My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie "A one legged Jedi walks into a bar..." "Oh, no." "He comes up to the bar and he asks the barkeep for a hot chocolate..." "No, stop. Drake, shut him up before it's too late." "Why, is it that serious?" asks Drake, his smile glowing silver behind his glass of amber. I can't help chuckling at my friends' typical antics. Peter has been trying to tell a "timeless" joke of his to the gang while the tired-eyed bartender passes me another pint of Smithwick's. The froth is still sparkling on my lips as I cast my vision on the gorgeous Áine, who's feigning utmost panic while clutching her Heineken bottle to her chest. "I'm telling you, it's a disaster. This pub will crumble from the sheer dreadfulness of his joke. Thousands will cower amid the rubble! The punchline uses bone humor, for God's sake! Bone humor!" "Hey, I didn't make it up," Peter mu...

How many were dead? I didn't know. They all seemed to become one mass on the television screen. The way the camera hovered over them was like the cameraman was expecting someone to jump up and go, "KIDDING!" But no one did. It wasn't a game show. It wasn't a reality show. This was real. And we were watching it like a poor kid's entertainment while the gunman laughed his ass off.

Tonight, it's time for me as a writer to (what else?) be a bit reflective and just a little bit mopey. Don't worry, this is just a little thing I'll do now and again to give you updates on my life as well as my current thoughts on writing and the literary/artistic world. And I'll also be recommending things for tonight such as a book, a poet, a type of music, etc. It'll be fun!  So being a recent college graduate, I've been struggling to find work in California. Big shocker, I know, but I've been job hunting for nearly three months now, and I've been searching for everything from classified education jobs to retail to office support to even an amusement train driver job at the mall. Yep...you read that right...I said an amusement train driver. Thank you, Craigslist. To tell you the truth, in August, I had high hopes. I was able to snag six interviews in a week and a half. That was pretty intense. And most of the interviews seemed to go really well. T...

Breakfast Ninja by Belinda Roddie Brace yourself! It's speeding toward you At ninety miles per hour Spinning three hundred sixty degrees. Toast between your teeth. You turn the corner and you're immediately assaulted by two flying waffles shaped like stars. This would be a lot more tolerable if you were armed with a fork. There's the table. Sit down. Now. Katana slices butter for you. Strawberry jam makes for a less gory meal. You let the dust settle quite literally on the kitchen floor with morning's casualties bleeding on your plate. "Don't forget," a disconnected voice resounds as if from every wall. "I'll be back in time to make you lunch." The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since October 21st, 2010.

"A satchel?" "Yeah?" "That's what you call it? A satchel." He wrinkled his nose. "Well, it's not a purse." "I know it's not. It's a pouch." "A pouch? That's what kangaroos have." "That's right...and you've got one, too," I said before teasingly adding, "Mister Kangaroo." That was enough to get his eyes narrowed into javelins of green.

The Man You See (A Sonnet) by Belinda Roddie The man you see is half past nine and dead along the streets of Washington and Post. His hair is rather white, his big nose red from snorting all the dust and city's ghosts. When I first watched him sleeping where the hail caught artists in its blust'ry canvas, I could not help but predict that I'd set sail upon the same sea where these authors die. For poets like their booze and battle scars, (so say the critics, bloated from their meal of bloody Sauvignon and caviar) but I stray from the gutters while I reel. The writer that you see may be dirt poor, but throw away your jewels - he has much more.

She had average looks, average hair, average build, average height, average everything except the skin. Her skin was tattooed with gold. Real gold. No joke. Yellow gold and tawny gold and blond gold and the kind of gold that's nearly tinted orange on the bars you see in cinema.