A Bag of Tricks: Short Stories and Poems

By Peter Leibert

For over sixty years, I have crept into the soul of the Fool. This traditional stock character in folklore is imbued with a certain sense of power, wisdom and magic. He can raise the dead as in the Saint George Mummers Plays, follows with authority as the last dancer in the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance. He laughs, protects, projects warmth and kin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
• Release date: Oct 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959453482

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Copyright © 2022 by Peter Leibert

Cover Illustration by Madelyn Mann

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A Bag of Tricks/Peter Leibert

Paperback: 978-1-959453-47-5

eBook: 978-1-959453-48-2

CONTENTS

SUPERIOR FLOWERS

THE SWEET FRAGRANT GRASSES OF FUNDY

MISS WRIGHT

THE HOST: Dearest Mother

KARNA

JANE

SIMPLY DOGS

THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

IF DOGS COULD TALK

SUGAR MAPLE

THE CAT

CENTRAL FOOD MARKET

KARNA’S BREEZE (KARNAL BREEZE)

GOLDEN’S BRIDGE

MISS COVINGTON

MAC-LOBSTER AND CHEESE

MAGIC HOUR: THE BED

THE BAKE OVEN

CAMP DUDLEY

THE SNIPE HUNT

THE MAVILLETTE FROG

CRICKET AND THE HEDGEHOG

THE HIGHLAND HORSE

POISONING EDDY SEHON OR ALL ABOUT EVIL INTENTIONS

SOUTHPAW

PAINTER - FOR DAMON

DRINKING

MAMA KITTY

CORGIS’ DELIGHT

STARS

GIN IN THE MORNING

NORWICH STATE HOSPITAL: 1978 - MICHAEL

THE SINGULAR MARRIAGE

FRANK

DUCK AND DRAKE

BUSKING

THE TOUCH

THE BEAVER LADY

BLUE HORSE TAILS

A FENDER PAINTED BLUE

FOR BERTRAM 2008 - 2020

For over sixty years, I have crept into the soul of the Fool.

This traditional stock character in folklore is imbued with a certain sense of power, wisdom, and magic. He can raise the dead, as in the Saint George Mummers’ Plays, and he follows with authority as the last dancer in the Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance.

He laughs, protects, and projects warmth, kindness, and mystery. These stories and poems based on fun, frivolity, and sorrow come from his bag of tricks.

SUPERIOR FLOWERS

The New London Superior Court House sits up high on a long driveway like an armory orphan, it’s only architecturally significant distinction being that it was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and built in 1891. It’s not a warm, inviting structure. It seems to shout-out, Ye who enters here must have serious business, or a serious defect of some sort. Yet there by the entrance sits a bedraggled rose bush, blood red, home to cigarette butts and candy wrappers.

I think of my mother’s rose garden: Amazingly well tended, well loved. And thorns, thorns. Thorns, simply called bull briars, draped in trees nearby. I had driven 23 hours straight through from graduate school in Bloomington, Indiana, and was greeted by my mother.

I’ve made a wonderful new soup from bull briers that I want you to try.

Now, bull briers have many, many large thorns and unforgiving leaders that when on a seemingly pleasant walk can easily snap back and draw blood. My mother hated these barbed monsters with a passion and spent hours pulling them out from their entanglement in the nearby trees.

Okay… sounds interesting, I said, lifting my spoon. One taste and then, Good Lord, said it all.

I will never forget the sensation of having something like barbed wire in my mouth. If you’ve ever bitten down on a rose stem and had one thorn lodge in the roof of your mouth, another in your lip well, it’s not energizing or pleasant.

Jesus! What is this?

My mother replied, Bull brier soup. It is supposed to be very tender. Obviously, it was not.

Where did you get the briers out of the trees?

Well, um, yes.

Let me see the recipe.

I was handed an article from the local paper, and I read it slowly: Recipes from Nature: In the earliest part of the spring, when the young sprouts are just breaking through the ground…

Mother, dearest Mother, did you read the first part of this recipe?

Well, I guess not, she replied. I am not sure how this slipped through her since she is an unusually good cook. Bull briar soup. Good grief.

Walking past the rose bush and stepping up one high granite step of the courthouse, I enter a large hall. People sit on benches with bare feet, matted hair, tattoos, and the occasional suit. Minutes here don’t count; they evaporate into hours. I stand, pace a bit, and settle on the gatherings and goings-on inside the courtroom. A young man, Dale Jonas, who looks like an elf with a flattened nose and a ruddy mottled complexion, is held in contempt of court for wearing an obscene tee shirt.

Young man, go outside and turn that tee shirt inside out, Judge Melvin Tooler bellows.

Half laughing, Mr. Jones replies with a quizzical, condescending look.

"Mr. Jonas, don’t you ever look at me that way again. This is not the place to play around. Did you say something? No? Okay, I’m holding you in