Shiny Happy People 1978, Dean Bonner All the chrome people Suffering metal fatigue No longer reflect

2020, Dean Bonner The people bunched up on the hill wanted to teach us to sing in perfect harmony. The tarpaper shack was humming with activity. The thin paneling that Daddy and his brothers nailed up had sealed out the wind pretty well, and now they let us kids paint…

It’s chilly here in the hallway office, maybe 55 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve not been able to get fully warm since my bladder cancer surgery two weeks back. Maybe that’s what set me to thinking about The Match Girl. Or maybe it’s just the season. …

Open Your Heart 2021, Dean Bonner “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” Caroline complained to her grandmother. The old woman stopped stirring the pot for a moment. “No one sings now. No reason to. Go on up and tend the sheep.” “Sweet Caroline!” a voice accosted her from…

I’m sorry for you losses, Joel. Someone should grieve; someone should remember. I saw your post just as I hung up the phone from helping dispose of a body. The body of the woman I divorced (relatively amicably) in 1999. I got a surprise call mid-day from a detective in…

I’ll Fly Away 2020, Dean Bonner The spinning disc glided along the beach, caught an updraft at the hill, and came right back to the grinning thrower. Just like the boomerangs we had heard about. It was magical. …

A Tale of Young Love Two score and three stone ago, I was a young college student at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. It was there that I tasted love for the first time. I spent my first two nights on a borrowed dispensary bed, awaiting a dormitory room to…

My 54th Year Pediatric Follow-up Appointment — I just returned from my 54th-year pediatric follow-up appointment. I had recently learned from a niece that the doctor who delivered me was still practicing. He had just treated her kids. At eighty-something, he still ran the busiest pediatric office in the area. His receptionist was at first confused, but…

Our Introduction into Lingerie Engineering — I was three and Jake was maybe five. It was a rainy day at the Blair Village apartments near the old Lakewood Fairgrounds. We watched cartoons and got interested in the characters in a Dick Tracy cartoon about missing fortune cookies. They had funny hats. Still, we were bored. …