they haven't ended

"But never attend / to happy endings—because if stories are happy, / they haven't ended."

~~ from "Ric's Progress" in The Back Chamber by Donald Hall

Rick Harsch, rare edition

Rick Harsch's signed second novel in "fine" or "as new" condition is a rare find.

Walkman

"You gotta make your own / spark, like those red lamps / on the ocean floor / that illuminate their prey / right before they attack."

~~ from "In Time of Plague" in Walkman by Michael Robbins

Later his leg died.

"[Daddy] had worked in a steel mill for over thirty years and had contracted emphysema. Emphysema and fits. And a brain tumor. He discovered he had a brain tumor during the course of a hospital stay because of the emphysema and the doctors wanted to operate. At first he refused. Nobody cuts my family, he insisted. But my sisters and my brother and I fussed and fussed until he finally agreed to it. They removed a tumor about the size of an orange from his brain and he was up and out of the hospital in a matter of weeks. And just the same. We saw no difference in him.

"Later his leg died. Just shriveled up and turned black and died and the doctors said that they had to amputate it or the death would spread throughout his body. And so he let them cut it off and he got a cane. He would smile and point to the empty place. Yeah, they got my leg but they didn't get me, he would boast."

~~ from Good Woman: Poetry and a Memoir 1969--1980 by Lucille Clifton

conversations with my mother and arguments with my father

"My father had been living with cancer for a while. He'd been in palliative care since August. In my mind, it was the worry of looking after him that saw off my ma. When she passed, her homecooked meals went with her. There was a stack of them in the chest freezer, labelled with cooking instructions. I remember serving my dad the last one, a lasagne, telling him 'a'ght, enjoy it because this is it.' He looked at me like he didn't believe a word of what I'd just said. The old man had always been a little peevish, but after my ma was gone he got downright irritable, the same way that a little boy gets irritable when he don't get what he wants. I'd seen him like that a few times before when he'd been drinking, which he didn't do too often. He wasn't no alcoholic like I am. He died on Valentine's Day, 2022. It was after his funeral when it first occurred to me that I literally had no one left to talk to. I used to have conversations with my mother and arguments with my father. Within a little over two months, suddenly I had neither."

~~ from A Reminder by Sam Redlark

Greetings from Rick in Slovenia

Rick Harsch's Rick & Jack in Croatia is one of five Corona\Samizdat titles I've read. The others were by Gary Amdahl, Roberto Arlt, W.C. Clarke, and João Reis.