Stories

A coming of age story of two young boys finding what true love really is.

Strolls; encounters; kisses through closed gates; lighted windows seen from below; rumpled bedsheets turning up men’s shirts . . . These are just a few of the images in August Stramm’s poetry collection titled “DU” (“THOU”).

What follows is a complete, fresh-look translation of the thirty-one poems of this set.

Damien's mom has fallen in love, and the side affect of this is that he is now being forced to spend an eight hour drive, and the rest of his life, with a stepbrother who he cannot stand. Dallas is everything he hates, and everything he wants. Dallas is NOT his brother, but sometimes Damien wishes that he could be something much more than that.

I wish I could turn back the clock and go with you. How many times had Morgan St. John said these words, tortured himself. But there was no going-back, only going forward and live.

We met Maurice and David in The Watcher. This story stands alone, but it might be more enjoyable if you read The Watcher first. These are two men of a seasoned vintage, and both, separately, have suffered great loss. This is a quick peek into their lives a month after a fateful meeting in the park.

Rothenia celebrates as Svetlana wins the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv, for that means the Greatest Show on Earth will come to Strelzen in all its camp glory in 2005. The possibilities for Strelsenermedia IPC are not lost on Will Vincent and his team. But the Song Contest will come to a divided city, and caught up in the politics are Yuli Lucic, son of the Staroman of Strelzen, and Henry Atwood, who can never let a story go, whatever the distractions.

Wanted criminal Hong Shen finally meets his end after being stabbed in the back by a comrade. As he makes his final resting place under a dead plum tree, he submits to death.

Instead, he receives two choices: die, or be given a second chance.

To take the second chance means he must complete a trial in the past in order to return to the present. But what he doesn't know is that the trial isn't only difficult for him, but even more difficult for the person he must be to fulfill it.

The intense heat and desolation hit you immediately the journey begins at the sordid truck stop, where sex is sold as easily as a beer. Jabez, the boy they call John, is a candy seller working for the hotel barman, a magician who can read people. But there is another reality, the Palace of Dreams where Jabez is the guide to strange events and pleasures. A bond is formed in the search to find El Cuervo de Plata (The Silver Crow).

Phil Weber, a Iowa college math teacher in his mid-twenties, heads off to Mexico for the summer, to try and forget his ex-lover. He's looking for an adventure, and he finds a couple he hadn't expected.

After troubling days, Owen and Alex finally find some peace to cherish their fresh relationship. But as it is in stories like this, peace is not about to last long.