I am honored to have been included in the latest zine issue (#5) of Plots by Clots titled Bots & Tots, dedicated to childhood memories and growing up. My contribution, Vinnie Malone, is a work of fiction, but based on an experience I had when I was six. One name has not been changed. Can you guess which one?
“Frantic. I’m frantic!” Vinnie Malone’s dad is standing outside our front door yelling at my mother even louder than he did at Mrs. Malone when she shrunk his special pants – the one’s he wore when Mr. Kennedy became president last year.
She slips me behind her full skirt, probably so I don’t get whacked by accident. He looks like the bird I saw last week pecking at a dead squirrel in the middle of the road. Every time a car whizzed by it flapped its wings and hopped to the curb so it wouldn’t get smushed.
“Vinnie’s missing.” Mr. Malone runs a hand over his shiny head. I wonder how his knuckles can be so hairy when his head isn’t. Continue reading
Of all the things I expected to find in my tomato soup, this wasn’t one of them. A few seeds so small they’d slipped through the strainer unnoticed? Perhaps. A bit of chopped onion that had stuck to the pot and avoided being puréed by the processor’s whirring blade? That I could understand. A pinch of pepper flakes secretly snatched, sprinkled, and stirred into the mixture by some sly son-of-a-snicker-doodle when I turned to rinse my hands of a splash of garlic oil that stuck to my fingers was even a likely find. But this? No.
One homemade heart
Alice Wetherby Pimms
Donna Gwinnell Lambo-Weidner 
‘TWAS THE NIGHT OF BAH HUMBUG
when the Grinch played his part.
His slim, furry fingers fouled
my holiday’s start
by pointing out the turmoil bubbling up
in our world-
the hatreds,
the judgements,
the greed that had unfurled.
Indeed, ’twas too late,
for neither laugh nor smile,
would ward off the Humbug cloud forming
in true Ebenezer Scrooge style…
‘Twas the night between the longest and the Most Holy Eve Continue reading →
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