With John’s story, the Coffee Coaster is starting a test feature, in which the literary piece is excerpted from its beginning to a logical breaking point. Then the reader will directed to a Web page in the Scribd social publishing Website where for a small amount (often $1) the reader can purchase the entire story in electronic format. [1]
John’s full story “All We Got is Time” may be obtained at this scribd link. Continue reading
Another too-true, slice-of-life short story from the
Granite State author du jour, Ronald Kaiser[1]
“Tell me about her,” she says, lying in bed one night. He knows who she’s talking about right away.
“Let’s not do this now. I’ll tell you some other time,” he comes back.
Note: The PDF version of this article contains the photos and artwork as well. The article is also available for sale on Lulu.com.
Contents
The Free State Audi
Finding that perfect buyer…
Okay, here’s the plan, Mom…. Mom?!
On the road again
Making the deal
Windmills? We ain’t got no stinkin’ windmills!
Coda
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
— Marcus Aurelius
——-###——-
This year I’m going to try to stay as current as possible with day-to-day activities, so no one has to wait for a few weeks to get the news. And news it is, at least in the Live Free Before You Die crowd, the Free State Project minions now well established in New Hampshire and planning to make their stands here come hell or high water. Things can always go our way, too, even with the advent of the Obamanon. Continue reading
It’s 4:32 in the afternoon, and
the women of the editorial department
are thinking of something other than work.
Each in the privacy of her small work cubicle
—on an isle of 20 cubicles
in a block of sixty cubicles—
each kicks back, reaching for the bottom drawer
and a small bottle, an ancient scent,
oil of whiteout, perhaps, or
attar of pink eraser.
I am the new employee,
the new boy on the aisle,
the only male in the department.
I am young, and this
is my first corporate job.
I have nothing in my bottom drawer yet.
I am not used to the stuffy air
that forms late in the afternoon in these cubes,
but I can hear how the sound of keyboards being tapped
gradually tapers off to nothing.
My coworkers begin to lean back
in their chairs.
Someone closes the Chicago Manual of Style.
Another stares at the computer monitor and lets out
some dreamy sigh that lowers to an almost inaudible moan.
Someone else stands up and stretches,
that long biped feline stretch.
No words spoken, just that afternoon silence
that spreads down the aisles and over
the short fabric walls and I can sense
each woman is linking up to the sensation.
The woman in the next cube takes a deep breath,
holds it, and I can hear her let it go slowly as I realize
the whole department is in some sort of editorial lacuna,
a work stoppage that doesn’t require a union or shop steward,
just something more primary, more primal.
I look again in the bottom drawer of my cubicle’s desk
and realize whatever cologne I put in there,
it will never work.
[rewrite of November 10, 1986]