The local townsfolk call it Old Albert’s Place, located on the north side of the crater, near the bunkers, a few miles off of Route 18. “Can’t miss it,” they tell me with raised eyebrows. “Just follow the dirt road to the end. It is still passable, despite the winter rains last year. Watch out for the potholes and radioactive stuff. Good luck, mister!”
And so I walk…
Aging memories and youthful desires in perpetual flux, expanding and shrinking to the calls of unknown voices – sometimes friends and sometimes foes, directing and misdirecting, TELLING but never SHOWING. The trickster, STILL slithering around the proverbial garden, spouting the same old lies, leaving a trail of dead poets waiting to be reborn: Agonizing trinities of father, child, and vacated lovers.
SHE remains elusive, incommunicado, camouflaged among prickly underbrush and apparitions of yesteryear; taken hostage by the thieves of muses and destroyers of gray bearded men with orphaned writers. HER fiery womb appearing far-off in the distance, bubbling up in the heat of bone-dry pavement: ILLUSION set ablaze by the desert of shame.
© 2020 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
“Do not fear facing people without your pants; the world is dirtier than your underwear.”
~ M.F. Moonzajer
Attention shoppers!
Please strip down to your undergarments prior to entering the shopping area. Place articles of clothing inside the ziplock bag that was overnighted to you. Your first and last name, or a barcode, must appear on the attached label. If the label is missing from the bag, face the door camera and hold the bag in front of you. Wait for further instructions. Otherwise, seal/zip the bag and drop it down the chute attached to the blue bin on your right.
Change did not exist in 1973. The people and things I cherished would last forever, as is, without alteration. Time stretched infinitely into the distance, a conveyor belt to nowhere, carrying our faces, mom’s milkshakes, dad’s store, my orange chopper and blue sparkle drums, and all those “feel good” tunes playing continuously on big sister’s turntable – our endless theme for 1973.
© 2020 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
My clunker of an 1987 Oldsmobile came to a stop, but too abruptly for nurse Cathy’s liking. I’d applied a bit of excess pressure to the brakes, causing a slight jerking motion to our bodies, but no more. She was being Cathy the drama queen though. Her head shifted violently forward and then backward against the head rest, arms and legs splayed outward and apart, as if I’d crashed us – high impact – into a cement wall. She groped at her neck, whiplashed of course, and then her head toppled to the side, with tongue distended.
Notes from David 