This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v111) (the October 2012 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Falling (a Down in the Dirt collection book)		get the 230 page Sept. - Dec. 2012 Down in the Dirt magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

August

Don Thompson

    Everyone here tends toward ghostliness by the end of summer. Irritable, enervated, worn so thin we see through each other. Old arguments come back to haunt us in August.

    Women’s voices scrape like knives on a whetstone, honing for a fight. Men won’t talk at all; their lizard eyes glare out from under a silence too hot to touch.

    If an evening breeze stirs at all, it blows hard from the wrong direction. Grit gets in your teeth, and its so dry you’d swear it originated in an ancient ossuary. Balm has nothing to do with it.

    After dark, the sirens—hopefully in the distance, fading. But you hear the spectral wail down the street, the lamentations next door, the banshee in your attic. At least the blood cries out from the sidewalk with a voice only God can hear.

    Maybe this August won’t be like that. I think the seminars will be good for us and those weekends at the retreat center among the high pines. Up there the air is too thin to hold a grudge. Already I feel anger flicker to the end of its neurons and burn out. And the lovely blue enzymes of peace seeping into my mind. I think everything will be all right... Easy to say at the end of April.

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