Five Stories by Keith Hoerner

 Battle of the Ball

His gun unloaded — in the face of being captured, and killed — Corporal Rathers looks to the “truck”... the ball at the top of the flagpole. Artillery fire blazes in the distance. Or is it nearer? He climbs quickly, breaks the ball off the top and slides down. The contents inside aren’t as expected: there’s the razor blade to cut off the flag’s Stars and Stripes, the match to burn them, but the bullet to take his own life is MIA. He does his duty, then thinks about the bullet. Until one shot – through his right temple — takes all thought away.

Double-Edged Sword

She holds two swords of societal success. Her career of achievement, her marriage of love realized. Nice house, nicer car. The look men look at — even her husband. Meditative dreams on summer days under a comforter of cool breezes. Still, one regret reflects the swords’ sharp edges. Cut her caesarean style — deep as you like; take out the child she cannot carry… his son. The single thing she cannot give him. Justice, she feels, is not in the cards for her. She seeks to be satiated through gluttonous eyes. Where are her maternity clothes, the infant boy she must steal. 

Writers’ Workshop 

You shared your writing with me. An extension of friendship, like a handshake. More like the reaching out of hands with the chance to be held – or swatted – open palmed. Sharing … emptying pockets to reveal hidden things among the embarrassment of collected lint, is a dangerous proposition. Your shadows merged with mine, achieving the density of darkness that brings on the dawn. How can I thank you? For selflessly taking my hands and guiding me to an unknown resting place within the pages of you. I spoke in an attempt to reciprocate. My words: sandpaper to your beach of memory.

Madonna and Child

I stand at the kitchen sink washing the one thing I took from home after you died: The Madonna and Child statue I meditated on kneeling before you being beaten, traumatized, loving you, year after year. I wash it gently, remembering the time you unknowingly soaked a statue of St. Joseph carved out of salt in a sink of warm water. You did not realize it would dissolve, desert you like your man-made religion. Only to return later, pushing your hands through the milky-white water, confused, almost frantic, as you thrashed about in search of what you had laid there.

Stuck On You

I am eternally caught in the poisonous web of your personal tragedies, floating in the eye of the tornado of your hatefulness — and inevitable eating of me. Still, somewhere between your fast, your frequent, your furious back-and-forth feedings, I can feel the beating of your heart as it turns from crimson to black along each dying petal. This, but a pressed remnant of the love we could have shared. You would have done me better to do me in swiftly, mercifully disabling my senses. But I was made to hang there, stuck and imprisoned with full consciousness, for your folly.

Keith Hoerner (BS, MFA) lives, teaches, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois, USA.

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