Occasionally, I give up on certain things actually making it to print publication. That does not mean I’m not proud of those particular works, but, because they’re too obscure or interesting or whatever, the print journals all pass on them.
And, if they’re not satirical either, I’m sort of at a loss as to what to do with them, and they end up sitting in my desk drawer collecting errant cat fur.
So I’ve decided to blog a select few, just to annoy virtual passers by and jostle, if not stoke, the few remaining embers of an ego I have left. Here’s the first:
Hot Rod
“What we came to understand
of what the Russians wanted
was to do it themselves,
to build up their own economies
and schools, their own tractors
and farms. Like the old days
only better.” So said Ron,
my friend from the State Depart-
ment. He’d been a junior staffer
before he found The Lord. He
said “I’d like to think I’m
a little like them,” as he
pulled the intake off an old
flathead Ford. The Offenhauser
looked light in his hands. He’d
been a Baptist minister awhile, by
the time he gave it up too at 35:
“Apparatchik,” described his time
there, “a marketeer for God,
a propagandist.” Ron snorted.
The wrinkles had begun to show
on his temples, pointing to ashen
hair. Now he runs a shop, turns
wrenches: “There’s a soul even
in a machine.” The Jesus-fish
hangs still over his shop door:
“To set the Faithful at ease.”
This was his ride, a purple
Deuce Coupe, a retro-rod. He
found it sitting in a barn,
where it had been for 40 years.
He took it home. “Listen,”
he said, and the crows caws
bounced off the toolshed. “That’s
God calling.”
—Lael Ewy
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.