SMELL OF PENCILS I reek of pencils. I smell of pencils. I collect pencils— thousands by now. My first, a drawing pencil, French: Conté, forest green, an HB. Hone from cedar. Smells like incense sharpened. Shavings fill the sharpener. I throw them on a fall fire, a burning pencil smell— of pine resin or old mold. The lead doesn’t smell like lead. A mix of graphite and clay, its burn can stink of sulfur, paint impurities. Between my finger and …
Tag: Mike Lewis-Beck
“Hard to Get” * A Short Story * Mike Lewis Beck
Hilda believed she couldn’t marry Rick, even though she loved him. She believed this because she stood married to Herbert, her first love. Her mother, Audrey Ann, told her, the morning of the twenty-pew church wedding at Lovely Lane Methodist. “Hildie, marriage makes us whole, in the eyes of our Lord, in the eyes of friends and family—love, honor, and obey. Herbert has moved up to second teller at the bank. He’s clean cut and never drinks on Sundays. When …
“The Train to Bordeaux” & Other Poems By Mike Lewis-Beck
The Train to Bordeaux left Paris under delays from a Metro slowdown, a Yellow Vest street action, and a heat wave of 42 degrees Celsius that perhaps caused the Arras diversion due to an announced ‘obstacle’ on the tracks, a could-be jump. German newlyweds across from us, red and happy, brimmed with cold beer downed in the station patio sun. As the train passed Poitiers, gateway to the South, I dreamt of a chilled Pineau des Charentes with a …
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“WANTING” * Fiction * Mike Lewis-Beck
Hilda has it all. She’s 42, mother of bubbly two-year-old Todd, and a professor of intellectual property law, where she has just made a bundle—her share in an inheritance suit deploying ‘The Eustace Diamond Defense’—which persuaded the judge to allow Mrs. Mandolini to keep the family diamonds her late husband, olive oil magnate Giuseppe Mandolini, had lavished upon her. Besides these personal and professional triumphs, she has just won a weight-lifting trophy at her fitness club, for executing a 190-pound …
“Car With Cake” * Fiction * Mike Lewis-Beck
Look, said Dick. See the red car. Jane said, Oh, look! It goes fast. A flashback to gramps reading Dick and Jane, about a little toy car—so unlike the real red car I’ve been working on. A beauty, I think, as I park it on a red-brick street, down from Carmine’s red-brick cottage. It’s autumn and the street’s lined with maples and their colorful leaves—canary, caramel, crimson. A group of kids with marshmallows-on-a-stick are huddled around a small bonfire …
“Soaping Up” * Fiction * Mike Lewis-Beck
“Why aren’t you in class or on the courts?” asked a guest, rustling the calm of the sun-soaked corridor of Total Tennis (TT), a summer camp for teen women. “The campanile bell rang at 6:00 a.m.” “Yes, ma’am,” replied Marina, a 19-year-old counselor-in-training. “Monday through Saturday, before breakfast, we’re all supposed to take a workshop. Yesterday mine was Better Backhand. Today it’s Kinesiology.” The student could explain Kinesiology to this new lady but decided not to since she had a …
“Café Metafoor” * Fiction * Mike Lewis-Beck
I sat on a bar stool at the best beer pub in Leuven, not to say the best in all of Flanders, which means the best in Belgium, maybe the world. Of all the brews on offer at Café Metafoor, I chose the Affligem Dubbel, a dark malty ale, just sweet enough and strong enough, but not too strong. Like all true Belgian alehouses, no food was served, except for peanuts or chips, for the salt. I went for the …
“Magpie Aubade” & Other Poems by Mike Lewis-Beck
Caffè Quattro Cantoni This whish of the espresso machina brings me back to my tiny table and a half-eaten cornetto—limp— its crumbs cascading over the Tribune and La Corriere, barely opened. I should pay at the caisse but it’s crowded. Instead I go over, over Laura, what she just did, what she just said, or not. Laura’s like an orange, sweet smelling and giving to the squeeze, but hard to get into, and once you do the fiber’s fiberous, hard …
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