Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
The Language of Snowbirds
How your stocks doing? Where we going for dinner? What the doctor say?
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
Just Desserts
Vanilla: Jim doesn’t have a cell phone. Shuns the dark side. Jim’s privacy, for nowadays, is greater than most. Strawberry: Dick Cheney called Edward Snowden a traitor. Snowden considered that a badge of honor coming from a patriot like Cheney. Chocolate: Edward Snowden doesn’t have a cell phone. Warns against it. I have one. People…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
8:07 a.m., Saturday, January 13, 2018 Dogs somewhere up the valley — three of them, if I hear correctly. One hammers its bark, bark, bark drumbeat; another moans its sotto voce personal agony accompaniment to the lead growler’s dark warnings toward any who might seek to exploit this sudden vulnerability. No! Way! Jo! Se! Then…
Bamboo Shoots Prompt for General
Rules and themes for the February writing contest : )
Okay, it’s a new month and a new chance to publish your great work. Remember, you never know. One of your pieces may get published in a future issue of Bamboo Ridge. I’m sure you’re very familiar with the rules for our contest, but here they are again. You can write a haiku or a…
Bamboo Shoots awards
January writing contest winner : )
Congratulations to Homelessinhonolulu. You are the January winner for the Great Bamboo Ridge Year of the Rooster Writing Contest. You’ve won 10 Bamboo Bucks that you can spend in our online store. Just mention that you’re a January winner when you check out. Thank you to all of you who submitted your work this month….
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
Love
The fierce love I feel for you is like rolling thunder building a rain and dust storm on a hot summer evening.
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
Drum Party
I can’t remember wakening to the sound of birds before, ever. It was a minor surprise that the already warm tropical sun hadn’t done it earlier, or, as I slowly focused my thoughts, the crashing waves on the nearby shoreline. Those, I soon discovered, were infinitely unimportant observations compared to the ones my sand filled…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
Auntie Visits The Cemetary
“Which one is Mother? How you know das her name? Long time ago get all kine rules: who can go graveyard, who no can. Depend on how old you stay. Da pa-kes get anykine rules. Mostly superstition. I no believe but if somebody tell you someting, if you no follow and den someting bad happen,…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
All Comes Down
Propped up against the headboard She calmly smoothes the cotton sheet With knarled arthritic fingers, Examining the faded flower pattern. In lucid moments she tells me that I look so much like my father. “He was the handsomest man I ever met.” And then there are those days she claims Someone has stolen her purse,…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
New Year’s Day, Plus One
Penning “2018” on my water bill payment, I realize it’s been fifty years, a full half-century. If not now, when? That novel of social and personal revolution, summer 1968. Better get to it. Staring absent-mindedly at the browning hulk of Douglas fir, I see needles and branches, lights and ornaments, all dry and brittle. Like…