Fairy Tales Part of First Sunday Prose Fun

For February the Bloomington Writers Guild First Sunday Prose was on the first Sunday (cf. January 8; December 4 2022, et al.), at Morgenstern Books, with past IU Alumni Association and Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies publications/PR worker and author of mystery novel BLOOD TERMINAL, with a second in the editing stages, Carol Edge as first featured reader, with two memoirs of childhood/teen life in Birmingham Alabama in pre-integration days, one, “Whistling Dixie,” on events around her — including the assassination of President Kennedy — and the other, “Daddy’s Knife,” on more intimate relations with family and, especially, her father. She was followed by Literary Representative for the Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington and Writers Guild coordinator for Last Sunday Poetry, as well as author and poet of numerous works including JOYCE & JUNG: THE “FOUR STAGES OF EROTICISM” IN A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and poetry volumes ICARUS BURNING and ICARUS REDUX, among others, Hiromi Yoshida, reading a series of prose poems (including two, of two parts each, on the fairy tales “Bluebeard” and “The Goose Girl,” of which more in a moment), followed by a personal narrative originally published in THE BLOOMINGTONIAN in 2021.

Then came the break and, after, a group of five “Open Mic” readers with me at number four, followed by moderator Joan Hawkins ending the session. A bit nonplussed as we would be using a hand-held microphone this time instead of our usual one on a stand, but happening to have as well as my book, THE TEARS OF ISIS, that had the story I’d planned to read, a more juggle-able text in manuscript form of a different story, but also of an appropriate length, I made a last-moment substitution. And by sheer coincidence, given Hiromi’s fairytale-based poems, the story I now read was a jaundiced account of a hopeful, but vain young lady named Cinderella, titled “The Mouse Game,” in the voice of one of the mice temporarily transformed into horses to draw her heavy pumpkin-become-coach to the prince’s ball and her subsequent triumph.

But you may be sure, by the end, that the mice will have their own agenda.