people

Greed (Friday’s Free for All)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Although it’s not actually free, three stories for 99 cents ain’t far from it. Amiright? 😉

Hopefully this will help you through the hellish days of August – or a few hours, depending on how fast you read. 😁

Greed is available Wherever ebooks are sold.

GREED (Murder & Mystery)

What does, August Wolf, A Face in the Falls and The Sharecropper’s Son have in common?

These stories reveal the perplexities, the strengths and the weakness of people that are true to life and, like life, these stories expose the innate greed present in mankind.

“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

*A Face in the Falls is included in the short story anthology Unshod.

Happy Friday Y’all. 🍻

Tuesday’s Tell-All (I’m Just Not that Good at Being Smart)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

I tend to lag in technology, often years behind the rest of the civilized world. I never claimed to be tech-savvy or even civilized, okay?

Truth is I only got a “smart phone” this year for lack of choices. I went kicking and screaming into the “smart” realm with no intention of using it for more than basics.

After a few months [eight really] I installed the Facebook app. Apparently you need a second app for Messenger so I hit the okay/install that too button.

Alright. Welcome to the year 2017.

So there I was creeping Facebook on my desktop, minding my own business while the app did its thing and suddenly I am bombarded with alarms. The phone started chiming erratically,  messages were rolling in with GIFs and crazy stickers and emoji’s. At the same time my cousin is texting me, asking if I just sent her something.

No! Oh hell, this demon possessed phone has a mind of its own!

To make a long [list of deleting apps] story short… My daughter explained the particularly bothersome app; how Messenger notifies your Facebook contacts with a suggestion to wave/interact.

Oh.

Well I waved bye to most of the apps and went back to using the phone as a paperweight.

Yeah.

I understand now why people are glued to their devices. Bless their hearts, I’m just not that good at being smart.

 

 

Write Your Own II (A Poem & A Picture)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Write Your Own A Poem & A Picture

This post was intended as part of Wordless Wednesday but I have to say this. I do not/did not expect a public response but in last weeks Write Your Own (A Poem & A Picture) Sarah replied with a beautiful piece blending the poem and the picture. I must say it was a very pleasant surprise. I understand many of us are timid about publicizing our words/thoughts; potentially exposing ourselves to ridicule but if any of you would like to make your take of the photo in the reply section I would love to read it.

A Poem & A Picture (Last Sleep Best Sleep)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Last Sleep Best Sleep

by Brenda Shaughnessy

Dead Sleep (1024x644)

Life, this charade of not-death.

Amnesiac of our nights together,

overheard talking in some other voice.

The great fruits of my failure:

silk milk pills with little bitter pits.

Who talks like that?  Says we are

ever-locked, leaving everything

petalled and veined the way nature

pretended.  Synthesized within

an inch of its life. O the many faces

of facelessness, breathing in the dark –

as if we could shape softness itself,

mold it around us like yams mashed

against a trough by a snuffling snout.

Our own. There’s no way out. Born

to such extra, we are born to lose.

No hairy fingers tapering to threads,

grasping for some lost last use.

Once we were hungry on earth,

soon buried like root vegetables—

to starve the soil as beets do,

growing in our graves.

But now we must remember

our way back to face-to-face,

to eye to eye and hand in hand,

and lock and step and key in hole.

Remembering how not to fall asleep,

we become so desperately drowsy,

and all cells strain to slow to a stop.

All desire to choose otherwise quiets.

No, no one can say we didn’t suffer,

that we weren’t swallowed whole.

A Poem & A Picture (On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream

by Abdul Ali

Winter Daybreak

here among them   the dead   the others   the aliens

I see you without    coke bottle glasses   a wavy comb over

your nose buried inside a notebook  over-

 

flowing with strange sightings   men and women

without a homeland   a library to shelve histories

dreams   the names of rare flowers  fruits  baby names

 

exiled from their villages   learning to say hello

with accents thick   with nostalgia   for their purple planets

here UFO sightings aren’t so spectacular

 

border crossing is quintessentially american  universal

crowds gather in squalid ghettoes where every country is a city

every city is a verse  & every verse echoes “Those Winter Sundays”

 

where a New World opens up where all the martians are welcome

at the writing table with their fountain pens & swollen digits & you

 

whispering

 

what took so long?