Archived Roundtable

A few days later, Marmalade was summoned to the kitchen table to be formally named. She of the ready smile, a cascade of wavy copper-colored hair and a smatter of freckles, became Clara Bean Orphan. “Princess hair. A pretty face. Men like pretty.” Such was the sum of...

For Jackie Langetieg (11/15/1938 – 2/20/2026) My great grandmother Isabelleimmigrated from Norway, spent her last year on a bed in Grandma Ella’s living room. I was only five so didn’t understand the word stroke, didn’t understand that’s why she never spoke. Isabelle,...

A Matter of Sweetness Midmorning, Cooper ‘s first nap of the day. He’s achieved so much already, up so early. Info sourced of spring forbs, flowers of the woods. His sister messages: Dead end, no answer. Talk later. Nap well earned. He dreams of his father’s morning...

How in the world can I begin to say When I saw the photo of baby boy  On that April Tuesday, the fourteenth day Every fiber within me shook with joy   When I cradled him in my shaky arm  My eyes welled up as I began to weep Said a prayer for there never to be...

Us 4. Jim invented time travel by accidentally boiling his potatoes too long. 5. In the foam, time could be bent at will and by Jim specifically. 1. He went back to the Napoleonic Wars. 2. He went back to the time of Socrates. 3. He realized all the epochs he was...

Clocks When they put you down for good today, I lost whatever armor I had left. Like an infant digging in sand, I fought the clock’s constipation, waiting for flags to rise so I could call and gossip, as usual, tell you everything they said about this woman who stood...

With the arrival of the girls, the house was as full as it had been for generations,  when the fecund Edwina Waverley produced twins—a dim-witted matched set of boys—and a sickly daughter. I’ll hop and skip in the retelling of their earliest years. For two principal...

In the course of      untimely events      unstructured interactions on a social stage that moves to political      or away to end. This inability to reach maturity. This incessant backsliding into the dregs     of chimpanzees     humanity at war Ever at...

Back in 1958 Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote the poem “I Am Waiting,” repeating those words over 45 times in the six-stanza poem. At the end of each stanza he returned to his deep longing for “a rebirth of wonder.” I especially like the fifth stanza where he writes:  I am...

I’m in love with a man who’s married (challenging spacing)   to a woman he met while skydiving in the desert when I first saw him in the corner, leaning on the bar, his blue eyes crawled into my heart   that one jagged incisor made  my tongue run over my...

Umbrella Exiting the theater, they walk a bit before calling a cab. Slight wind, then a shower of rain. He opens his umbrella, puts his arm around her, pulls her underneath. Wind at their backs. The back of her neck tingling. She leans into him; so tightly to this man...

The Bear I forgot to tell you about the circus bear, how I thought he was fake, a man stuffed inside a fur costume, how the bear rode a large unicycle around the rink, sun glare stabbing through the tarp down on all of us, the bear swatting horseflies away with his...

I’m lying under a deep blue February sky, void of clouds, replete with sun. 55 degrees of grateful anticipation of spring, although the deep freeze will inevitably return to solidify the neighborhood’s small lake where foolish ice fishermen are also taking advantage...

Dust in the Wind There’s a slight rain. Butterfly’s. They’re yellow and pave the road. Some woman on a bike chasing a dog. We’re still in Kansas. It seems we’re always in Kansas. Dorothy’s in the kitchen. She’s sweeping dust from the floor. The floor of dust. The...

I.  After intervals of fourteen measures in three-four time, your fingers climb to the top octave of the piano, your hand stretches out to strike a resounding chord. Everything is musical. Then everything descends into silence. Pure unadulterated silence. Hold your...

The Crown Prince of Dubai was well-known for his proclivity for being easily bored. He walked out of the original Star Wars and turned off the O.J. chase before it even started. Ergo, he devised an event that would bore no one — not even him. Every polydactyl cat in...

Midnight Market   I heard a rumor about the old woman at the Midnight Market. She can get you what you need. I was born without a heart, but exist anyway. Just like how my coffee pot sputters and produces without a heartbeat. I need a heart to find the other half...

    Hollow We were going to live forever, your blind cats too, that was the plan, but every bottle had a hole in it, every glass a crack that leaked, and the riverbeds were dry and the sun thirsted like an iguana in the desert and you kept saying, Give me one more...

He walked down to the pier where he often went to find peace. The seagulls eyed him up. Obliterated white shit covered everything. A warm wind wafted over in waves. He had a bag of chips in his hands, which had gone cold now. Oh well. “I hate you, and everything you...

Anxiety stifles me like a bang out of hell and I don’t know why I’m feeling it yet if I quit…and that stalls me because I can’t see into the ‘quit’ as if it’s a material practice versus an image that is outside and beyond the emptiness from where I stand stuck like a...

Is there one right way to live. One right way to die. One right way to be laid to rest. Must there be maggots? Matter exchanged, converted, not destroyed, not ameliorated. That part’s fine. But does it have to be maggots? Can my decomposition be more aesthetically...

Fathers   They come in all shapes One man, balding in a handsome manner, making his blue eyes stand out And fill with tears as he told me about his two sons, Who he had not seen in seven years because their mother saw him As an unfit father. He explained that...

you were the candle on the altar of our hearts[1] a garden of pure light until temptation power              greed serpented around souls flames extinguished slithered out to waxy soil   we weep angry tears of despair through the iced winter of sorrow...

Braeg approaches Raine at the neighborhood pizza joint in this old factory the local community lobbied to preserve. Raine’s not a pizza eater, but their salads are great. Braeg catches Raine’s eye and they acknowledge each other in a friendly exchange. She indicates...

We were sitting in our separate Zoom squares, all of us connected for this one hour reading and responding to a poem by James Crews. We were walking the icy streets,/talking about the ways our country/has betrayed us again, he begins the poem, and a few lines down:...

On The Lookout - Bear Mountain, Powell Ranger District, Northern Idaho one night I asked of my father’s whereabouts. he sent only a distant burn. an ancient rumbling. echoes through canyons. dry lightning. a brief rain. awakened to a distant flash in the west. I lay...

My first boyfriend was the the third, no fourth, but not fifth, boy I had intercourse with. The others were one-offs. On a scratchy blanket at a secluded park, I told him not to worry —timing was good. He perched oversized frame with its giant head over me so I...

Harvest It was a pretty good year for harvesting children, torsos having grown plump and sturdy as watermelons, their hair unruly leaves of kale, their mouths full of rich soil seeded with cukes and spuds and pea pods about to poke through. Each wagon was loaded to...

On the other side of menopause, I became a bird. A dull-looking brown bird, with not much song. Not something bold and mysterious like a crow or a woodpecker. The universe had other plans.  The good news is I am smaller now, my bones are hollow, and I’m buoyant. I...

This is test 1 of the notification system.

The photo of Guinevere was from back then, when you were fourteen. There were three of you, school friends. But Guinevere called you at home too, cord stretched taut to reach some private corner. The third girl never called. Guinevere said she found her mother in the...

(I've been writing a lot of micros in the last month so I might throw a few on the board this month. Thanks for reading!--JC) Someone is tenth in line to the throne of Liechtenstein. Someone is spitting. Someone is smoking again. Someone is hiding out in a forgettable...

Even so. . . The year is almost gone and I have yet to post something here in December. Meanwhile, I've been catching up -- reading all your creative writing, grateful to be in a group like Bending Genres. So, of course, I've signed up for the first round of BG in...

celebration…final exams… basking under sun…all-night crams… sand-soaked toes… Christmas trees… blood-soaked clothes …help us please… empty presents… dreams vacate… empty presence …guns galvanized with hate… heroes surge … evil purges …   knives rage… mind crazed...

(if anybody is still around to read this--sorry for posting so late!--feel free to give me any direction on where to go with revision!) We were still thawing, our young lives blossoming now that the blizzard was behind us. The roads plowed, the drifts and banks...

Smoking  I am a backseat kid, sucking down front seat smoke that furls over the headrest like a dirty fist, stinging my eyes and ears. Mother’s fingers tremble while she holds her Tareyton like a knife. I see the deer, middle of the road, at the same time they do, but...

The man with the step ladder and secret screwdriver is late, so you walk down the hallway. Names and dates in golden lettering cut into the angelic smooth white marble walls. Down at the chapel you come upon the grimacing face and torn flesh of Jesus staring upward in...

Hi all -- These are two unrelated pieces. I apologize if the second one is a repeat. Also, a CW -- there is a mention of a gun in the second piece. I have been writing a lot, but struggled with what to post this month. (The spacing in the second piece might be wonky.)...

Sufficiency Off to bed early because of a meeting in the start of tomorrow, the night owl lies awake for hours until his regular bedtime hits and he begins to feel the tire, yet still restless, up into his chair, he turns on the light and empties his head onto paper...

The Experience of Being a Golden Retriever    A while ago I was sitting in a group therapy session, and the facilitator asked what animal we thought of when we looked at the other participants. I was surprised how many said I was “obviously a Golden Retriever”. The...

  Jesus is in my dining room. Three days ago, he politely scribbled in pencil on the RSVP I’m going to bake you a cake! Love Jesus. His handwriting is terrible, and is hard to read. I don’t want a cake. Now, He strolls out of my kitchen with the confection,...

In 1983, me and my toddler son lived in an apartment in Davis, near Sacramento. I worked in a government office and carpooled with Casey, an intern, just out of college. We took turns picking music for the twenty-minute commute. Casey carried cassette tapes in her...

Pain is the strangest beast. It claws, It gnaws.. The Person roars, Grows Large with every stab & jab.   Others shrink and fade, pale ghosts locked within internal fight never-ending, constant sea that saps, not zaps. shrunk into the abyss.   Both...

Double-Paned windows unseal moisture seeps mars the view blurs water, birds, sky   doubles the pain of drowning in the fog of damp disillusionment                Drove past your house last night light shadowed the kitchen love lit fire in my heart summer...

On A Rainy Morning A tortoise shell is birthed. Exhumed from subsidence between my scapula. The Turkey vultures have their way all black & white & wingspan & beak. Must have smelled the death, their voracious instinct to locate the carrion & pull....

The following five pieces came from daily prompts: a word and an image. Our challenge was to keep each response at (or about) 100 words. Let me know which of the five you like best. - Marjorie 1) Note - This response was inspired by an image of a poem by Maya Stein:...

I died and I came back, not as me — as broken me The soul existed, but the brain was broken The brain floundered while the soul struggled to be whole What did they both know? What did they both understand? Sex, intercourse, that seemed to be all It doesn’t take much...

  There is magic in the merging of two separate entities into one. Amber and the house watch the cascading stream from the kettle splash into the mug with the tea bag waiting to change. The satisfying alchemy from unflavored to flavored. Amber wants to alchemize...

One Is the Loneliest Number At twelve, the Age of Consent, Jerry 47322’s response to his Freedom Letter was automatic. Male (fertile), check. Partial custody — until full emancipation, check. Remain within the Pods, check. Memory: annual refresh, check. At thirteen,...

Scare the hell out of me, Joe keep that to yourself everybody involved knows what’s being talked about let it be evil’s not to be ignored trouble in every corner on a day like every other now recalled So, recounted today key is to trust that this alternative is better...

Red Flannel Pajamas  Just looking at the autopsy report  So many years in a box  I notice something I never remember reading  Red petechiae- I look that up  Heat stroke  My boy in red flannel pajamas   On a warm April morning  For how long  I remember the red light...

Clown  She says, I don’t need your roadkill poetry and I say, I could really use a BLT right now and she says, Fuck you! I’m not a victim so I call an ambulance and so she says, I read your blog. How could you? Aren’t you ashamed? and so I shave off every strand of my...

We were the nice girls with As and Bs twirling around our heads like cartoon stars, the ones who caused no trouble, invisible. We prided ourselves on being nice. The day it happened, a cool Saturday with the rustle of changing leaves over our heads, we were looking...

My sister lives with me now. She hates it. I hate that she hates it and yet here we are.   A turmoil of circumstance happenstance and tangled emotions webs of joy and sorrow, gratitude and resentment Silent pointy fingerling words Trapped in golden cages of love...

The world expanded, as if every atom were being pumped full of air. Or was Benny shrinking? The world was massive, hulking, unrecognizable. Benny a speck of grit. Tugged toward a pinprick in the Pod’s metallic shell. A high-pitched hissy screech as air escaped the...

I call them my Internet Gurus – these smiling, energetic faces I summon on my computer – sometimes live, other times replays. They helped me survive the pandemic and, through loyalty, I keep them around. Some of them, like Laurie, gave me poems and prompts – something...

It was Ray that lit the lantern but we were all accomplices out on the dock over the lake late fall static dry cold & crisp.   We were gathered. We were there for Sandy. We lit it for Sandy. Yes Sandy. Sandy who just died, that Sandy. This is when it started....

I’d known Tael to write like this as he walked along slowly, alone in the wild – usually settings near water and within the thicket of woods, and always away from people. He said it got things out of his head so that he could move along to the next...

White Lights As I watched my daughter grow from that amazing infant, so capable of arousing a deep love that I never felt before, I wondered when she would feel that first stirring of falling in love. I knew she loved me, because I told her "I love you" so many times...

Skeletons We danced when there was no wind or hope left, swaying like cedars plucked of all their seedlings, needles covering the forest floor like a hidden trap door. We danced in stilted time, the clock a bone stuck in the throat, each wall weeping to themselves in...

560 Toilet # 1 — I’ve seen a lot of butts — some brown, some black, some white, some with piles so large I fear they might splash my water. You can imagine (well, maybe you can’t) that being the main crapper in an emergency room hallway I see more pee and poo in a...

There is an aching/desire/longing space I want to fill, not with gold, but by the blurring of lines. The edges unknown/foreign/secret to me, but I search for the appropriateness of my lines merging with yours. There are rules for where hands and tongues find their way...

Donna served some time in jail pointed a gun at the cop who came to arrest her never planned to pull the trigger, she said. But still.. . . This year she’s sober and over the moon, as they say. Her first grandbaby – a girl – is due any day now. She’s made a quilt –...

The traitorous body demands!- Shades of Beige and White. White bread White rice White plain fish Egg – white, boiled No spice, no herb No dash of this or that. Just shades of Beige and White.   The fight for life Diminished to No fibre No colour Calories...

  Can we ever really feel if there isn’t lust? To apply BetterHelp’s insights (medically reviewed by Dr. April Brewer, DPH, LPC) on this, lust is “an intense longing” or “usually intense or unbridled sexual desire.” I think of it as a slight heart flutter when I...

On their twelfth birthday, Benny 32841’s “Freedom” letter arrived via World Chat. They wondered how many others were notified that same day. No knowing. Statistics were banned before Benny was hatched. Thought, wondering, was a violation. Benny 32841 anticipated the...

I stare into the reflection of the glass. A restaurant window, downtown Seattle. My mind blurs. I can picture the scene, the scene where he falls; dad slowly being dragged up to the top of the escalator before I shut off the damn machine and try to get him stable. We...

(song lyrics) Well the bottle of wine is half-way gone And the midnight snow is falling down And the fire is out for the night   And you’re half-way to Mexico If I had my way you wouldn’t go You would stay around put up a fight   And the wind outside makes a...

Synthesis and translation                                (587)                                                   Sept.18.2025 Years of practice and still not whole, even with evolving externalized info tracks specifying 450-1500 species sharing defined tendencies,...

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn” –attributed, probably mistakenly, to Ernest Hemingway The shoes, little velcroed Nikes, size 1C, $10, dominated the square Facebook advertisement. Marilee While hundreds of Facebook shoppers saw the ad, Marilee was the first to pay...

One Shining Moment I spend most of my days listening to individuals tell me their stories. It is an odd career, as I never know if I help those that come to me, or if I am just a listening ear. Many of these individuals see me across time, and tell me they feel...

History She was trying to teach me how to kiss while I thought we were talking about water An eagle hovered nearby stuck in the sky like a push pin No one in the history of the world had ever died yet She jerked the rivet free from its closed eye and kept searching...

  The spoon carved from the purple apple tree is an appendage cradled in my pocket. The space serves as a gallery. Displayed only for my two presents that open every morning. My eyes glaze milky with my particular love for spoons. Their bowl shape hold soup...

My first French kiss was with Randy, son of the local undertaker. We cuddled in the back seat while his older sister drove us around the lake, including its small secret backroads for future reference. The kiss took me under, left me without breath by this initial...

Artificial Intelligence: that’s quite a mouthful. But shortened to two syllables it’s A I, easier to say. I’ve noticed though that the two letters typed together look like a guy’s name. My pal, Al. So whenever I hear about Chat GPT, I think of him as Al, a really...

I emailed my body to the wrong person / it was returned with a different set of feet / what was I supposed to do with flamingo feet / they began to take flight / ahh -- a challenge  / a friendly feral hog showed up to be an instructor / he massaged my phalanges with...

Permission Granted.                                                       BG.8.2025                                 (975 words) He calls the painting ‘Last Day On The Farm’, the day his mother is removed to a memory care facility. She only knows she’s going for a ride...

I was in sixth grade when my parents met me at the kitchen table. My older brother liked to treat our parents like opposing lawyers. I leaned into the role of criminal defendant. “We had a little visit from the police,” my mom said. “Oh?” “Someone reported seeing you...

I remember how kissing you felt like that time on the tilt-a-whirl when I was ten spinning and spinning the scent of corn dogs and funnel cake twisted through the twinkly lights and toy voices below and though I felt sick I wanted more because of the thrill and the...

Mower That summer was like a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop dripping into your mouth or over your acned chin then down your one good shirt you’d spent some money on the same squirrels you loved to watch scrambling up tree trunks like cute thieves too hurried to notice...

As We Once Were - After Georgia O’Keeffe, Abstraction (1945, cast 1980) before dawn before ever after before even early before leaving silkenslumber the bed still moist spirals of your hair around my fingers hands mold the curve of your hip your skin smooth as...

You’re invisible. You’re sitting across the aisle from some late-middle-aged man on a Boeing 747, someone maybe exactly your age, someone who has zero awareness of you. The man has the V of a receding hairline, more silver than not in his formerly thick, dark hair. He...

The Next Season My mother-in-law will have died. The Season After I will tell my husband I need to go. Winter One of three possibilities and I will be settled in New Mexico. (If you want names of the leftovers, let me know.) 

My friend Joanne has been separated from her second husband for 22 years, but more recently, she said, they’re on friendly terms. He’ll drive her to frequent doctor appointments;  she’ll make meals to share in her apartment. He’s very needy, she confides – he’ll call...

I will tell you about this wall that appears wherever I go. You won’t notice it. It’s there to contain me, until - well, who knows. I don’t.   I want it gone, until I notice that it operates as a barrier blocking others from approaching. ‘Thank God to that!’ I...

Dear Robert, I found this letter & diary as we cleaned the mayor’s office. I thought it might interest you. With love, Tom _        _        _        _        _        _ Dear Sir, I wish to voice my strongest objection to your Last Artist Exhibit. It is a...

Extension He would call me after a sparrow flew into the window, though he never knew about the dead birds, how could he, drunk as he always he was, his voice slurpy-sounding as if he was sipping on some kind of stone soup, and I’d be at work when he’d call so they’d...

  The Feather It’s a school day, late spring. He’s got close cropped red hair, thick glasses, pudgy cheeks. The apple of his mom’s eye. He dressed himself this morning. Black and gold arcade t-shirt, gray shorts, white sneakers. He won’t turn 10 til next week....

Invisible Ink ~ After Toni Morrison Perhaps we have forgotten molten conversations, words that flow like fire down roads covered in dusk, in dust. We once knew the impossibility of the unopinionated, how literature cannot exist without words made to swear, to tear, to...

I’m making love to myself. Maybe not the way you first think, but I could. I’m good at that. Maybe after the sun sets. I’m loving myself. But not in some indulgent way like rubbing my newly flattened stomach or fondling my perfectly round breasts. I’m making love to...

Too many funerals lately. At my age, I should expect it. But the cumulative effect of so many funerals is depressing. They don’t call them funerals anymore. It’s Celebration of Life. See all the photographs mounted on poster board, arranged around the room. See the...

look beyond the frame glide over skyscrapers like Superthem rescue yourself burst through fragile glass dance in multihued shoes scatter gold coins from the disappearing pot before rain recommences silky jackets  become threadbare colors  barely resist   Take the...

See-through        But you didn’t call me back is what I hear the man whisper into his cellphone at Gate 8, an anthill of people and commotion blurring around me, the thumbtack beginning its push, center of my forehead, neat as a surgeon’s needle, a migraine...

The retreat center’s slopes rise above the llama pens. Under the old white swamp oak extensive branching, the herd rests under midday sun, periodically to stroll off for a fresh lunch on the adjoining grasses. The tree shadows to the edge of the barn's shed allowing...

“My mom says they stole my rainbows.” Claire white-knuckles the book with her name stamped across it in gold just below the words “Holy Bible,” but solidly above a slightly off-kilter “I <3 Jesus sticker, a seventeenth birthday gift from her mother. “No one can...

I was on a losing streak, and I needed a win. When I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I’d think of my life as a long rebuttal to the Rolling Stones. How no matter how hard I tried, I just might find, I’d never get what I needed. When I wanted to move on, I listened to...

I survived and my parents survived. We were untouched, unscathed. We were thrilled.  With the insurance payout, we booked a cruise lasting six months. We started in Fort Lauderdale and ended in Fort Lauderdale. We drank drinks we thought we would never drink.  I was...

    Honeysuckle withers in the wind suckling plants struggle under spring rains that soak plains and prairies leagues of cicadas serenade Kentucky hills after seventeen years of silence swarm and jostle a litany of revival dance at the family cemetery of...

Flip You won’t remember how the inky shroud of night wrapped around our teenage bodies as we curled together on your bed, your breath hot against my cheek. Santana played in the background, your fingers seeking mine as you whispered something was wrong with your dad....

Your red Acura hatchback is stolen …  Not really—you let some guys take it from a side street near Apache, the neighborhood gay bar—to go get some food. You sit on the curb, sweating in the San Fernando Valley stickiness … but they never come back … you walk home....