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With a start, I opened my eyes.  I didn’t know what caused it, but something 

jolted me. Looking around, I was not where I had been.         The seat with the 

built in desk was tight on my stomach.  It was uncomfortable. But this was the 

least of my worries.

I was surrounded by teenagers.  They were making noise and were

unruly. I was in a classroom.\

Jesus.

The students were too busy being hooligans to notice me. Suddenly,

it hit me like a great whoosh of air -I realized I was back in my high school. I 

recognized the Cross on the wall of Jesus, and the old style

clock. On the flipside, I didn’t recognize any of the students.

 Mr. Smith then entered, and as he did so, the students stopped, without

a word. They all settled down and sat. I remembered this momentarily, that he 

ruled his class with power.  He was exactly how I remembered

him, still youthful, with a steely gleam in his eyes.  

 I had just been at home…How did I get here?

 “Mister Jones,” Smith bellowed from the front of the room. “Mister

Jones!  Mister……Jones!!!”

 It took me awhile to realize he was speaking to me.  

 “Yes, Mr. Smith.” 

“Welcome back.  We’ve all missed you.”

The next thing he did was to start that day’s lecture, and I could not

move, still extremely uncomfortable, and there I sat unmoving for

45 minutes. I didn’t speak or take notes.

Once the lecture was finally over, I was finally released from my chair,

but I couldn’t do so until every student was out of the room, and Mr. Smith was 

long gone. I had hoped to be able to question Mr. Smith.

Once in the hallway, I couldn’t remember what my next class was.  

I stood there looking around, thinking that it had been so many years

since I had been there, in this place that I had spent four years already.

Headmaster Phillips appeared in front of me, out of the blue.  He too looked like 

I remembered him, unchanged, with grey hair and piercing brown eyes. 

“Mr. Jones, you don’t know where to go?  How quickly they forget.  Welcome 

back.”

“I don’t belong here….” I quavered, unsteady on my feet.

“Yes, Mr. Jones, you do. You never finished high school.  You’re back to finish 

what you started.”

                                    Andrew McCarthy  

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Sarah Darling

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Big Gulp Mini

 They’re lookin down from those downtown buildings,

it’s a guarantee about that

 Mister master prodigal sister

like a blister-blaster drone in a laundromat 

 He walks like he looks like he just beat someone

he looks like into a bloody pulp

 Shenandoah filled with waste water vanilla no problem

close your eyes take a big gulp!

 Steve Sleboda

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Monologue of a Ray of Light

A piece of beach glass

nearly invisible

in the seaweed-

Was she blue or green?-

can tell you

I was born, and died.

Still I run, run, run!

 But like the rumbling-

Do you know

the lions talk to me?-

of the vociferously marauding null set,

can I really die?

 At first

I couldn’t believe

that thinking and traveling

were the same thing;

I bounced like a thief

with numbers on his back,

my round self purposely extended

into a dangerous sea of fun.

 Once I dove

out of the stratosphere.

and taking a low pass

saw a group of ammonites

in a shallow tropical sea.

 Then I found myself

very far from Earth,

a whim at best

on unpredictable tides,

in darkness a stripe

that’s left its sleeping cat

forever.

 Frank Montresor    

                                 Living in Everett

Why should I care about casinos, parks, toxic landfills,

firing teachers, water mains, gas pipes, electric wires,

funeral motorcades, cathedrals, cracked curbs, parking

complaints, recyclables in plastic bags, opioid junkies,

oversized trash demanding stickers, property taxes, rusty

water in tenement pipes, football victories, threatening

trees, why should I mind?

 I pay heed. I pay respect. I sing to myself,

“Ring-a-round the roses, pocket full of posies,

ashes,  ashes, we all fall down,”

while admiring newly planted sidewalk trees

and sculpted petunia beds in downtown parks.

 The civic mind is a force. It is an invention.

It is a tool to supposedly better a community.

What is natural? What is instinctual? The civic

mind is a guise, be it goodly, be it self-serving. 

It can be shirked, ignored, dismissed, taken as

a phony mask worn for the itch to power. The

civic mind can be embraced as a noble mask

for success in the domestic and foreign. What

should I care for the civic mind, a theater mask

too often deceptive and bumbling, so often

disappointing, a kingdom of hollow men mangling

the chase for life, liberty, and happiness?

 I work a day. I sit and don’t pray against my foes,

people who ask of me. I learn to politely respond

and act in accord to various queries, requests.

I relish the marching wind when stepping outside.

I relish the bolting sun when moving outward.

I care only for immediacy, that surprise from the outdoors,

that shine from the sky, the outlay of human habituation,

the glow of pedestrians, that stanch grandeur of motorized

vehicles. Do I care? I imbue. I imbibe. I dream of burritos

and sweet drinks. I swoon over beautiful faces and forms.

I walk without civic regard, merely release and the pursuit

of pleasure, armored in civic cloth.

 Andrew Rosen

  Flowers of Stone

 This morning, Patty sleeping undisturbed by me--she so enjoys her late hours, alone awake in the house, undisturbed by me--stillness broken only by the grunting and grinding of the city trash removal trucks, persuading myself that hearing loss tinnitus aggravated by my own lucky accidental hour of solitude is as charming as tree toads and leaf peepers in a swamp surrounded by the chaos of a forest, I thought of how much I enjoyed--a serene sense of strength much greater, less ephemeral, than mere joy--our languid breakfast communions on the theme of ordinary life's entangled sociopathies--a serene strength much like we achieved, day after day, on our seemingly effortless ten mile runs, and now, a month after turning 78, my work as utterly undone as the chaos of a forest, still squeezing from the golden lemon of our road-running exertions a routine of daily exercise, I sustain the hope that I'll bring my human, utterly personal, impulse toward utterance, to a dead volcano's monument of equilateral grace, it crater harmlessly wide open, no longer belching the slobber of lava, gas and fire, loaded at the slopes if dark core with infinite crystals of earth's truth, flowers of stone each and in their darkening entirety, safe and engaging for men, women and children, before I can't anymore or I croak, a dead frog who has or hasn't managed in the end to crawl to the side of the road and become its own questionable spectacle amid the roadside's litter.

   Kenneth Rosen

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Tumult

  with the first

light

the debris of

angry

words between

slith-

ering commas

for

those too poor

to

evacuate when

told

while too late

horses,

assateague's

finest,

calm as their

last

barrier is breached

and

you who stayed

scream

to wildly rocking

Noah's

help me, help

me

and my kittens

    Russell Buker  

        A Sham Leading to Shambles

selected Dan Crocker’s (D C) Facebook posts,  Aug-Oct 2018

  Knowing is half the battle, but the second half is harder.

  He lied to duck some serious questions.

  Bitterness and pain has rarely, maybe never, sounded

so good or looked so captivating.

  DC suspects his instincts know more than they’re saying.

  DC takes in the situations, and whistles lowly.

It helps a little.

  Pussy Riot is right, and a creative force that is right

is the biggest threat to those who are wrong.

  DC searches through his certainties and seeks through

his securities but only finds elation in his relations.

  It’s a rare review that convinces me not to see a movie,

and even rarer when I respect the talent involved with

the film, but… nope.

  Facebook dissolves while rain pours down.

Dan moves through the drops.

  D. C. makes his way through the new normal with

trepidatious hope, but eyes open for dangers and delights.

  D. C. checks his vision and washes his lenses before

accusing the lines of being blurred.

  D.C. knows the joy of escaping consequence, but has

seen the long-term damage of those who get hooked on it.

  There’s no way this ends well for anyone.     

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   Felt  Sun 8                 Fall 2018              

Contributors

Trish To              cover (Not Far From

                             & More or Less /

                             8” x 8”, acrylic on canvas), 6

Russell Buker     1-2

Sarah Darling      3, 13

George Lloyd      7, 8, back (Figure in Landscape,

                             1975, Eugene, OR, crayon on paper)

Frank Montresor  4

Andrew Rosen    5

Steve Sleboda     6

Kenneth Rosen   9-10

Andrew McCarthy  11

Bruce Colville     12

Dan Crocker       14

Contributors control copyright. This eighth issue of Felt Sun

(a zine of text and image) put together Fall 2018 in Everett, Mass.

by Andrew Rosen andrewjrosen@yahoo.com.

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Pat Pontillo, www.pontillopictorials.com, photo

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Adnan Adam Onart, "So Remote," Issue 4

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Efram Burk, rusted barrel lid, digital photo

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Kenneth Rosen, "Divinest Sense," Issue 4

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Sarah Darling, FLAMING HEART, colored version, oil painting.

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Daniel Crocker, third page of "Dragon Bones," Issue 4