My Cardboard Balcony

Needle Road by Belinda Roddie There's a needle road I take back home, slick and silver, next to the lasso lane, the coil of asphalt slapping automobile hooves as they trot away from a long commute. On the tip, a taquería smells of carnitas and cayenne pepper, the hot chocolate spicy, the mariachi band trembling in their braided charro tapestries, breathing in the cold autumn with plucked strings and hot air in horns elevated to the cloudy heavens. When the tires on my truck hit the curb just right, it is almost as if I am the thread in the eye, a string looped around the chromed tesserae of the mosaic neighborhood - an idolized mesh of fabric and stone, woven and sewn to create a flow, a continual line that drapes over the lip of the needle road and doesn't even end around the simple, stabbing point.

Daddy bought Leslie a new piano, and it played a tune so flat that I could feel the floor level out beneath me as the notes pounded it. Flat, flat, flat. Leslie played it every day, though, and once Daddy hired a guy to retune the thing, suddenly the garish phrases became fairly elegant melodies. Leslie played piano until the day she died. A week before she succumbed to leukemia, she played for the entire country with the New York Philharmonic. Everyone applauded, whether on theater seats or couches at home. I cried. And when Leslie smiled, her teeth were perfectly flat.

"What the Hell, Hampton?" screeched Leinbach as they stood over the pit leading to the underworld. Cold, black smoke billowed from the maw, and below that, all the travelers could see was orange. "That's right, sir!" Hampton laughed, shoving her hands into her long black coat and grinning from ear to ear. "Hell, indeed. This should be where Markus landed for a pit stop." "Do you have absolutely no fucking regards for, I don't know, not pissing off the devil?" Leinbach shouted. "Relax!" Hampton laughed. "He owes me."

by Belinda Roddie "I've got a splitting headache!" she said, referring to the laceration in the back of her head. "Yeah, I'm not sure ibuprofen will be strong enough for that," muttered her brother as he sat in the chair across from her hospital bed. The nurse had waddled off to confirm a painkiller prescription with the doctor. Of course, there was no hope for the car - it had been dead at the scene. Leave it to Kimmie to get distracted and veer off the road! But Dan had resolved not to freak out until he had reached her room in the hospital, and as it turned out, he didn't have to be anxious after all. Of course, his mom had been hysterical on the phone, even after he had told her the good news. He wondered if news of the totaled car stung worse to his parents than the potential injuries that their daughter could have received. Once the prescription was filled and the request to the pharmacy finished, Dan was allowed to push his sister ou...

"Can you make sense of the transmission?" Alan could not. Hovering over him was his boss, Lucinda, who had pulled off her suit jacket and dropped it onto the adjacent stool, rolling up the sleeves of her conservative satin shirt. On the speakers was nothing but the roiling of static - like swollen waves caught in a radio receiver, warbled and unwelcoming. "I don't know what they're trying to tell us." "If anything at all," interjected Claire from the back.

So I totally didn't almost forget to write this because I was playing video games and solitaire! Eh, heh, heh...eh...yeah... So, temporary job: It's not bad at all. I really like the people I work with, and we all really get along. The work can be a bit complicated, but it's doable; I just haven't been working very long hours. Hopefully that will be changing next week, so maybe I can work at least six hours a day. Of course, it'll all come down to when the rest of the scorers and I finish up grading this test. We've already completed grading four out of six subtests, and that's in a matter of a week and a half. So much for stretching out this job as long as possible. I guess we're all just too efficient! Writing: There are now nine chapters in my latest novel. Whenever I have the energy, I pump something out. I think due to the hit in my confidence after my job prospects got weird, it's been difficult to keep myself motivated. I have to really pu...

For the final assignment we had in my Shakespeare Tragedies and Romances class I took back in senior year of college, we were given the option of writing any additional scenes, prologue, or epilogue for one of the plays we studied. With some edits, this is the resulting assignment I wrote back in May of 2011. It got a B+. The Winter’s Tale: The Lost Story of Antigonus: Three Scenes From A Missing Act by Belinda Roddie Act VI, Scene I Enter Antigonus, stooped with age. ANTIGONUS These sixteen years have weighed upon my brow, and sixteen more will wear away my eyes, my ears, my tongue – the flow’ry speech! Aye, man, no use in fancy words that trip the fool and send him tumbling down into the sand. My feet have blistered on these rocks before, and now the wounds will fester yet again. Come, rest a while, Antigonus, and calm the battered flesh that holds your heart within. Ah, poor man who believed that he, redeemed, would find his safe return t’ Leontes’ court!...