NO. 89: PETS ON MEMORIAL DAY

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.

*        *        *

Being a foundling on Memorial Day is difficult. You want to memorialize past generations. How can you, if you don’t know your relatives? Pet lovers, like me, we can remember a Fido or Puss passed on.

But what if your beloved is a parrot? My Captain Polly may live well over 200 years.

Or your beloved pet is a Trumpeter? Turt is my Trumpeter’s name. He is a rare form of giant land-sea turtle that may live just as long.

“They may very well outlive you, Raji,” my wife reminds me.

Maybe they will parade by my headstone to honor me one last time.

I can just see it – Captain Polly rides on Turt’s huge shell. I smell the sweetly pungent sardine – my favorite food – Turt, in my honor tosses from his beak-snout onto the sod that sits six feet above my head.

I smell the warm, dry brimming-with-seed sunflower – my favorite snack – that Captain Polly drops from her talons alongside Turt’s offering. Then Captain Polly warbles a rhapsodic melody and Turt trumpets a coronet-like accompaniment.

Such is the life of a foundling for Memorial Day: Just imagination, dreams.

I love my pets. I know they love me.

For the next series of postings, I will be ruminating on pets of all sorts. I hope you’ll recognize some similarities to critters you know. And what more appropriate time than May, National Pet Month?

My Pet Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

My Pet Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

(Read more of Turt, Captain Polly, and Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 88: A DESSERT RECIPE- FOR DELIGHTFUL BOUDOIR RESULTS

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

In the late 1800’s, my immigrant Russian great grandmother, Shelva Fiction was barely able to speak English.  She learned it by beginning a journal about her husband, ‘Doc’ Fiction.  His was a life dedicated to folk and patent medicines, and cures in general.

One of her entries was of special interest to women.  It was Madame Rrrose Heather’s Whure’s Delight, or as G-gra’ma Shelva called it, ‘R-R-Ruse’s Pride’.  It was, and still is, a popular pastry aphrodisiac.  For generations wives have been serving it to husbands, quoting G-Gra’ma “with delightful boudoir results.”

Shelva compiled copious note on the ‘Delight’.  She was a great story teller.  Here is her version of how the delight came about.

TALE OF THE ‘WHURE’S DELIGHT’ – HOW ONE RECIPE CAME TO WOO A NATION

For nearly 75 years, an anonymously-written cooking column appears weekly in the Cincinnati Daily Opine. (We at the Fiction House know it is the work of Madame Rrrose Heather, owner of Cincinnati’s most notorious bordello.) The column’s recipes exotic fare is served on 19th century dinner tables – maybe once. Then it’s a return to the basics more reflecting a society’s stern work ethic. But one sumptuous fudge dessert, with a few alterations becomes culinary legend throughout the land.

SHELVA

SHELVA

“What ye sprinklin’ in the Delight sauce, Rrrose Heather?”

“In the old country it’d be…” Over hot stove, Rrrose whispers it and Bonnie titters. Rrrose smiles – so enjoying these ‘mother-daughter’ kitchen times with one of her ‘girls’. “But since we cain’t be gettin’ that here I use, just a smidgen’ mind ya, oil ‘a the buckeye. It be givin’ the same passionate allure. Wouldn’t be surprised if our business triples after they print this; while over on the domestic side ‘a the city babies begin poppin’ out left and right nine months down nature’s path.”

Rrrose tenderly strokes Bonnie’s abdomen. She can’t wait until Bonnie realizes she’s pregnant. ‘A grandmother, Cincinnati’s Rrrose will be!’

(Author’s note: That original recipe, now so commercialized, so changed over time that it has lost, how might one say, its ‘vigor’, but the original Whure’s Delight is still served – fresh-baked daily – couples make your reservations today – at the Fiction House Bed and Breakfast.)

(Read more of Shelva and Rrrose Heather in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

 

 

 

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 87: THE BECKONING CALL OF THE PORTRAITS

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh 

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. A thousand minus one perish. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.

*      *      *
Sometimes late at night, I can’t sleep. Tenille and our children are upstairs in bed. So, I roam the grand old rambling Fiction House and examine the portraits lining the walls. They are those of the hundreds of Fiction House former ‘residents’.

I know them only in my imagination.

They are relatives, authors, friends of the family, and some foes. Others – characters in stories – it’s hard to tell if they are real, or if they’re fiction from the bookshelves.

So quiet! You feel tonight is different from other nights. Then you hear – barely audible at first – whispers. They rise from the paintings.
“Tell our stories Raji. If you don’t it will be as if we’ll never have lived.”

I gently touch the canvas face of my great-great grandfather James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, the Fiction House founder. It’s cold, yet it warms my hand as if he’s alive as he was when he sat for the artist. He’s a handsome devil. (See above picture) Looks just like me. (Hee! Hee!) I take Blackjack down to dust his old frame. I believe the dapper old gent just smiled appreciatively.

As I hold great-great granfa close, I notice something I never before did – or maybe it’s a strange magic of night. The wall covering beneath the hanging is no darker than the rest of the wall. The burgundy fleur pattern from the 1850’s isn’t faded.

THE TALE OF THE WALL COVER OF THE FICTION HOUSE (even it has a tale)

It is made from the finest, most expensive deeply dyed silk from Lindia. Its installation is the result of Blackjack’s abolitionist relationship with his friend-decorator, Madame Rrrose Heather. She operated a chain of bordellos along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers – from Cincinnati to New Orleans – that served as safe houses on the Underground Railroad. She used the design at each location.

“Seek safety in the whure of the fleur,” became an abolitionist password. Torn swatches of the wall covering became discreet codes along southern trails. They pointed the way to northern safety for runaway slaves:

To safe houses like the Fiction House.

“Tell our stories Raji…”

THE TALE OF RAJI

The portraits’ beckoning haunts me, nicely. I’ll not refuse their request. I, Raji, know little of them because I became an orphan, a foundling, at a tender age. I continually discover who, I, am through their stories.

SHELVA’S TALE 

SHELVA

SHELVA

In my role as archivist-editor for the many generations-in-existence family business, Fiction House Publishing, I’m continually finding the writings of my Russian immigrant great grandmother Shelva Fiction.

They are tucked discreetly but haphazardly hither, thither, and yon within the tired home: Beneath re-upholstered settees to build them up.

Reams of wadded writing pack tightly into dusty airshafts. Fistfuls more, they’re insulation for the attic, and draft dodgers in the basement.
No rhyme, reason, nor explanation for this word-hoard, or their hiding spots.

Since Shelva shelved them – many over 100 years ago – mine eyes are the first to see them; hands first to touch; nose to smell their not quite completely faded lavender scent.

Oh, the treasure trove of history and drama they hold for me to reveal to the world: journals, diary, and biography. It is the treasure I’ve dreamed of, hoped for – stories of my past I’ve never known.
It is every editor’s dream coming true. Every glorious find an archivist may discover.

G-gra’ma Shelva barely spoke English when she arrived “to Amerika” from her Mother Russia. One can see, over the decades, by the flow of her prose, how she became proficient – second-to-none in her adopted language.

Shelva enjoyed, and became impassioned by the unique and adventurous lives of the Fiction House women. Through the scraps of Shelva’s writing I find, I piece together their stories told in their words, through Shelva’s caring voice.

Shelva showed special interest in an elderly healer-midwife named Mama Lucy. Shelva’s husband Doc Fiction, my great grandfather, based many of his healing medicines and pharmaceuticals on Mama Lucy’s bayou potions and notions.

“Tell our stories Raji…”

MAMA LUCY


 Down the hallway gallery I go to Mama Lucy, 125 years old if she’s a day. In her portrait she cradles a floppin’, flounderin’ foundlin’ baby gator. Her blind eyes seem to scrutinize me, and pity me for being a foundling too, and encourage me to discover my past by telling of all those who are pictured on the walls. Mama Lucy does all this with the same deadeye look.

A poet who spoke in Lake Pontchartrain Cajun strains, Mama’s words came softy and sublime, often in sing-song rhyme.

‘Yer life, Raji, it be a dereliction,

If you not be tellin’ the tales ‘a the House ‘a Fiction.’

I answer her in kind.

“Yea, my Mama Lu,

I be Fiction true.”

I straighten her painting. I wonder: Maybe it has been askew for over a century? I notice that Mama’s is much heavier than others of the pictures I’ve handled. I remove it from the wall, slip away part of its backing. Out slides hundreds of formulas for the notions and potions.

A recipe catches my eye – Madame Rrrose Heather’s Whure’s Delight, nutty fudge, with a few merry alterations.

A newspaper review is attached to it. In the mid 19th century of the Sunday culinary section of the Cincinnati Daily Opine, the cooking editor describes it, “A bawdy repast for the never to be bored again boudoir. Just one taste will assure your just desserts.”

*      *      *

The portraits in the Fiction House, they beckon me – ‘Tell our stories, Raji.’
I shall, every Sunday night in these postings. Join me, won’t you? No telling what grand adventuring we’ll be invited to be part of amongst these 1,001 tales.
NEXT WEEK: THE TALE OF RRROSE HEATHER’S WHURE’S DELIGHT

(Read more of Mama Lucy, King Creole, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

 

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 86: MOTHER’S DAY MAGIC

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

SHELVA

SHELVA

I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction. Typhoon tears me from my mother and father on board a sinking ferry near the Lindian coast. A thousand minus one perish. I alone survive. I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh. Now I am Raji. These are my found and foundling tales.
*      *      *
MY THREE MOTHERS

She was well over 100 when I was still a little boy.
I am not even sure I met her, though I am told I did.
Yet my memories of her, my Russian immigrant great grandmother Shelva Fiction, they are vivid as the two mothers who raised me. My memories of Shelva come from letters and stories ‘Mother’ Shelva composes throughout her lifetime:

She tucks the writings away in obscure hiding places in the Fiction House.

Who can say why?

Securely they wait, until I discover them.

The find, purely by accident?

“No,” Tenille tells me, as we sit in front of the fireplace on a still brisk May evening – Mother’s Day. “Fate led you to them, Raji. In spirit, she was watching over you, leading you to them.”

Here now is how Shelva accomplished this mystical feat – on a magical Mother’s Day, of the previous year.

* * *

It’s late. Luny Mum is full. Dark clouds drifting by occasionally obscure her orb. Scarlet-hued rays streamed ominously from Poppy Sol before he retired for the evening. Tenille and our children are asleep upstairs. It is quiet. Other than a squeaky floorboard, or rattling water pipe, the grand rambling Fiction House is so peaceful this time of night. I am drawn to Shelva’s portrait gracing an alcove. I cannot say why, maybe I’m under a spell or in a trance.

Shelva’s a smooth-cheeked brunette, her neck thin and willowy. She’s stately as any Czarina. The flash of her blue eyes radiates against her glowing olive skin. Ageless, I cannot tell if she’s 25 or 45 when she posed Breathing, deeply, I think I smell borscht and caviar, her favorite repasts: Maybe she and the artist noshed midst the sitting, and now a tangy beet-earth scent and a wisp of the sea life permanently saturate the canvas.

I crank her old oak Victrola, and turn the volume low so I won’t wake anyone. The only ones aroused are the spirits of old Russia as the soft strains of balalaika music sift around me. Suddenly and for no reason the music spikes.

The noise – like a thousand Cossacks crowding me, doing a foot-clapping kazatsky dance.

Fortunately, the doors upstairs are closed. No one stirs.
Shelva’s portrait tilted slightly from the vibration.     The tilting, along with Luny Mum’s obscuring shadows make it look like Shelva’s mouth moves. It must be my imagination, but I hear her say, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time Raji. Catch me as I make the leap into your world.”

Her portrait begins to teeter-totter, as if somehow it is unbalanced. Then I hear a fanning-shuffling, like a deck of cards. She falls toward me. As I hold her upright, hundreds of envelopes spew from around the back of the frame. They cover the floor.

The very first one I open is a word map, giving directions to her hiding places. Squirreled into nooks, crammed into crannies, filed behind false-paneled walls, I find more envelopes, containing what I’d describe as “word-hoards”.

Furiously, curiously, deliriously I read her tales of the Fiction House. They give me clues – as to who I am, and the history of forebears I never knew; and knowledge of all the residents, saints to sinners, whose lives helped mold me –

The Fiction House residents: Blackjack Fiction, Laza Bones Thibidioux, The Mariner, Kunta Kiinder, Efraim Ephraim, Captain Polly, Turt, Cecily Cobra, Luny Mum, Poppy Sol and all the others I’ve never met.

I sit on the floor and weep, in joy. For the first time since the ferry accident, I truly feel I am James Thaddeus Fiction – the Fifth, besides being Raji Singh.

I feel re-born –

As James.

Thank you great gra’ma, Shelva. Happy Mother’s Day.

Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

To me, an orphan foundling who knew little of his past, or the people he came from, it is Happy Birth Day.

(Read more in the novel, Tales of Fiction House. Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment. Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures. You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 85: MAY DAY ON THE BAYOU IN POEM AND STORY

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

“Tis 1800, there ‘bouts, early morn.

Today Thibidioux chil’ to be born.

Butterflies come and tell me so.

‘Come Mama Lucy – time to go.’”

110 year-old healer and midwife Mama Lucy chants these words as she walks sprightly along the bayou road leading to the Thibidioux cabin. Amulet necklaces of critter teeth and bones click together in time to her pace.

“13’s be wild

Bad tidins’ for comin’ child

Ups to me to potion free

The innocent born to be”

She cups hands behind her back and catches a floating 13-pointed leaf. For luck, she extends ritual by popping it in her mouth, swallowing.

“Should be gay – this First of May

But twelve plus one crayfish

Black pussy, at my door, lay.”

Mama Lucy’s words that come, seldom, yet sublime, often arrive in singsong rhyme. ‘Dems of the bayou forgive her this crime. They know the tragedy that fraught this

“My only beget,

Son,

He,

Alligator ‘et’.”

Shoeless, her worm-thin toes wriggle in the dirt. Dress looks a gunnysack containing rattly-bony frame. Never tall, with age she’s shrunk to the length of a yard-and-a-third stick, almost as thin. She’s pliable, like willow; no dry twigs of arthritis. Easily she carries a 40-pound carpetbag of potions, lotions and cures weighing half herself. Ghost-white hair sprouts sparsely from atop once onion-round head that is now withered, avocado shape. You can’t tell if she’s white or black because time has blended her skin to a neutral gray. Blind, eyes shriveled pits; she views with eagle vision the world through her senses.

From seemingly nowhere lightening crisscrosses the azure sky, occasionally igniting burbling swamp gas. The explosions are like popping firecrackers. They frizz thick moss swaying from trees. Mama Lucy sniffs,

“Rotten egg smell.

‘Yea, do foretell

Fomentin.’

Bad day be born

Today’s chil’

Lifelong forlorn.”

She plans to dose the mother with a tonic of foamed mushroom and boiled spleck to delay birth ‘til past midnight, when a new day would bring fresh charms.

Mama Lucy feels the air, suddenly dank.

“Hundred yards yonder

13 gators, dey bask.

Dey no hinder

My carin’-for task.”

She doesn’t veer: BLIND PERSISTENCE; BLINDING STUBBORNESS!

Rouge dust stirs at Mama’s feet as she meanders to, then among the lounging reptiles: All are tan-tinted 8 to 12 footers – biggest in the swamps. [1]

  Senses tell Mama Lucy that today they scheme as they lounge. She feels their fear and apprehension as they nervously swing open their snouts. Teeth brush her knees. They cry out at her intrusion.

Their instincts – to stave off riling-up two-legs, thus, preventing wholesale gator slaughter – dictates their bayou code:

GATOR BRETHREN EAT A TWO-LEG. THEN THEIR RELATIVE BE UNTOUCHABLE. SO, NONE MAY HARM MAMA!

This, be their ancient bayou ‘way’.

Mama Lucy plucks gently into balmy air and catches mosquito. She holds it, as New Orleans gentry hold teacup between thumb and forefinger.

“Skeeter, take mah blood.”

She lets it sting, then, bayou-lightening fast, moves her hand and places it near the biggest gator’s battle-cratered snout – that of King Creole. King Creole instinctively scissors open, shuts jaw. He snarfs insect cleanly, not touching human finger.

“I trick you, mah shaz a mio.

My blood floods into you, King Creole

So now hast you strode

Over your own precious code”

Again, this cunning ancient human who knows him well has duped him – the KING!

She, who took him in as foundlin’ gator, hardly bigger ‘n a human finger. He were dehydrated, floppin’ down-side up, hunnerd yards from the bayou. Doctored ‘im day n’ night; wet-nursed scratchy, wee-toothed beast right alongside own boy ‘til ‘e could ‘et solids: Let ‘em both sleep together; raised ‘im into a fine young specimen, she did, then set im free in the swamps so ‘e could live ‘mongst own kind.

N’ ‘ow ‘e repays ‘er? By, years later returnin’ and ‘etten her grown son, his own crib, then sandbox, then pirogue, brother.

Creole snaps, bellows. Slimy reptile saliva spatters Mama’s face. She wipes it into a bottle she snakes from pocket.

‘I trick double.

My mojo’s workin‘

Gainst your lurkin’

No’ting a better fixer,

Den gatah-spit elixir.’

–Poppy Sol reflects philosophically down at the alligator conclave. ‘As humans do what they gotta; so to, gators do, but not necessarily what they oughtta.’–

Gators stare warily at their king. Grumbling growls. Some wonder. Should they doubt his ability to deal with the bayou two-legs.

King regains composure. He brings the conclave to order by thumping gavel tail. He needs their full support in their long-planned, REVOLUTION against humans that begins today. He raises tail, proudly, and then dangles it, disgusted. Embedded into it is a squirrel that failed to hustle past with a nut.

Mama Lucy: No longer does she despise Creole for ‘etten her only offspring right in front of her 3/4’s century past. She began rhymin’ – that’s how she stays sane. It took Mama nearly half-a-century,

“…ta be a realizin’

Life way-too shoat

To be a grievin’

A pirogue

Cain’t no longer float.”

She pats Creole’s snout. Though blind, she believes she can see her son’s eyes in Creole’s eyes. Imagined though that might be, it’s the only vestige of his life she’d ever have. Because of that, never would she harm Creole, she long-ago vowed. [2]

“I know you be a plannin’ somethun’, King Creole,” says Mama Lucy. “I be keepin’ eye on you wif’ my soul.” She slides a bottle from her carpetbag and sprinkles sparkly contents over gators. She chants,

“Grinded an’ pulverized leather hide

‘a gators long gone-away.

Let descendents see yer evil fate,

If today, on humans

You darest to prey.”

Gators sneeze, quiver, and shiver, at feeling the dust-touch of ancestors. Some run.

Huey Long, ruthless politico, demagogue in the making – King Creole’s top Lieutenant and held back only by King Creole – stops them with a growl that sends treed birds flying. ‘Do not let the old witch bad-omen us and stop our revolution. If you do, I will hunt you down. Your fate will be worse than that of becoming your ancestors’ powder.’

Gators of the conclave crouch. They fear staying but fear even more, going.

Mama Lucy re-commences trek toward the Thibidioux place – just up the way. Gators mill, always with two on lookout for Thibidioux cousins, uncles who might pass by with glistening explosion sticks deadlier than any razor fang.

[1]Perilous tannicus: Nicknamed ‘Gatemouth Browns’, because these muddy-complexioned perils have snouts that thrash wildly as gates in a gale. The swinging produces a twangy bluesy melody. Perilous tannicus live five times longer than most gator breeds, and some bayou folk claim it’s because their baby-cry-like songs relieve tension, subdue worries.

[2] ~~Editor’s note:  You, too, can see Mama Lucy’s son’s haunting eyes.~~

(Read more of Mama Lucy, King Creole, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

 

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 84: EYES OF A LIFETIME, A BAYOU POEM

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Farewell to April and another National Poetry Month.

And

Farewell to Lucius Abel.  That last day with him, his Mama relives every day.

*     *      *

All is dark. Just one thing she sees – her son’s eyes – perpetual eyes.  Mama sees them from his beginning to end.

“He has your eyes darlin’ Lucy. We’ll call him after you”, young husband, now, so-long deceased, tells her.

She holds newborn tight. “And after you Abel. We be so happy – dans notre paradis de jolie.”

Her man strokes her perspiring jet hair and she feels so proud –

A tiny fragile body has her life in him.

Then she sees Lucius Abel a boy; eyes gleaming excitement when he catches first catfish by hand…

…as groom, determined eyes set on beautiful bride and their new life…

…then as new fa, to a boy destined to be their only child – excited, nervous eyes…

…as his wife and teen-age son are pulled from him during the hurricane; cold,despairing eyes…

…as his eyes now go dim, as the gator pulls him under for the final time.

She sees the turquoise eyes again of the newborn she once so tightly held.

“Sleep tight mon chil’.”

(Read more of Mama, Lucius Abel, and the gators in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

 

Posted in Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

No. 83: THE TALE OF AN EASTER LILY AND A DESERT RESURRECTION IN POETRY AND PROSE

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

April is National Poetry Month. For humans it is a time for Easter, Passover, and various human (‘two-leg’) celebrations. Plant, bird, butterfly, and creature (the ‘four-legs’) celebrate, too. They call it Transformation: The Time of the Great Desert Pilgrimage.

For your two-leg reading pleasure, here is the magical, surreal poetry we at the Fiction House cherish.

LET ME TELL YOU THE TALE OF PRICK LILY THE SAGE

A ragin’, sagin’12 feet tall

Green

Cactus Queen

Prick Lily

Whose wisdoms come

Quite Willy Nilly

To partake of her

East Tehas Wit

Far away Critters

To her desert

Will flit

But not too close…

For fear of being

Pricked Silly

The towering Prick Lily mystically emanates to her butterfly sister, Calico. ‘Know what today is, Calico?

As magical as Lily’s communion, is Calico’s reply from off in the desert. ‘But of course, Lil. On this day, at this hour, for thousands of years, never interrupted.’

Lily emanates,‘Yes! The Great Desert Pilgrimage. Lead them to me.’

‘Indeed Lil I will.’

The gulf breeze tips Prick Lily’s forever-upright arms. Bastion trunk firmly anchors her. She doffs white, ten-gallon – Doves sail. Lily sings: ‘Ya hoo and rippity doo. It’ll be a rip-roarin’, rootin’-tootin day deep in the heart of Teharoo.’ Lily’s emanations spring forth from her prickers, thousands of tuning fork transmitters. Critters, plants and varmints of the territory, their sensations, preened from millenniums of nature’s honing, absorb her vibrations. Lavender petals, the shape of fine porcelain dishes, and, just as delicate, forever blossom on Lily. Their lacey antennae-like pistils are her sense-sound receivers.

Calico becomes – hundreds of butterflies – and her shifting colors bewitch all who see.

Luny Mum suddenly seems to glow above the desert, making a rare, full, daytime appearance. She gleams to a just-as-anxious Poppy Sol. ‘A parade, Poppy. Wouldn’t miss it.’ Her beam streaks the blue sky, touches, and holds Poppy’s warm ray tightly.

The hundreds of Calicos – they swoop down and light upon Lily – then become one Calico again. No one can ever be jaded to butterfly magic.

Creatures of the desert sand will witness a parade few humans can imagine. What a tale could be told.

Spider-webbings royally cloak Lily’s shoulders

Calico perks antennae. ‘Do you feel the vibration Lily?’

‘Indeedy do. ‘bout time. I ‘xpect you’ll be the one to lead em all in.’

Calico affirms with the flit of a wing, then flies off, to beyond the horizon. Lily beams to her subjects near and far. ‘As the heat Orb shines his brightness and the night Goddess honors us with a daytime audience, come all! Gather for the royal procession that will transform our desert – into – our Paradise kingdom.’

LILY’S ROYAL TALE

Creatures stream across the sand to Lily. Most are timid, like lizards and armadillos, but also copperheads, coyotes, Gila monsters. Prick Lily trusts all, fully. In turn, she is trusted infinitely. Creatures convey to Queen Lily their most private thoughts. Passing leaves, migrating birds, deliver news; plants, other cacti, relay messages. She collates, stores all; interprets and disperses desert sage.

Lily achieves near harmony among her subjects through her fanciful mix of cowgirl frivolity and Solomon edicts: ‘Coyote territory – north of me; wild hogs, south; all insects are fair game to salamander, and sal, for snakes; snakes for birds of prey – but only if those doing the preying rely first on the dying for their diet. ALL must gather for sunset vigil with others of their kind…’

Stray bulls might charge Lily to challenge her desert dominance – but only once. “Youch!”

If humans wagon by, they stop and look in awe of her majesty. For those lost in the desert, parched by torturous heat, she provides sustenance by easing the sharpness of lower prickers, allowing them to gouge trunk to suckle her liquid.

THE SKY PARADE COMMENCES

What all the critters spent the year anticipating BEGINS.   The sky becomes awash with colors, yellows, ambers, reds. Calico leads hundreds of thousands, maybe a million butterflies.

The parade’s spectators’ eyes widen. They are fanned by the cool flutters as the promenade surrounds Prick Lily. The critters feel they are swept up into it, swaying gaily, airborne within the hues. Any sorrows are deadened. Their world is beautiful, loving.

‘If only we can keep these feelings forever’; they think. No more pain, sadness. Just joy. They’re certain the world has chosen only them to savor its beauty.

Butterflies’ flutters thunder louder than any herd of horses. They barely see Lily because so many of the paraders encircle her. Lily yells, ‘Yahoo, rippity roo…’

Sweet music is this peacefulness. This all may last a minute, or five, or maybe an hour. Maybe a year, a century. Creatures cannot tell; so lost they are in their reverie.

Then, the music disappears.

A TALE OF RESURRECTION

Calico now is dying – a butterfly’s natural death. She lights upon Sister Lily’s cheek and flutters one last time.

Calico whispers, but all desert creatures hear her. ‘Do not feel sorrow for the dying. They live on in those for whom they cared. Grieve only that they no longer feel life’s glory.’ She drops onto Lily’s arm. Instantly, she shrivels to a larva, no bigger than a dot. She rolls, falls, and then catches on a flower near Prick Lily’s trunk.

Begins the magic of instantaneous re-chrysalis – the domain of Calico alone. Larva morphs to caterpillar, hatching, devouring flower. Chrysalis sack becomes big as a worm, absorbs sky’s colors, burns with them. The image of Calico shines over the desert; almost out-glowing Poppy Sol.

Prick Lily shouts out to the desert creatures surrounding her, ‘Look skyward, All. You’re seeing the glory of commencin’-on.’

Then, a re-born Calico appears.

Prick Lily weeps joyfully at the beauty she sees. Her falling flower petal tears brush the sand-bound creatures’ faces, replacing their ‘glums’ with smiles.

Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

 

(Read more of sisters Calico and Prick Lily in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 82: HALF-HUMANS/HALF-BEASTS, A POEM

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

April is National Poetry Month.  We at Fiction House Publishing celebrate all types of poetry. From Deep in the Bayou, comes this warning from Turt, our fin-clawed hero in Tales of the Fiction House:

Turt’s thoughts are all broad smiles as he thinks of the wonderful moments he and the foundling, Raji could share. But, from a lifetime of observation, he knows of the invisible barriers twixt two-legs and other creatures. Never, should it be breached. Those who do make the cross-over from person to animal, or animal to person, those like ‘Laza Bones’ Thibidioux, they are hideous and monstrous to both worlds –

– Half-humans/half-beasts:
You live LONG in the shadows and on the fringes,
Bleached of any human kindness – any animal pride.
You enslave, abuse and betray your own,
In your futile attempts to become even more of both
You may fracture, mar and deface
The beauty which is life.
Never can you destroy it.

Though these crossover interlopers possess the physical beauty of both worlds – human, animal – they encompass fully beast-nature of both. This makes them hideous to look at because the sages of the ages are correct in their simple rages…

“Beauty is only…”,

‘But oogly – oogly it traverses all the way to the bone. (More precisely, to the soul.)’

(Read more of the poetic skills of Turt in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FROM THE THRESHOLDS OF HELL

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Rescued alive!!

33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days in 2010. Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, and Lou Diamond Phillips lead a coterie of first-class actors in a new movie portrayal of the harrowing events. It’s titled, The 33.

Here is a short homage in poetry to miners all over the world who risk their lives to provide precious resources for us.  It is from Fiction House Publishing’s recent novel about coal miners, Seeds of Vengeance by Mark Rogers.

*     *     *

From the thresholds of hell, the miners emerge.

Sluggishly, worn leather boots clapping the earth,

dragging pick, axes and flat shovels –

they leave behind in the dust any hopes for the future.

Another twelve hours in the ‘hole’;

Faces, mouths, and clothes blackened with the gritty soot.

Spirits deflated from crawling like rats underground,

burrowing through areas little wider than their pain-wracked bodies;

                                                             emptying sharp coal chunks into finger-splitting railcars,

                                              hoping rotted support beams wouldn’t splinter and crush them.

©2014 Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, Short stories, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No. 80: A BAYOU GATOR’S REMINISCE – A LIMERICK

Posted on March 29, 2014 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

 Just one of the 1,001 Tales residing for all eternity in the Fiction House.

Last Week: An homage to butterfly beauty.

This Week:  Their nemesis, the gators…

*     *     *

See purty buttahfly – see dem flits.

Onst our snouts by mistakes, they sits.

Gulp, yum! Ah so coloricious we would glow;

Me ‘n gatorhoodhood frien’ Thibidioux-

As dey twitter downst into our belly pits

*     *     *

(Read more of the poetic beauty of Calico in the novel, Tales of Fiction House.  Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

©2014 Raji Singh (New material)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment