Goodbye, Bob Sanzi

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

GOODBYE, BOB

Nancy Beaufort

Today, June 23, 2010, I said goodbye to my best friend.

     Bob and I were together for over seven years, longer than many marriages last. It started with an invitation to dinner and blossomed slowly into a deep bond.

     He and I shared many adventures. He took me to sprint car races, drag races and flat-track dirt bike races. We visited Watkins Glen and climbed up through the Glen, then retraced the old road race course. We packed his bike and rode it to Arlington, Texas, to meet up with the folks he rode with while he lived and worked there. We put another thousand miles on the bike before we made the return trip to Latrobe. We explored a bog near Wilmington, North Carolina in search of carnivorous plants. We rode the train to

Listen Up and Talk Down

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

LISTEN UP AND TALK DOWN

Norma E. Leary

     If you’re really listening to what people are saying, you’re certainly aware of the continuing epidemic of uptalking.  “Uptalk,” in a manner of speaking, is the habitual verbal delivery of declarative sentences ending with audible question marks rather than periods, i. e. “It truly is annoying?” (Yes, it is, unless you’re tone deaf.)

     Media talk show guests are often guilty of omitting periods more noticeable when the questioning tone is heard throughout declarative, compound sentences. It smacks of the talker bent on alerting listeners not to interrupt because he or she isn’t finished: “Me and my friend (I’m already cringing) went to see his show?, we had box seats? and so were up close? and glad we went” because it was worth the price?”

     Exhausting to hear! As unnerving as a mouthful of

Flamenco Dancer

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

FLAMENCO DANCER

Jean Isobel Myers

The sounds of a Flamenco Dancer, once heard

shall ne’er be forgotten

with stealth like movements,

she appears, grace floats, without a sound

emerging from the perimeter of the spotlight

not wanting to detract from her benefactor,

the accompanist

strumming e’er so slowly

chanting, an introduction

oh so, haunting a sound

but, to the untrained ear

not understood

 

What Happened To Old-Fashioned Love?

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

WHAT HAPPENED TO OLD-FASHIONED LOVE?

Fran Welts

     I’m reminded of the song by that title when having a conversation with a woman I’ll call Jane. We met at a cancer center in Pittsburgh. Our situations made both of us tired, just going along, but still enjoying the good times wherever we find them.
     As we waited in a very crowded room, she asked me why I was there. She told me how she had remarried at age seventy-three years old, just six months ago, after a long forty-five year marriage to her first husband. Joe, her husband now, had also had a long first marriage. They believed in marriage so after a short courtship, they wed.
     At this point there were several heads turning in our direction, many of them young—or young to us!! They had laptops, I-phones, I-pads, and whatever else is new and modern, and were busy typing or texting. But they paused long enough to listen. Like all of us, it’s human nature to listen when someone is telling a story.
     Jane explained that sixty-three days after they married Joe was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw and throat. He underwent removal of his lower jaw, and needed a trachea to breathe and a feeding tube to eat. He cannot close his mouth and he cannot speak.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Around the waiting room you could see

Annie By The Seaside

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE 

ANNIE BY THE SEASIDE

Walter Matusic

Down by the seaside where Annie goes

There in the stones a flower grows.

Annie looks out at the foaming sea

Then sits down by the flower and me.

For long is the time that I’ve waited,

On this island tormented and hated.

Where a prison embranded me

And on the island they stranded me.             

But though they tried they could not hide me

With pretty Annie now here beside me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

ADDITIONAL READING:

Strand of Old Glory

ONE ROOM LIVING

Lost in My Pasta

The Sunshine State

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

THE SUNSHINE STATE

Mark

     Through the dark night, cement highway strips marked time with a rhythmic clump-clump. Stuffed near the back of the bus in an odorous sea of musty upholstery and unwashed humanity came one thought: Go Greyhound! I made the mental note of the $15 remaining in my wallet as we crossed the Florida state line as I curled up in my seat. For further comfort, a small portable radio pressed closer to the ear.

     Two months earlier, in snow-bound Pennsylvania, I had attended a college job fair. Recruiters from Disney World Orlando were there and a paid gig in sunny Florida didn’t sound like a bad idea. They promised an intern sales host position plus lodging for a six month term.

     My new home was Snow White Village. We new-hires got to reside in a park of fourty-eight trailers, fenced into a tidy rectangle. Each trailer’s walls were

We Were Off

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

WE WERE OFF

G. David Schwartz

To a foreign county we were off

We don’t know their lingo enough

And as everybody answers

You can’t know it ‘til you life the words

So off to the villas and towns

To speak in the native surrounds

Ready? Here we are. Get out of

Nodes of True Fantasy

BEANERY ONLINE LITERARY MAGAZINE

NODES OF TRUE FANTASY

Ernest Williamson III*

I don’t like you
nor is the sun a god with an opinion
unless we denude opinions and deem
them
truth
well,
what I mean to say
is that