One of my poems, originally inspired by a D. Avery prompt, up on Stereo Stories, along with Jeff Duff singing Macarthur Park.

MACARTHUR PARK by JIMMY WEBB. Poem by Doug Jacquier.

This week’s prompt is Australia. Get on to it like a blowfly at a barbie. Read all about it at https://sixcrookedhighways.com/min-min-weekly-prompt/ and post your wildest thoughts in under 250 words.

I know you’re probably just letting your engine idle while you get your ducks in a row and take the path less traveled, but just a gentle reminder about this week’s prompt. https://sixcrookedhighways.com/min-min-weekly-prompt/

Don’t worry about all the Rabbie Burns stuff (sorry, CE and Jenne, no disrespect intended).

The prompt is simply about best laid plans going astray. Up to 250 words will do the trick.

Stereo Stories have just published one of my lunatic raves, God bless them.

BUS STOP by THE HOLLIES. Poem by Doug Jacquier.

My 50-word story, Wild West Romance, made it into this annual anthology. ‘The 50-Word Stories of 2022: Microfiction for Lovers of Quick Reads (50 Give or Take Book 2)’ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFXD2P8X

Just goes to show that you can tighten up when you want to. This began as a 99-word story for the Carrot Ranch Challenge. 🙂

Views on whether a Pushcart Prize nomination is anything to feel good about range from it being meaningless (after all, some 10,000 nominations are made by small publishers annually) to it being an important acknowledgement that at least one publisher has included your work in their best six for the year. It’s no surprise that I’m going for the latter. 😉

Rat’s Ass Review (isn’t that a delightful title) has put forward a poem of mine they published in their Fall/Winter edition this year. It’s called Christmas Presence and it goes like this:

Christmas presence

Whatever the generations bring
to this collective presence,
there will be totems of the past
fixed firmly insistent in each of our minds,
arrayed with faces carved in the hard woods
that only family trees produce
and set, sometimes poles apart, in the family grove.
Children growing themselves from new numbers each year,
all named and loved and parented in common for a day
with tear-filled eyes, chocolate-coated faces and grinny cheeks,
each hoisted to embrace and admiration,
all feats applauded and all false pride mocked.
Food, prepared as sanctioned by time,
in unspoken, ordained ritual by the women,
the bearers of all sustaining life.
 
Men, surrounded by seemingly unobservant boys,
using beer to shorten stretching distances,
quietly competing every hurdle
until a child clings to a leg
and wins.
Lives past, sitting patiently in reserved and sacred chairs,
coming back to life in anecdotes
of bastardry and joy.
Toddlers and crawlers, excited and bewildered,
knee-deep in wrapping paper and parental nostalgia.
Babes at breast, absorbing every nuance
through the pores of their clan skin
and the memories encoded in their mother’s milk.
 
The married-ins, belonging in their separateness
to this caravan, as hopeful and as helpless
as those that followed a certain star
but at least knowing for whom they bear their gifts.
 
And, amidst all, the matriarch unfolds a pattern
and, with skills both ancient and subtle,
draws to her strands unknitted,
in case they ever unravel
and pull the fabric apart.

One of the rarest of beasts in the litmag world is those precious sites that allow you to send material that has been published previously so that it might reach a broader audience than the weekly Retired Wheeltappers Annual Report. One such delight is Digging Through The Fat and I thank them for their kind indulgence.

https://diggingpress.com/2022/11/02/community-no-78-doug-jacquier/

Over the last 5 years, Jason Splichal and Jeff Sommerfeld have published over 700 writers from around the world in their Sky Island Journal, reaching over 115,000 readers in 145 countries. I am deeply honoured and grateful that they have published three of my flash fiction stories in their Fall 2022 edition. You can either follow the link to the issue and read some of the other fine work as you scroll down to mine or download and read from the links below. For those only used to my humorous jottings, be prepared for the more serious side of my work.

WOMAN IN BLACK AND BLUE (Alert: This story includes graphic domestic violence content.)

THE HISTORY OF THE COOK

SOLITUDE HAS ITS OWN REWARDS

Any and all comments gratefully received.