is a retired activist, teacher and fundraiser who lives in beautiful Bella Vista, Arkansas, USA. He wrote and traditionally published two novels, a chapbook of meditations, and nearly 90 short stories. He also writes and publishes poetry and nonfiction. He has received support for his writing from The Ohio Arts Council, The Arkansas Arts Council, and The Speculative Literature Foundation. He earned degrees in English from Charter Oak College and Miami University. But he remains proudest of his work developing creative opportunities for homeless/unhoused people and people living with mental illnesses.
SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
That morning the flies were everywhere, blackening windows with their bodies, filling the air with their buzzes, flitting about my head, even landing in my ears and nostrils. I shooed them away with my hand and when that didn’t work, I chased them around the cart barn with a swatter, striking but missing constantly, each empty thwack a judgment on my abilities as would-be exterminator.
“Flies” – Subnivean, 2023
Read “Flies”
I noticed how the edges of things crisped with light and right away knew someone had slipped me the mickey. It didn’t take much in the early aughts, I was such a lightweight at seventy-eight, but it was nonetheless unnerving to stare at the curtains and see the contrast of flame on top with ash below. I smoked a Pall Mall, walked out the door, and sunlight accosted me like a mugger, rifling my pockets, kicking my shins, boiling my eyeballs blind. I leaned against a lamppost, crown of my head cold against the metal, hands gripping it with a force like to burst the rivets.
“Slipping the Mickey” – Midnight Chem, 2023
Read “Slipping the Micke”y“
We were so bored in high school in 1978 that we very nearly threw a kid in the bonfire at Homecoming. We had nothing in particular against him; he was just tall and gangly like the rest of us but unlike the rest of us, he hung out with girls: homely girls, girls from our neighborhood, ones we called dogs. This made him an easy target.
“Dogs” – The Bookends Review, 2022
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Mom lay on a cloud, wings spread, eating a piece of coconut cream pie with her bare hands. She was clad in a thin white robe, head adorned not with a halo but a tall, platinum blonde wig, her spectral body puny as a twig.
“Love Among the Fever Bags” – The Write Launch, 2022
Read “Love Among the Fever Bags”
It was after midnight and rain beat my head like tympani. I checked my look in a shop window: mid-thirties, five-ten, black haired, green eyed and gaunt, nose flattened to my face from a case where it was broken by a punch from a semi-professional football player, a woman who seemed at the time about the size of Vanuatu. These days I carried a sweet little straight razor inside my overcoat pocket to even the odds.
“Sweet Little Straight Razor” – The Yard: Crime Blog, 2021
Read “Sweet Little Straight Razor”
Follow Michael on X/Twitter: @mfontanawriter
Read his blog: https://michaelfontana.org/the-unrepentant-pantser-a-writers-blog/
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Michael Fontana 