Creative writing
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The moon was full the night nine prisoners stood chained together awaiting the train that would take them from the Joliet prison in Illinois, to San Francisco. From there, a boat would take them to Alcatraz Island — their final destination. The shiny silver chains allowed for very little wiggle room. The men were so
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Picture it : 1966 in Arlington Heights, IL at Our Lady of Perpetual Angst Catholic School. Mrs. Ludy’s third grade class had been designing their special Valentine mailboxes all week. Snippets of red construction paper cut with blunt-nose scissors speckled the classroom floor. Tatters of paper lace doilies and glitter stuck to clothes and jackets
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The bus lumbered along the road. At every hour or so, the driver smashed the pedal to the floor, screeching the brakes. The doors slammed open, and passengers swarmed the vehicle like fleas to a bloodhound in June. Before everyone sat down, the doors crashed together and the bus resumed its journey with a lurch,
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** Until the day I die, I’ll never forget their glassy, unblinking eyes. You know, I’d made that dead dolly— what you all call a Voodoo Doll — myself. Mamaw taught me how when I was a kid back in Bayou Lafourche. She said that since we were direct descendants of Marie Laveau, it was our legacy. My mama died
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Last month’s editorial page lay rumpled on my floor. Its letters graying and damp-wrinkled, edges curling upward. Broken shells that once held sunflower seeds piled in one corner and a plastic mirror with a silenced bell in the other. How that bell drove me crazy with its incessant, cheap-metal jingle! In retrospect, it wasn’t really
Ergo, the Ogre 