Flying Island

The house next door was lifeless until yesterday when I saw a family of raccoons. The old man and his skinny dog who lived there before-- left without closing the front door and no one has seen them since. A fellow across the street who wears thick glasses swears he saw the old man in the Walmart Parking Lot on Main Street the rainy night the door was left wide open. He was singing loudly pushing a cart filled with cases of dog food. The paper boy says he’s owed five months delivery and the mail lady says she can’t put any more mail in the box and oh, by the way, someone should return the checks sent the old man from Social Security. – by T.D. Richards From T.D. Richards: “After a career in corrections, Tom Richards began taking poetry classes at the Indiana Writers Center. In 2013, he published a collection of poems, This Side and That . He lives in central Indiana with his wife.”

The Milk Saucer by T.D. Richards    The old woman cries out in her sleep to the old man who has gone,  leaving his ears in the drawer. She opens her eyes, and the cat with a broken heart is pressed against her mottled skin stroking her thin wrist with breath. She recalls tiger lilies in the green depression glass vase he won at carnival--tossing pennies into the milk saucer. Bio: “I have lived in Indiana most of my life. I have had three careers that have lead me to value the importance of observation, hence my love of poetry now.”

Why I Love Ham Salad Sandwiches With Baloney By T.D. Richards In the cassock of her feed sack apron, Mom moved in the kitchen with sacramental intent, bending under the cupboard to withdraw the oiled meat grinder, her mother’s wedding gift. As her acolyte, I clamped the grinder to the counter while she chopped chubs of baloney and cranked them into mince meat to mix with sweet pickle relish and creamy mayonnaise and soda crackers that crunched and crackled through the razor edged cutting plate. She raised white Wonder bread asleep in its warren to chaperone the ham salad spread made with baloney. I got the meat grinder when mom died nd my sister got the recipes I knew by heart. I’m told there may be a final Feast to come. If so, I implore that Mom be chosen to make ham salad sandwiches with baloney and I be invited to eat them ad infinitum. Bio: T.D. Richards is a freelance writer who has written poetry as a way of sharing his lifelong observations from w...