Short Fiction

I’m a beat writer in St. Louis for the literary journal ‘Boulevard’. My focus is on politics, which is ironic because I went to Washington University in St. Louis to become a doctor.

My oh my, how my life would have been so good if I had the mental wherewithal and fortitude to finish the degree! But alas, I switched to becoming a journalist writing about things like the failed covid vaccine. It’s quite depressing.

So now I travel, on the road a lot, covering inane stories that readers would find interesting.

This time I was tasked to cover ICE in North America, so I grab my laptop and my two books and a headed down to the Darian Gap in Panama. It was an expectedly long trip in my dependable red Volkswagen, cutting north to south thru the continent on a tight rope of a budget.

(You really don’t need much money to go on these adventures. When I travel, I like to carry a classic book or two to keep me entertained. My two favorites are by the Beats: Alan Ginsberg, and to preface I’m not gay, and the handsome Jack Kerouac, and I’m not into underage teenager girls either.)

I started this trip in the early spring of 2025 when the sounds of tensions started popping off in that old pooh bear state of California. Starting in the Midwest, my first stop was Palm Beach where I thought was the source of the troubles.

But they wouldn’t let me in, even though I was a journalist. So, I continued westward on the I-10 corridor to the border town of Laredo, TX in order to get real answers in Mexico, so there I went! But I did not quite make it to the Darian Gap; I stop in Guatemala and turned around there.

Coming back home to Chicago in reflection of the trip, I reached an epiphany, that to be a good writer, one must experience life. It’s like Homer, the Ancient Greek, who spoke into existence in verse, the Odyssey, as he sailed the Aegean Sea!

And now, I foresee a transitioning to an Ancient Grecian Age whence an Ancient Roman Age of war and conquest, we have left!