News from the front….
As some folks know, and some folks don’t, I run a small print journal of 50 word fiction.
it is called Blink-Ink and is produced with help from Full of Crow Press and Distribution.
Full of Crow is where I hang my hat so to speak. After months of techno problems we have
moved our email. Any of you who write very short fiction please find us online at
blink-ink dot com and submit your work to blinkinkinfo at gmail dot com.
It’s fun and easy. Take a look and see.

Used to be only Doctors gave out flu shots.
Then couple of years back pharmacies joined in.
How seems you can go most anyplace to be inoculated.
A waitress gave my wife hers while she and the kids waited for pizza.
I got mine at the car wash. The girl who gave me the shot looked
like she knew about needles, in a spoon and candle kind of way.

He was a private person.
He liked to whistle, and told strange jokes.
Quiet by nature, he was painfully shy.
Just worked hard and kept to himself
People said that he looked like
baseball great “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio”.
Poor dad was so embarrassed
when The Slugger married Marilyn Monroe.

Saddle up Yosemite 1995

At The “Western Experience” Base camp we were quickly sorted into groups for a day of trail riding. Our daughter and her teens and tweens sisters tore out of camp literally in a cloud of dust like an old TV posse riding hard in pursuit of imagined desperadoes.
In contrast our son and his mount were engaged in a Vulcan mind meld non-verbal
discussion of the tentative parameters of human equine interphase. Further exploratory talks were agreed upon.
One on the trail we realized how well the corral staff had matched horses and riders. My wife’s horse was a beautiful chestnut filly with flashing eyes and a touseled black mane. Spirited and proud this, “Alpha Alfalfa” bit every other horse in the ass till she was in the lead. Mine was completely uncooperative and openly hostile. Have you ever seen a horse scowl? He took every opportunity on the trail to try to scrape me off on rocky out croppings. His specialty was a sudden bolt, then gallop under a trees with limbs only centimeters above his saddle horn.
 Only once did I get wacked really hard in the face. That made the crazy old bastard actually smile and toss head, swinging his tail wide with joy.

The guy ahead of me in line switches to another line that’s longer rather than
order his Mega-Burger from a woman wearing a head scarf.
His new line is slower too since the senior running the register laments to each
customer that he is seventy two years old and can not afford to retire.
Ethnic discrimination, high cholesterol fast food, and a gutted economy.
Ignorant, fat, and broke.

Honestly, training your monkey to crap in an alabaster urn is hardly Bohemian.

by-Doug Mathewson

At the New York wedding,
laughing wildly, arms in the air,
my wife of 37 years and I danced
hard and fast to manufactured diva hits.
Jeweled disco lights sweep the crowd.
The tornado of music spun faster
One a.m. and dancing to Britney fucking Spears.
Now that’s some DJ!
by-Doug Mathewson

Thursday or so the Dallas Daily Dollar ran a story about music legend
Quincy Jones turning ninety years of age. Over breakfast that day at the
Silver Spurs Retirement Ranch Lasso Larry Lariat just about choked on his buckwheat mush when he read the quote. “Sex at my age is like trying to play pool with a rope”. The scenarios just started unfolding one after another for the old Rodeo rope trick artist …
by-Doug Mathewson

Saturday I dropped a jar of pickles in the Dollar Store.
(Breakage in isle whatever). 
High School girl at the register was very nice about it,
(She smiled and told me old people drop shit all the time).
To make up for the mess I bought three jars
Quickly summoned a young lout carried them to my car,
(To insure I didn’t drop these too).
I wanted to give tip him, but only had two twenties,
so I shook his big doughy hand instead.
(The boy looked at me like I was a fucking man from Mars).

by-Doug Mathewson
 
 

Back home, back where we came from originally, the work for “trouble” has both a masculine and feminine form. The literal translation would probably be “unravel”, but trouble is what it means. These days the masculine is for big problems, and the feminine for smaller ones. Back then it was to distinguish between the troubles of men, and those of women.
That spring day when my Grandmother cried out the masculine form and threw a dish, then threw another and began to cry; we knew, my sisters and I, that our Father would not be returning from the war.

by-Doug Mathewson