Several of us are standing by the cigarette-machine, leaning against the plate-glass window below the blinking neon blue. Suddenly Red-nose Charlie, a long-time regular appears. He drags himself over a snowbank to land on a shoveled path, created just for him.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Let the old bastard in,” says the bartender.
Charlie enters a darkened room, steps up to the fifty-foot mahogany bar. “Frickin’ cah’s buried.”
Roomful of unshaven laughter. A fellow snowed-in buddy of mine takes off Charlie’s backpack. I fish-out several baggies and toss special warm homemade brownies across the bar. Laughs turn to cheers. Reefer prohibition has ended, down in Massachusetts.
Don’s short story entitled,’Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Through the Fat 2018 Chapbook Contest.
His work has also recently appeared in The Rye Whiskey Review, Drunk Monkeys, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, FFM, O’ Dark Thirty, among other venues.
Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or stereotypes he's met while on the road. He likes to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past.
Before he stopped working to write he ran educational programs for homeless shelters. Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.
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