The OrphanAGE, Vol. 1.10
First Lines
You know more than you think you do. ~ Dr. Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
I can’t recall who said it: We all love a tantalizing mystery… but they were spot on. With so much of what’s interesting in writing these days seems to be found in the genres, I was tickled by an offhand remark during a recent visit with A.D. Childers, confessing that she tended to write at her best when awaiting the release of next Tanya French novel (btw — TF is waay solid without the cloying tropes or all the splatter porn). Enjoy the snippet from Childers’ first novel (she has two), and go snag you one.
There are so many rules these days. From the quaint: no shoes no service, to express checkouts declaring: 10-item limits to Facebook’s dainty, puritanical: no graphic content community standards. It should come as no surprise that a host of rules has grown up around comics (aka graphic novels). The OrphanAGE is pleased to present an unpublished panel from the curiously idiosyncratic work of Odessa Doolittle’s recently released Diary of a White Rabbit sessions.
And, if one is out-n-about in KC’s poetry scene, you’re likely to have run into James Benger. A true aficionado, we jumped at an opportunity to offer a couple of his new works.
Peace,
Dante
In This Issue
- Short Fiction (mystery) by A.D. Childers
- Poetry by James Benger
- Comic by Odessa Doolittle
A.D. Childers, The Switch Point (excerpt)
transcript from August 27th, 2017 recording
Kennen: I first met Leonie Tilden in September of 1994 and I still remember that moment vividly. I had just transferred to Ashter High School, which had started its fall session about two weeks before. It was built out of dusty brown bricks with few windows, hardly inviting. I was standing at the curb, squinting in the morning sun when this girl came up to me. She had this curly honey-colored hair that looked like it was fighting to get out of the braids she had wrangled it into, and freckles viciously peppered over her nose and cheekbones. And her green eyes were … beautiful in concept but terrifying in execution. [laughs]
She said, “Hey, you!” and I stood there like some idiot statue. I think I was kind of afraid she wanted to fight me for some reason. She sighed and everything about her just softened. “Kennen,” she said in this completely different voice. It was kind. Well, cajoling actually, like I was a frightened child. I suppose I wasn’t the first person to be intimidated by her.
When I finally got enough balls together to nod my head, she told me she was there to show me to my classes. One of the counselors had asked her to help me out because we had a lot of classes together. It was easy for her to pick me out because there were only about 75 kids in the freshman class, most of which had been going to school together since kindergarten. Also, there was the fact that most kids were waving and meeting friends before first hour started, and I was the only person standing outside hanging out with the fire hydrant.
“Come on, I’ll show you around,” she said. She seemed in no way irritated to have been assigned an apparently mute stranger to help out. She took care of me from the start. She always had my back. I suppose that is why I felt so lost after she was gone.
…
Kennen: Every little town has its stories, its legends. People think they want to know the truth, but sometimes the truth is disappointing. Or it doesn’t have a s much meaning as the story. [glances over shoulder]. I’m just going to tell you what I know. The facts as I know them now. Things I noted back then. Then you can decide.
You can find A.D. Childers books at Prospero's or at her Amazon store.
Odessa Doolittle
Copies of Odessa Doolittle's graphic novels can be found at Prospero's Bookstore or at their website.
James Benger
un
in
formed
an unformed notion of what it is
your last shred of dignity
left out to run into whatever it finds
patience on the periphery
a lone branch concluding nothing
the wire the bird lands on
bearing the weight of all that is hollow
undulating – the way of it all
the streetlights only illuminate
those things we are ready to see
underneath a veil of contempt
a slipshod contraption of a life
time on the other hand
focusing on the unseen digits
a carburetor clogged with
all the things no one wants to acknowledge
an ill-fitting key
that somehow still unlocks whatever’s on the other side
you came and saw
only what you were prepared to perceive
but then we do it all the time
don’t we
and that’s it
until we find something new
Foundation
I would find places in the backwoods
to hide myself away from everything,
because most days it all felt like
the world was one of those
dilapidated buildings downtown,
and it was creaking and swaying,
and there was no question that soon
I would be buried under the
bricks and splintered wood and broken nails,
breathing in the asbestos of a life that
never felt anything less than toxic.
Some days, the dogs would follow me,
sometimes they’d lead the way,
following a scent that presented promising,
but we’d usually end up in the same place.
Someone had lived there long before the
ecosystem of rural Indiana reclaimed
what had always been hers in the first place.
The crumbling remnants of a small chimney,
the diminutive open box of what was left
of a fireplace that once kept someone warm
on the nights when the wind and snow
threatened to overtake everything.
I’d sit on the bricks and pet the dogs,
watching the insects explore what remained
of this manmade relic of a previous generation,
and I thought about those people
who once called this little stretch of nowhere home,
what their lives could’ve been
before nature reclaimed her birthright.
I once considered rebuilding,
making my secret place all that more official,
but clearing the vines and weeds,
the shooing of the bugs and rodents,
taking down the trees, seemed the exact opposite of
what I or any other part of the world needed.