September 2024 - With Hesitant Knocks
Welcome to the September 2024 issue of Dog Throat Journal. This is our fourth issue. One year's worth! Happy Birthday! We're back with some familiar faces and some new folks who have joined us, as well.
This issue includes work from: Becky Parker, Brad Rose, Claudia M. Stanek, Constantia Geronta, Elaine Mintzer, Ken Poyner, Patricia Hope, Richard Bower, Thomas Elson, Trilety Wade, and William Kitcher
Thank you everybody. I'm very grateful that you've entrusted us with your work. Your support means a lot.
Go ahead and enjoy the works. And drop a comment, too. Authors enjoy getting some words back at them. All the best. Victor David
Issue title by Thomas Elson
Heart Attack
by William Kitcher
A car travelling down a residential street at 30 kph toward a main street.
A red-haired woman with a red-haired girl in a stroller shopping at a fruit and vegetable store.
A tall slick man strolling down the main street stopping occasionally to look in store windows.
A blond woman walking her dog.
A husband and wife arguing...
In This Diner, in This Ocean
by Elaine Mintzer
“If you want to know what water is, don’t ask a fish.” - Chinese Proverb
In this diner, all sounds become one: the melody of frying and pouring, the slide of shoes fetching waffles or eggs or grilled cheese, the skate of heavy plates across Formica counters, the rattle of cutlery and plastic tumblers, calls from the kitchen, conversations in the booths, and piped in, Bob Marley sings...
How They Came – Part I
by Thomas Elson
AT THE DOOR:
They came with hesitant knocks. Then stepped back. Soon both palm and forehead against the door peering inside half-hoping no one would answer.
They came wading through wet torrents or blizzards, treading gently over sleet or crawling in desert-like heat - wind blistering or suffocating, cool or accepting.
They came with painful spirits - bent and ragged. They came – Unknowing. Angry. Dismissive. To maintain peace. After making one promise too many. Keeping too few. Neglecting most. All came with promises no longer believed. After years of resistance. After their con games failed. Fights. Avoidance. After depleting all resources -families, employers, churches.
A Call for Thunder
by Becky Parker
“Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.” Daniel Webster
Corn husks lay strewn on the ground, grainy shadows of a paltry harvest. The pragmatic farmer knelt under the scorching Prairie sun, and reached deeply into the soil with calloused hands; heart daring to hope. His breath caught as a withered worm, mixed with dust clung to the crevice of his fingers. Blue eyes scanned the windless horizon, searching...
The Death of a Cicada In the Garden Among the Punishment of Life
by Trilety Wade
He’d moved so many times that he stopped unpacking his books. Multiple boxes remained taped and sealed, taking up room in closets that were never big enough.
“This is why I only read books from the library now because I don’t have room for any more books.”
“Boxes, you mean. You don’t have room for any more boxes.” A cackle from her mouth cut through...
Christmas
by Constantia Geronta
Deep cold, the wind accompanies and underlines the seconds, like a suite for cello and piano, the radius of the sun a crystal that dribbles and iridizes, a withered little flower in the pot and a sparrow eats crumbs at the veranda, apartment blocks with flat terraces, where can the moon throw its light?, and when the night comes, clouds of smoke rise up and the stars a stain, a naked plateau, mountains all around and a night lamp lights in the dawn, projecting on the deserted wall a paper moon, a tracking through the night...
Weeping
by Claudia M. Stanek
To know someone from birth to death speaks the sadness of air abandoning atmosphere. All the children are gone; war calls them adults and leaves the broken ones to mark the graves of the dead with unpainted stones. Their hands bloody from all the burying. The people of God groan through their rage...
Tabula Rasa
by Patricia Hope
I need to empty my mind, discard the remnants of last week’s rainbow, toss the sauce that wasn’t thick enough for Sunday night’s spaghetti, throw out the song that won’t stop popping up every few minutes, the melody echoing loneliness, a something-gone-wrong-song like a train tunneling through the mountain of my life.
I need to stop, look, and listen, ease the danger of being railroaded, put the brakes on anger gripping me every time I see a troublemaking fanatic on television or hear about a life lost for nothing. I could sleep if it were ever quiet in my head instead of being the all-night bar for lost causes, the haven for abused animals and children, the 1-800-help number for all my friends’ problems, and the factory of face-offs for everything from cancer to religious zealots. Also, photographs of sunsets, trees, old barns, and...
Swimming Lessons
by Brad Rose
What are your favorite symptoms? No, you know me, I prefer matching eyebrows. Of course, like Sisyphus, on Wednesdays, I like to take it easy, because it’s all downhill from there. Just because I have slow hair and a never-look-back grin, doesn’t mean I’ve been toing and froing since the get-go. In fact, ever since I took swimming lessons at the Y, drowning deaths have been rising...
After My Brother’s Surgery
by Richard Bower
At five, my brother went blind. I remember the bleached sheets stiff as cardboard. I scraped my fingerprints along the contours. Little skin shedding onto the bedding, my brother’s blindness lasted the morning until they pulled the gauze from his eyes. Dusty Egypt in our noses, his body dried from long storage in the sand. We unwrapped him, hoping his flesh still underneath, the skin supple and spongy...
The Scourge
by Ken Poyner
No one knew exactly what form the anomaly would take, but we knew that with so many balloons in so many children’s hands, there would be an evolution. And then Little Johnny, with a room full of balloons, pulled one down and drew a face on it. Not just any face: his face. Not the best of artists, the rendering was somewhat of a caricature or perhaps a grotesque. Perhaps that is what it was intended...