First it was fall, then it wasn't. Happy New Year



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A Regretful Death

Published in Cirque, Vol. 7, No. 2; 2016 www.cirquejournal.com by  Jerry Dale McDonnell Above the routine of the rasping, cutting sound of the crosscut saw the noise and demeanor of the late-September afternoon woods changed. We didn't immediately quantify the change. We just knew it changed. The odor of standing pine and fir, of sawdust and fresh cut wood, the light dampness of the air, the gurgling water in the creek dancing around rocks all remained, but something had changed. Even the camp robbing Gray jays in the trees were on alert.   Living in the woods, paying attention is just the way of things. Sounds, smells, clouds, the wind, changes in plants and trees, migration and habits of animals are like news on the radio. In the timber-pole corral our lead and riding horses were agitated, which is a blip on the radar. Joker, the smallest, but oldest and wisest horse of the herd snorted, laid its ears back briefly then spun and jumped to the other side of ...
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Glory Royal

Published in Over The Transom #27: February, 2016 by Jerry Dale McDonnell It’s our bar. A day’s end hard work bar with a too recent nod toward tourist hippie/yuppie types. It’s long been my comfort zone where I’ve spent much of my dead-end life and where she found me and took a hold of me and twisted me around. Bras of various cup sizes—donated after the shots and beer back have done their work—hang down from the ceiling like plucked chickens. Twas usually around midnight when the occasional gal pulled her bra out from under her blouse, or if the booze had brought her to stupid, tits were bared. Hooting and hollering of tit bragging and admiration is standard. Two visiting strangers started the collection years ago but now most of the hundred or more hanging bras are from young just turned legal drinking age city girls sometimes escorted by long hairs with unearned holes in their jeans on a weekend toot to our small village in the mountains just shy of Canada. We, a bare knuck...
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On The Rocks

Copyright© Jerry McDonnell ,2008 Published: South Dakota Review ; Summer 2008, Vol. 46, No. 2 by Jerry D. McDonnell He wasn’t laughing, but all he could sadly see through his tears was this coyote image from a Road Runner cartoon, Willy being Coyote, but just now panic was running in on Darryl like a sudden squall. Jumping off his horse, Darryl Bent ran back along the pack string on the narrow ledge called a trail. A landslide section of ground was giving way beneath Willy’s hooves. Willy rode the four feet of earth down off the trail like an elevator stopping on an upper floor of the steep, rocky drop off. Now teetering on a small rock the size of a dinner plate, all four of Willy’s hooves together like a ballet dancer on point, this 15 hand, well fed, mountain conditioned horse carrying 100 pound alfalfa hay bales on each side of its Decker pack saddle calmly looked up at Darryl as if it was all in a day’s work. A steep rockslide dropped 500 fe...
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