Tag: don moss

Memoir & Fiction by Don Moss
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Two sepia side-by-side photographs of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.

DRAMA: The Tobacco Pot – A Play in One Act (1996)

SETTING: Einstein’s office at Princeton, desk, with large tobacco pot, two chairs, stacks of books and papers everywhere, half erased equations on chalkboard, Lighting slightly dimmed.

AT RISE: The two men have been life-time theoretical competitors; this competitiveness shows in all their interactions, though good naturally, as if acting out how media sometimes pits them against each other. NEILS BOHR, lost in thought, stands in profile by the desk fumbling to fill his pipe. The pipe, unfilled, unlit, he moves toward back, toward the window of the large office, walking furiously left to right, his hands clasped behind his back.

BOHR: Einstein, Einstein. [BOHR’S hands fidget with the pipe. Einstein enters stage left on tiptoe. He pauses only an instant to watch BOHR and smiles. He heads silently for the tobacco pot] Gezukenakken, pond scum. That means “pond scum” in Danish. He’s always late. Oh, Einstein! [BOHR picks up chalk, announcing as he writes] E … = … m … C … squared. [Just as EINSTEIN’S fingers eagerly touch the tobacco pot, BOHR suddenly spins round. The two men pretend to glare at each other.] Stealing from my pot again, Herr Doc-tor Albert? […]

Memoir & Fiction by Don Moss
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A mirrored image of a child jumping down a staircase in post-impressionist style, perhaps taking place in the 1960s.

SHORT STORY: Don Moss’s “Down The Stairs”

Our large farmhouse had an oak staircase that descended eight or nine feet to the landing, then offered five steps to the right and left, to the dining room and to the parlor, respectively. At age four or five, I would stare down to the landing and imagine a perfect leap to the precise center of the landing, absorbing the fall with no harm to body or to the parquet oak landing. Since the basement stairs were directly beneath this stairwell, I just knew any imperfection in the act would send one through the landing to the basement and to my demise. That last detail was of no interest, simply the consequence of imperfection. This fantasy felt more like a message built into the stairway and landing itself.

Evidence of my never attempting the jump is the fact that I sit, seventy-some years later, now writing these words. I was neither gifted with any useful athletic abilities, nor plagued with innate daring to attempt such a stunt. I didn’t take the fantasy literally, even years before I knew of such a word as literal. The image of the stairs, leap, and perfect landing did not abandon me. The image did now and then vanish, drifting below conscious recall. […]

Poetry by Don Moss
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A stylized shot of West Virginia, where a portion of Don Moss's "Lettered State" takes place.

POEM: Don Moss — “Lettered State”

Lettered State

An hour past dawn, at this clear-road pace,
We’d cross the last county line,
Passing from East to West Virginia.
His plan was masterful. A second D-
W-I, he’d be revoked a full year.
With the foresight a son might inherit,
He’d claimed his wallet stolen
And applied for a duplicate license.

He slid the form under the wide
Bi-focaled face of the counter woman.
Who’d lifted her head to assess him,
Corrected the date, asked of insurance,
Reviewed and stamped his freedom form,
Freedom to drive west, to Phoenix, AZ,
A two-day drive to friend Tom’s,
Take the Arizona test, cowboy a year,
Return to Virginia and petition
The court for reinstatement. Masterful.

His ’73 Continental drove well, but
Father didn’t know what to do
On the right side of the wide front seat,
Forming fists of dependence.
“Son, how fast you going?” […]

Poetry by Don Moss
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A stylized, 3-colored, tripartite portrait of a smiling Bruce Ario, the great Minneapolis poet.

The Minneapolis Poet: Remembering Bruce Ario

I can’t find the quote just now, I think by Kurt Vonnegut, something like; ‘Don’t just hold up in a room and write, socialize. Get people interested in you.’ Vonnegut said it better, a little longer, but this book on Bruce Ario’s poetry is a good application of the idea, though, as for now, online, not on paper. Bruce didn’t hide in his room writing—he got to know people, read his poems in coffee houses, joined the Uptown Poetry Group, UPG, the small informal writing group led by the author/editor of this book, Dan Schneider. (Not the well-fed TV producer actor born in Memphis, Tennessee, but Dan Schneider, from Queens, NY.)

I got to know Bruce through the UPG group, and, now and then, sharing a microphone with him at a reading. I saw a number of his poems and offered comments a couple of times each month for a good number of years. He, of course, commented briefly, in his manner, on work I brought in and on that of others. UPG participants varied as months passed, but Bruce and I and several others were of the core group. I do not say “members,” it was not that sort of thing, no dues, no qualifications. The only criteria for attendance were to bring in work, accept comments, offer suggestions to others, and leave egos outside the door. This last quality is likely why no “known artists” of the Twin Cities ever paid the group a single visit. Word got around that at UPG expect useful critique, not empty praise. […]