MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1950) I first met Ray Bradbury in the pages of his book The Illustrated Man way back in 1951. His easy flowing, poetic style of writing science fiction and fantasy hooked me into a love of these genres to this very day. From that book came others throughout the Fabulous Fifties and beyond. They were books I had to
THE LILY PAD, THE JAPANESE BRIDGE Painting by Claude Monet (1899); Poem by Sal Buttaci (1994) Who could imagine what Monet was thinking when he took his brush to this! Ask him what inspired him and he will no doubt lie, say "The Japanese Bridge" or "The lily pond: the way the lilies sit on the brown river" or "The mood I was in, the feeling I h
THE CART: THE ROAD UNDER SNOW IN HONFLEUR Painting by Claude Monet, 1865; Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994 The road under snow we ought best not to complain about! Yet we do so every winter, don't we? You say the jostling ride hurts your back or the old horse is too slow or that I see so poorly I cannot avoid the rocks jutting in our path. As for
BIG JOE HAMMER DR0VE THIS CAR BUT THE HAT HE WORE ON HIS HEAD Yuh want my real name or duh one duh guys gimme back on Grand Street when I wuz twelve or doiteen? My mudder give me names long as yuh arm! "Where dja dig 'em up?" I used tuh tease de ol‘ lady.. Back in a Ol' Country––Sicily––dey han’ out names like candy: da more da sweeta. Dey name
ARCHIMEDES IN HIS WOODEN TUB, WORKING ON HIS FAMOUS PRINCIPLE No book about Sicilians would be complete without mention of Sicily's favorite son Archimedes. However, not content with simply mentioning that renowned mathematician, engineer, and physicist, as the author of A Family of Sicilians…I tracked him down by spending the be
Painting by Auguste Renoir, 1876 Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994 This is not the veil I had hoped to wear. You can take that for the God-honest truth! This one is black; the other was white. This is today: a time for mourning. That was long ago. How do you explain a life? Mine, that is. One summer the earth revolved around the two of us. W
STEMS OF WHITE PEONIES AND PRUNING SHEARS Painting by Edouard Manet (1864) Poem by Salvatore Buttaci (1994) We play the game sometimes of divining the alter egos of your garden flowers: What they resembled on their tall green stems, what they might have been if only they could have decided for themselves in the pre-garden before they were seeds,
BERTHE MORISOT Painting by Edouard Manet (1873) Poem by Salvatore Buttaci (1994) "Too much yellow!" I tell the painter. "You've made me out to appear some pasty-looking, half-dead matron who has never seen the sun! Devotees of art one day will stand before this canvas
VAMPIRE AND SKULL (Public Domain) College Freshman, age 22 First of all, I bummed around a lot before deciding to go to college. Even though I enjoyed tinkering with cars, I listened to my father who kept telling me I was a bum, that I needed to get a college education if I wanted to amo
YOUNG BOY LEANING OVER BAKERY COUNTER Maybe it would have helped if I had raised my hand some decades ago and told my story. “My name is Jeremy and I’m a sugar addict. I’ve come tonight seeking help.” But I didn’t. Nor did I look to psychoanalysis to help me. My father had raised us to distrust “those meddling brainpickers.” In fact, even before
' YOUNG GIRL BATHING: Painting by Auguste Renoir (1890) Poem by Salvatore Buttaci (1994) Not a stitch! Oh, if ma mere and mon pere could see me now! Their little daughter naked as the day she first saw the light. Let me say Pa Pa would put enough of his belt to me that no artist would ever care to paint me again. I should tell you I am not a mo
FLASHING MY SHORTS by Salvatore Buttaci A flash of painful remembrance, a memory of a wounded World War II veteran, a tale of Uncle Pete who wasn’t really Uncle Pete at all, and then the darkness of a life once lived in unrestrained laughter. Encounter Years of hard drinking had driven him to seed. He slept under cardboard on the coldest Ne
"Cigarettes" by Anna Cervova (Public Domain Photo) I was twenty-one when I started smoking. Prior to that I had considered it somebody else’s nasty habit and that I, a wise, independent kind of fellow, would never fall prey to puffing myself to an early grave. Then one afternoon my new brother-in-law offered me a Lucky Strike, explained
THE IRONING LADIES (LES REPASSEUSES) Painting by Edgar Degas, 1884. Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994. "I have had my fill, I tell you! This morning I could have slept at least till noon but Claude up early before the geese, raged in another of his foul-mouthed moods, not finding this or that, blaming me-- Can you imagine, Jean
How did the man become trapped inside a jar? Don't let the megaphone fool you. He can scream all he wants, but he will remain trapped, splashing in the briny depths. Something horrid this way comes... My pet you say? From the door where you stand, perhaps you thought, Old Mr. Svenson has an odd-looking fish or a reptile splashing in that jar. Th
THE BALCONY (LE BALCON) BY EDOUARD MANET (1869) Whenever I look at a famous painting, I often wonder what the model was thinking about as he or she tried hard to maintain the pose given by the painter. Pressing concerns? Daily problems? Love gone sour? New-found love? And in a still life who owns the dish of fruit, the bouquet of flowers, the wine
You can't see it, but there's a silencer at the end of her pistol. Does Your Gun Need a Silencer If You Plan to Kill a Mime? who can hear in the forest who cares if the tree falls there on the city concrete the mime bobbing like a stringless marionette acts out a wordless life heart beating without sound hands and face dotted with
I’ve led you on and I am sorry. You came in good faith to discover precisely how to end another’s life and walk away untouched by the law. In other words, you hoped this article would explain, step by step, how to exact justice without fear of reprisal. Come on now! In this technological age of advanced forensic science and DNA testing? You’d b
This ain’t gonna sit right with most of you out there, but I’m swearin’ it’s the truth. Every word of it. And I’m puttin’ the lingo down here ‘xactly like it happened. First off, I’m about as simple as God breathed life inta. Growed up in a little Texan town in Bandera County. Hill Country. Little town called Pipe Creek, population less ’n two hun
If anyone were to ask you to pinpoint the precise moment of your epiphany, that statement you made to a large enough audience to assure your reputation as a thinker, perhaps not brilliant, but at least a notch or two above average, what would you say? I can tell you what was on my lunch plate yesterday, but probably would say mash potatoes instead
