JERRY JAZZ MUSICIAN
Not From Around Here
*Short Fiction Contest winner and Pushcart Prize nominee.
Going through high school as a Jewish person in rural Alabama wasn’t easy for Ash Blackstone. However, after joining the high school jazz band, Ash begins to discover his identity from a surprising source: the music and life of interstellar Jazz visionary Sun Ra. Told in fragments from multiple perspectives, “Not From Around Here” explores how the evolution of identity can transgress traditional dividing lines of class and race.
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CANYON VOICES (ASU)
Translations from the Wasteland
*A standalone chapter from Mother of Exiles.
This place is like a camp on Mars. Isolated except for the stars. By day though, it is a military base lifted out of Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, or anywhere Uncle Sam has his big boots and sand-colored tents. Except we are not in any of those places. I almost don’t believe the others when they tell me that this is the US. This desert cage is what we dreamed about for so long?
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BIG BEND LITERARY MAGAZINE
Jeremiah in the Desert
*A standalone chapter from Mother of Exiles.
There was a word burning in the old darkness behind my eyelids. Witness, it said. All the way out to the desert I followed it, whispering it to myself. I rented a camper, gave my wife a kiss, and drove the 2,100 miles from Brooklyn to West Texas and then looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My dark glasses and gray beard turning grayer. “Now what, old man?” I asked myself. Now what?
THE ALEPH
Going to the Beach
I thought it was just going to be a nice trip to the beach. Really, it’s all Josie’s fault. I never would’ve taken this day-drunk vacation if she hadn’t run out on me with that Neanderlithic yoga instructor (she never even liked yoga). But there I was walking the boardwalk of the Lost Flamingo Hotel—a heat-bleached resort catered to the needs of “retired singles that mingle”—the sun irradiating the white sand, all those rippling blades of heat, my flip flops turning to plastic goo.
Jeff Dingler 