Glass Jar

By Top Writers Block

A container. Something that holds. Sometimes reflective, sometimes inspiring...so many things a glass jar can hold. This collection of nine short stories and poems holds something for you. Give it a try. Top Writers Block authors Alan Naylor, Jeanne Felfe, John Muir, Elizabeth Rowan Keith, Suzy Stewart-Dubot, Melissa A. Szydlek, and Cleve Sylcox have provided a collection of whimsy, fantasy, a touch of horror, drama, romance, and some humor.

Your purchase of this ebook not only supports the creative outlets of independent authors, but also supports charity. Top Writers Block is an international group of writers who continue to donate all of their author proceeds to Sea Shepherd in France, an organization that devotes itself to preserving our seas and oceans and the life within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Top Writers Block
• Release date: Oct 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370278251

Top Writers Block

Top Writers Block is a diverse and eclectic group of talented writers who decided to write stories together - just for the fun of it! We are happy to announce that authors proceeds have always gone, and will continue to go, to Sea Shepherd.fr every time Smashwords has made a payment! Thank you to those who have supported the group, independent authors, and Sea Shepherd. Our collections are usually written with one theme or genre in mind. Each author contributes when they have the time, so some of the collections have as many as twelve authors participating. Every collection has something new, with stories and poems ranging from romance, drama, and adventure to mystery, fantasy, and horror. All the Top Writers Block's proceeds will go to Sea Shepherd, so by buying you are helping to keep our oceans alive! Thank You all so much!

Book preview

A Collection of Short Stories

by

TOP WRITERS BLOCK

Written on the theme:

GLASS JAR

Copyright ©2016 by each individual author as noted

Published on Smashwords

Cover Graphic from Adobe Stock

ISBN: 9781370278251

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WISTERIA by Alan Naylor

FOREVER LOVE by Jeanne Felfe

THE CAN IN THE FLORA by John Muir

FRAGILE by Elizabeth Rowan Keith

thēsaurus by Suzy Stewart-Dubot

GLASS ANIMALS by Melissa A. Szydlek

WHAT’S IN THE JAR? by Cleve Sylcox

A RIDE HOME by Elizabeth Rowan Keith

PRINCE OF THE PINT CLUB by John Muir

WISTERIA

by

Alan Naylor

Copyright ©2016 Alan Naylor

A retired Banker living in a suburb of Minneapolis, Alan has been a writer for most of his adult life.  His primary interest is the creation of personal verse on subjects including nature, personal relationships, and ironic and satirical situations.  He has several books awaiting discovery by a publisher and is at work on several new anthologies of verse.  He is a member of both a writers’ group in Minnetonka and St. Paul and recently participated in a presentation made by the St. Paul group called The Egregious Errors at the Minneapolis Fringe Festival. During the 1980’s he was a Board Member of The Loft, the principal writers’ workshop in his region of the country.

Glass jars were the grist for the modest career

of Mrs. Wisteria Bloom,

who crafted jar gardens designed to bring cheer

to a listless decor in a room,

produced at her home in a small mining town,

a drab little hamlet called, Boom.

A neighboring town, quite aptly called, Bust,

is perched on the opposite bank

of a river(?) that idles as it passes by

and under a bridge made of planks.

Though residents of either town would prefer

to live by a stream far less rank.

Wisteria paid little heed to all that.

She merely worked filling a jar

with lovely arrangements, artistically wrought,

which no blemish ever dared mar.

And throughout the region, in most other towns,

some thought her to be quite a star.

And how did she come to acquire this skill

to deal with plant life quite pygmy?

She’d heard that the subject was taught very well

at a college in Whipple, B.C.,

that graduates in their careers fared quite well

whatever their own specialty.

And there she discovered this key to success:

to craft gardens miniature

required that she follow directions she’d learned,

that sticking to them would insure

that results would be better, much better by far,

if she eschewed using manure!

And such rules were pleasing since, in her short life,

amidst all its many vexations,

she wheezed every time that a garden was fed

with cow, calf, or steer defecations.

The usage of chemical thisses or that’s

thus filled her with exhilarations!

But chemical feedings should not touch the glass.

They’d muddy its life giving skill,

might block all the sunlight from doing its thing,

like exercise it’s natural will.

For plants must have sunlight, her teachers had said,

or they might get frightfully ill.

She’d purchased a washer, quite chic, Japanese

to prepare all her glass jars for use.

The day that it would not turn on...goodness me!

Her curses were truly profuse!

She had to seek aid via calling Japan,

to just learn a small screw was loose!

But then came the day she met Myrtle LeFay,

a consultant to small business types

who wanted to grow at a pace quite go go

through use of her skill to craft hypes.

For she on TV, could, convincingly,

through use of her stentorian pipes,

sell near’ anything by stressing its bling,

it’s skill to restore, to improve,

to chart a new path, to scour out a bath,

to remodel, reduce or remove.

I am, proclaimed Myrtle, "a hare not a turtle,

a claim that’s quite easy to prove!"

Wisteria, she said. "your sales curve is dead!

You’re mired in a rut of glass jars!

You’re locked in a cell where you’ve been quite a spell,

content to look out through its bars!

You must change your tune! Don’t aim for the moon!

Your goal should be, REACH FOR THE STARS!"

Wisteria, abashed, was very intrigued

with Myrtle’s most confident style.

Her use of cute rhymes populating some lines

had even made Wisteria smile.

And so they both went to a dumpy road house

and talked for a very long while.

Myrtle knew, as a rule, silence was a good tool.

She thus had the patience of Job.

She had an agenda to which she’d attend.

She’d query, then listen, then probe.

But finally she said, "Abandon the jar!

Your gardens should use a glass globe!"

Wisteria gasped! Such a simple idea!

It was, it was just common sense!

And so she paid Myrtle a fee for her help,

a fee far, far less than immense.

And then she got to it, developed a plan!

For one can’t just perch on a fence!

She didn’t take Myrtle along for the ride

though she knew she must advertise.

Yet while selling jars on TV. might work well,

for globes, such might not be so wise.

No, florists and gift shops...the customers there

might think them a singular prize!

And that’s how it happened, how her house in Boom

was not fully up to the task,

why she built a factory(?) over in Bust,

it’s tax break far more than she’d asked,

where at each year end her few employees

hoist many a glass from a cask!

There still is a market for her lovely jars,

quite suited to a window sill.

And while kitchen counters put many on show,

in houses which crown some high hill

it now is in fashion to feature glass globes

which her gardens artfully fill!

###

return to Table of Contents

FOREVER LOVE

by

Jeanne Felfe

Copyright ©2016 Jeanne Felfe

Jeanne started writing as a teen, but never seriously until about 2012. She would start writing with stark raving enthusiasm, and then mysteriously stop, sometimes for months or years. It wasn't until she retired from her ATT Project Management job that she asked herself, if not now, when? She launched into the July 2013 Camp NaNoWriMo, the writer bug bite, and this time didn't let go. Since then, her personal essay Yes, It's Personal was published in 2014 in Under the Surface: Anthology #8. In 2015, two short stories--The Bond and The Price for News--were published in Anything Goes, Volume 2, and in 2016, her Urban Fantasy short story The Elementals was published in Matters of Substance. Her humorous piece The Pie Rack's Secret and several others will be published in late 2016 in the Saturday Writer's anthology. Her debut novel, The Art of Healing, a sweet love story, was published in June 2016. Jeanne is currently working on her second novel, a dramatic story of lost love, lies and family betrayal. Her short, The Elementals aches to be a novel and will be third, after the characters in her second get their shot--otherwise they will drive her insane badgering her with what about us? Jeanne is