Today, I’m sad. I feel a weight in my chest and a general heaviness in my whole body. I just want to lay my head down, stare at the wall, or go to sleep. Of course I know why I’m sad. It’s reasonable to be melancholy when you’ve just lost your only sister, your oldest…
Category: Flash essay
Flash Essay: Chest Cold, Students and the Oscars
I have a grand chest cold, one that causes me to seize up when I cough and rattle when I breathe. No fever, no aches and pains, just a cough that makes people instinctively step back, as if to say, “Please don’t give me whatever it is you’ve got.” Besides that, I saw students from…
Flash Essay: What I’ve Learned from Research about Huck Finn
I am helping one of my students with a term paper on Huck Finn and as part of the process, we’ve researched what inspired Mark Twain to write the books he did. Here is some of what I’ve learned: Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) started Huck Finn in order to tell the humorous anecdotes he’d…
Prompt: The Word “Time”
Time is an issue for me. It has been an issue for a long while. Not when I was a kid. Then time stretched out like a relaxed cat, stretching long, and I relaxed with it. Playing outside up in trees and pretending each limb was a room in my imaginary house, and me climbing…
My Submission Plan
Today I submitted three of my pieces to literary magazines. I also followed the advice in the article I posted and actually took the time to read several magazines, especially the ones to which I submitted. My plan is to devote one day a week to submissions, something I haven’t done lately. It is time,…
Prompt: Marcia Ball and the Texas Blues
We saw Marcia Ball and her band the other night here in Texas at a local club called Loose Wheels. They are a long-term Austin band and they play a combination of Texas blues and Louisiana rock. You could imagine yourself sitting in a New Orleans bar listening to her pound away on her piano…
Flash Essay Prompt: A Stolen Cross and the Lesson that Comes with It
Jesus is hanging on a metal cross. This cross is part of a stand so it is freestanding rather than designed to hang on the wall. The metal is silver and Jesus is silver and the nails that are attaching him to the cross are silver. The cross and stand are about a foot and…
Flash Essay Prompt: The Word “Other”
Other? What does that mean? Other means not us. Someone different. Someone who does not share common traits or beliefs or locations or even species. Other is a word that comes up a lot when people want to judge someone harshly. He has other beliefs. She has other interests. Not ours. Against us. Not with…
Prompt: The Word “Encounter”
Encounter is a word that conjures up mystery. Encounter is not just a meeting, but something more fleeting. An encounter suggests movement, as if both parties are on their way to somewhere else and they briefly come in contact. One can imagine an encounter in a stairwell, where two people pass and glance at one…
Prompt: Reading and the Recession
Beloved. I need to read Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Rachael has asked me to help her with one of her college essays on the book, plus one of my high school students will be writing about it in his AP English class and asked for my help. I’m happy to read it; I’m delighted to read…
20 Minutes a Day 