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Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Poe Ballantine
Poe Ballantine has been unknown for so long he’s decided he likes it that way. His latest book is the novel Rodney Kills at Night. He lives in Nebraska.
Fiction
Decline Of The Lawrence Welk Empire
I get a postcard from a place called Paradise, and on the back is a note from an old friend that says, “Free lunch under the coconut trees.” It is the season of disco and dope smoking, of long, ramshackle cars built by cocaine addicts in Michigan, of oil embargoes and promiscuity and awful haircuts, and I look around at the girls and boys in their platform shoes and bell bottoms and everybody divorced or pregnant or stoned or listening to disco and scratching their VD sores, and I know the world is coming to an end, so I call United Airlines and order a one-way ticket to Paradise.
January 1996
Fiction
The Color Of Their Souls
There was a tear in our screen door and I would peek through it at the little houses across the street. The house across from ours was purple. There were many wild-colored houses on our block, like a row of cheap drinks; their great snarls of TV antennas were the swizzle sticks.
August 1995
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