Stories

A collection of poems by Wayne Gray

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.

Three poems I wrote as an exploration in writing. Content and form of each is different, but there is a tenuous connection to the anthology theme.

Explore various delicacies with me.

2023 Poetry Anthology Exploration Submission.

A place to put prompts

A place for my prompt responses and other experimental shorts.

Boccaccio's Decameron, a story of renewal and recreation in defiance of a decimating pandemic, relates how ten self-isolated Italians pass the time regaling each other with tall tales during the Black Plague. While Covid19 wasn't nearly as decimating, the opportunity for such entertainment did exist. As a takeoff on that idea, this short story might well be a modern version of one of the tales, recounting events of earlier, less stressful times.

This is the second story in the Wearing Green on Thursday series. Bruce Hutton has graduated from high school, gone on a road trip, loved and lost his best friend, and is now an engineering student at Stanford University outside Palo Alto, California. We follow his life and loves as he becomes comfortable living as a gay man in the 1980s.

Andy and Donnie have been friends since the beginning, growing up in the same neighborhood, sharing the same friends, and now playing football on the same team in middle school. They’ve been inseparable throughout it all; but now a new line has been inserted in the equation that is their lives, one they have to learn to deal with, or face having their friendship perish:

Love.