williams stares open-eyed at the ceiling. Tomorrow night the Grand Ol’ Opry will explode in thunderous applause. Fans will scream his name like a litany to a saint. He will sing song after song. He will bow and exit until one more call for yet another encore will bring him back. Finally, he’ll quiet the crowd by removing his white cowboy hat, wave it, and return it to his head.

“Here’s my last for the night,” he’ll say. “This one’s for Audrey. Are you listening, Darlin’?”

Then the king of country music will sing every note from the depths of a heart so wounded, not even time can heal, “Hey, good lookin’.Whatcha got cookin’. How’s about cookin’ something up with me?”

BIO: SALVATORE BUTTACI; Buttaci's poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared in The New York Times, The Writer, U. S. A. Today, Cats Magazine,Christian Science Monitor, Bardic Echoes, Wind, Iconoclast, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating Brothers and Sisters, and many other publications here and abroad.

His newest collection of flash fiction, 200 Shorts, is available from the publisher athttp://allthingsthatmatterpress.com.  His first, Flashing My Shorts, is available at http://tinyurl.com/6bqu6b2

More than anything in the world, including the craft of writing, Buttaci loves his soul mate and wife Sharon Lee. The two of them live in Princeton, West Virginia.