The opener for one of the stories in my collection, The Weight of a Body, now available as an e-book on Amazon. The story was inspired by a real incident, one that I've taken great care to turn into fiction. Poetry wiz and literary lion M.L. Liebler liked it enough to include it in the anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, published by Coffee House Press. It features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by and about America's working class. Contributors include Philip Levine, Diane di Prima, Willa Cather, Jack White, Quincy Troupe, Li-Young Lee and a host of others. Find a copy at your favorite bookstore. Read on...
The Problem with Mrs. P
First problem:
nobody was home to help. Not her two daughters, off to school. Not her husband
Robbie, who hadn’t been home for weeks, probably right this minute at that whore
Gloria’s house.
Second problem:
she was seven months pregnant and bleeding like crazy. She pressed a
cream-colored towel against her crotch; it bloomed with a red chrysanthemum of
her own blood. She stood in the bathroom doorway, eyes sparking, knees shaking.
Third problem: her
damn husband had the car. Not that she was in any shape to make the seven-mile
drive into
Fourth problem:
the telephone was dead, thanks to Robbie not paying the bills like he was
supposed to. She had her own cell phone with a few minutes still left on it.
But it was downstairs on the kitchen table. Just the thought of negotiating the
stairs brought a throbbing to her abdomen.
Fifth problem, or maybe it was the first: she and her baby boy might be dying.
No comments:
Post a Comment