Poems, short stories, long stories, plays, essays and articles.
BOYS
by Nancy Hartness
My cousins are boys chasing around.
Chasing around
Outside this house where inside there’s
More food than Thanksgiving and nobody
Tells you what you have to eat.
I grab chips and run.The ground’s almost frozen.
I eat bread and run. I eat cake and run.
I eat more chips and run.
If I eat any more, if I run any more, I’ll explode.
I run.
“A Child’s Prayer to the Patron Saint of Television”
by Nancy Hartness
Dear Saint Clare,
Thank you for Mister Philo Farnsworth 
Who invented T.V.
I hope he’s not too weird in Heaven.
Thank you for The Mickey Mouse Club.
Momma banished us along with the T.V. from
The living room where our dancing feet
Wore out the carpet. She covered up the bald spot.
Thank you that I, of all the kids, knew
Best where to whack the cabinet and
Command the picture to return.
Thank you for Howdy Doody,
Phineas T. Bluster,
Flub-a-Dub and
Clarabell, the Holy Clown, who
Never spoke but once.
Thank you for the Westerns,
Soap Operas and
Jack Paar.
Thank you for the Saturday Afternoon Movie.
And especially most of all,
Mother Clare,
Thank you for Samuel H. Kress
Who gave so much before
He died in 1955.
Amen.
This poem was Nancy’s entry in The Kress Project at the Georgia Museum of Art, where it received an honorable mention.
KNIFE EDGE CREASES
by Charlie Hartness
When my mother met my father
it was at the Stardust Ballroom in Macon, Georgia
He came over on the bus from Camp Wheeler
and she walked to the ballroom from her house
wearing a gardenia corsage
There were a lot of good looking soldiers there
she said
and all of them were tidy in that soldierly way
but your father
oh my goodness
his trousers had those knife edge creases
like the bows of twin destroyers
cutting through the water
faster than anyone could ever swim away.
- Nancy and Charlie wrote an article about Earl Murphy, their Missouri fiddler friend for The Old-Time Herald magazine.