PURE FRANCIS

Yet Another Award Program

by Paul Beckman

    Manny held the record for tolerating the most annoying people in an eight hour work shift—eighty-seven; obliterating the old record by nineteen. Two days later, while walking from Grand Central Station up Fifth Ave to Central Park he logged forty-four “getting bumped intos” without an apology, just edging his old record by two.

    He was already way ahead, he was sure, in channel surfing, pigs in a blanket eating at weddings and time spent keeping a telemarketer in conversation before hanging up. That was a golden one hour and six minutes.

    All Manny needed was one more record to break the Creative World Record Almanac of Records but he wanted more because he knew that Herby and Ike were not letting any grass grow under their feet and the final record and reckoning and award dinner at Denny’s was only a week away. He wasn’t worried about the others—their visions were limited to being followers of previous year’s records and not innovative leaders such as himself in this creative intellectual’s version of Fantasy Football.

    Manny walked away from the Award Dinner with a Denny trophy for coming in second—now five years in a row and beating his personal best of four from the previous year.

    He walked the two miles home swearing under his breath the entire way and thus begun his first record of the new year—distance walking while swearing under one’s breath and he had a strong feeling that this upcoming year was going to be his in a cakewalk.


Paul Beckman thinks everyone should see his website at least once and then send it on to all of their contacts.

Only the Finest China

by Jack Bretterson

Visions of painful asphalt stain my nightmares,
this grand adventure in the horror direction,
using color to progress the story, my meteoric
decline. My opponent was winning, death

dealing, the frightful result of the forbidden
experiments of his face-builders, a spectacular
hole. Each one encaked with a thicker frosting
of eye, lip, and cheek paint than the next,

I am not one to obsess over the details of history,
multiple iterations on statues and the nasty
fantasies they have in their heads. I was not
a full citizen until I was born the second time,

hidden alcoves suckling gravel from my torn
flesh. And I could run into the ground again
and again, an architect who has basically gone

mad, ninety percent elemental and ten percent
human, but I preferred the celebrating from earlier,
and continued with that, using perverted science,
doing a lot of hack-and-slash damage to the book.

 

Jack Bretterson aspires to suffer from more first world problems.

His Time Among the Sheep

by Joe Guszkowski

He backed away from the salt lick.
Somehow
from miles of scrubbed floors
he recalled a carpet:
the aerial view of a
primary-colored town. 

Fired from his dream job there,
he woke to find the song he loved
was a cover
of an older, better song. 

Stepping from the shower now
like a frail monk,
he wears nothing but mist. 

He learned later
that the pre-school bully was half-deaf
and terminally ill
and this put a new light on things.

 

Joe Guszkowski hates music, but likes this band.

Building a Bridge

by Nathaniel Tower

    After a particularly heavy rainfall, I came across a sizeable puddle on a neighboring sidewalk. Not being one to get my feet wet but not being one to let obstacles get in my way, I stared at the puddle wondering how I could cross.
    A careful assessment told me it was too big to jump over, so I set out to build a bridge.
    After a quick trip to the hardware store, I dug holes to plant the support posts. A man came out of the house nearest the puddle and asked what was going on.
    "I'm building a bridge so I can cross this puddle," I told him.
    He told me I was crazy but didn't seem to mind. After all, I was providing the supplies and labor for a project that would improve his property.
    Once the supports were in place, I began setting the beams. Several passersby wondered what I was doing.
    "Building a bridge so I can cross this puddle," I always said.
    Most people either shrugged or told me that sounded nice. One elderly couple turned and walked the other way. By the time I was ready to construct the side rails the pair had barely made it back to the end of the block.
    "Why not just go around?" one young boy asked before going out into the street all willy-nilly. I shook my head and paused momentarily as I watched the boy waste his time.
    Several days later my bridge expanded over the entire distance of the puddle and then some. After putting the last piece in place, I noticed the water underneath had dried up. That was no matter to me though; there was bound to be another puddle someday.
    Every day I check underneath my bridge for new water. I have yet to find even a single drop. My bridge has done more than I ever dreamt it would, and I've never had difficulty passing by that plot of sidewalk again.
    Unfortunately on my latest walk I discovered a new puddle just a few feet in front of my bridge. I guess I'll just have to build another one.

 

Nathaniel Tower wishes he had a Big Bunny.

Get Back Better On

by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

 

Eleanor Leonne Bennett has won 17 first places in 15 years.