Michael J. Solender lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife Harriet where they obsess over their garden. He hails originally from the sometimes frozen tundra of Minneapolis, MN. There he ignored (only once) his mother’s advice to pursue a career in medicine and became a Corporate Klingon. A recent Corporate Refugee, Solender is a freelance writer whose opinion and satire has been featured in The Richmond Times Dispatch, The Winston-Salem Journal, and Richmond Style Weekly. He writes a weekly Neighborhoods column for The Charlotte Observer and is a contributor to Charlotte ViewPoint. His micro-fiction and poetry has been featured online at Dogzplot, Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow, A Twist of Noir, Thrillers Killers ‘N’ Chillers, 6 Sentences, Powder Burn Flash, and Flashshot. He blogs here: http://notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com/
The Lesson (September 21, 2009. Issue 9.)
I am a member of a dying breed. I am a child of the soil. I am a farmer’s daughter.
My grandfather’s father was a sharecropper and took the 180 acres given to him by the state of New Jersey
after the First World War on the promise of farming the land and operating under a 100 year lease for $1.00 per year.
He died with red clay in his veins after scrubbing the earth under his feet for 40 years, my grandfather at his side the last 20. My father joined him as a young man and I soon followed as was the custom for the first born, of either sex, to follow in the farming tradition established in our family.
We were egg ranchers. Chicken farmers. Poultry purveyors. Great granddad had grown corn and soybeans but Papa converted the farm to eggs after watching corn prices go to nothing and Uncle Sam drop all subsidies for grain production.
My father was a gentle giant. Wouldn’t even kill a spider. Then one day he buried a rooster alive. I’ve never forgotten that lesson.
That particular rooster had raided the prize hen-house, gotten into the mornings production and generally made a mess of things. Now, there’s is not much more useless and even dangerous on an egg farm than a rooster. The last thing you want is to slow or stop the production of eggs.
So, when Daddy grabbed that cock by the neck and through him into the hole that he quick covered with dirt, I knew right then that men would play a subservient role in my life going forward.
I am a farmer after all. I don’t have time for useless cocks.
Two Poems (August 20, 2009. Issue 8.)
Looks For Someone Else
Giving him
the two ear treatment;
When had it all
turned perfunctory, the yessing bastard?
His boyish grin long gone,
those looks reserved
for others in lame eateries.
Her well slowly depleted
needed filling, not folly.
Peril would join her in bed
that evening, it’s dying spirit
laying a snare.
He’d not know why or when
or reasons offered.
Upon awakening she’d not be there.
Granada
Her burn still smolders inside me
a place where sated can’t find
Fractured sun half illuminates my wanting
remembered form fueling my desire
Her hands offer nourishment like balm
they fed me bitter orange and sweet lemon
Tiger flies and humming birds
follow stares where I saw her last
I need only her fire to sustain me
Granada let me long past pasts no more