From Chicago Gothic (2007). Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Pursing your lips is better than biting them, she remembers, and then she remembers the sting of the lemonade on her adolescent bit lip, that summer when she’d grown a couple of inches so that her long pants became capris. That summer also brought Sean who’d kiss her and run away, something he repeated for years, until he ran way to the Navy and never came back. He was blond and brave, unlike her, she thought.

Last night she and Sheri had spent the evening at a club, pounding 7 & 7s and the dance floor, and now her pounding headache was in its third hour. “Oh well, pale is in…” she said to herself when she looked in the mirror this morning. Still, the white shirt might have been the wrong choice, though she’d an inkling to start anew this day – no more drinking, library and not the club tonight. White shirt instead of black.

Stopping at a store window to look at herself, she shifted her weight, then turned a bit. The corners of her mouth went south. She reached for the the black leather she’d been carrying and covered herself before moving on.

-Danny Grosso 

Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.

The Dangle

With seductive eyes and a desperation borne and a siege mentality and instinctual self preservation, the Dangle spends most of its life in the trees, away from any harm to its personal liberty. Its connection to the muddy swamp below its lair is its sensuous tail, lushly maintained, and appearing to beckon interested parties to safety. Of course, rarely is the beckon genuine, and the gesture is always for the benefit of the Dangle alone, who likes to test its powers of attraction and manipulation. For this, the creature will remove its gaze from reflective surfaces, a diversion which encumbers most of the rest of its time.

The Dangle is so selfish as to disregard any utterances not coming from its own mouth, save one, for it is known to respond to this inquiry: “Pardon?” This phenomenon is extremely curious, for another creature, the Pardon, is the Dangle’s distant and more powerful cousin, and it is known that on rare occasions a dangle, perhaps through some aspirational transfiguration, has metamorphosed into a pardon.

 

–Danny Grosso 

Someone Else’s Memories was produced as a graphic single – an illustrated story with a CD of an original song co-written and performed by Danny Grosso and Russ Offman.