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Robert

Roman

Empire

RED BRICK ALLEY STORIES

The Killards Are Coming

Every damn day in Religion Class, Sister Anna Banana yapped about the Soviets revving up to start a nuclear war with the new president, Ronald Reagan. She said after the cities burned to Holy Hell, there’d be something called “nuclear winter” that would kill all... 

Double-Strength Demon Dogs

Fantastic Freddie was the only altar boy from the Red Brick Alley. He was always consecrating Ritz Crackers and trying to make us eat them like communion wafers. He light-fingered incense from the sacristy, and he blessed water from Old Lady Tully’s spigot...

Laser Loop

I couldn’t see over the tall green school bus seat except when we hit a pothole and I bounced up in the air like a Pop-Tart jumping out of a toaster. Nobody at Saint Augie’s could believe I was allowed to go. My first school picnic ever. I was good from the day I handed in my pink...

The Boy Wonder

How the Hell did Jaggerbush get himself up there? He was clawing his way up into the open window above the Science class door like a real-life gargoyle. The blockhead of a wooden mallet stuck out of the back of his Toughskins where his butt crack was. He wore three...

About The Author

Rob.jpg

Robert Roman grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, where he sold newspapers to cars from a concrete island. Read more→

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“He’s a good writer, Hemingway. He writes as he is. We like him. He’s a big powerful peasant, as strong as a buffalo…But giants of his sort are truly modest; there is much more behind Hemingway’s form than people know.”

– James Joyce


Whelp, one more of my Hemingway Half-Dozen Prose Poems has been banned from another Facebook Poetry Group. How many is that? I’ve lost count. I consulted my lawyer for his usual ground-and-pound advice. Then Doctor Reality recommended I offer an explanation. I damn near spit my mescal all over his legal briefs. OK, Doc, I hereby submit my defense.



What in the Holy Hell is a Hemingway Half-Dozen Prose Poem?


Reinvention Time:

Hemingway’s Paradigm,

Plus Rhyme.



Rhyming Response to Hemingway’s Own Original Story via Hemingway Half-Dozen Prose Poem


Hemingway’s Story:

Poignant Territory,

Memento Mori.



Hagiographic Homage via Hemingway Half-Dozen Prose Poem


Modernist Voices:

Hemingway’s. Joyce’s.

Sublime Choices.



Superfluous Suggestions for the Hemingway Half-Dozen Prose Poem Picador


Don’t Stall.

Start Small,

Simply Scrawl.



Subscribe and stay tuned for an easy-peasy explanation of the Ezraku.

Same altruistic time, same charitable channel.

Updated: Oct 9, 2024

- Short Story from The Red Brick Alley

How the Hell did Jaggerbush get himself up there? He was clawing his way up into the open window above the Science class door like a real-life gargoyle. The blockhead of a wooden mallet stuck out of the back of his Toughskins where his butt crack was. He wore three sets of the scuba mask goggles they made you wear to keep your eyeballs from boiling out of your skull in case there was an explosion in class. He wore one over his eyes like a normal human being and one around his neck and one on top of his head so his brown hair stuck up all around it like weeds in the cracks of the sidewalks. Just one of anything was never enough for my little brother. I didn't know what he was up to; he never revealed his secret plans to anybody, not even me. He just hatched them. Then I'd have to swoop in to the rescue, as usual. Jaggerbush slithered through the window and was gone. I stood guard under the window waiting to catch him in case he fell during his escape. That's what brothers were for.

"Hey, Ringer!"

Who was yelling my name now?



Read the rest at Eclecta Magazine here.


“They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet.”

- Ulysses, James Joyce


Today’s very scary sonnet:


A Waking Nightmare


Doc Reality’s latest reading task:

James Joyce’s final curse, Finnegans Wake.

But in that moon shadow I fear to bask,

Sooner face vampires without wooden stake.

Pandemonium, pendulums and pits

Crawling with creepy insect anagrams,

That mask red deathly sins mankind commits

Like Lecter’s in The Silence of the Lambs.

The Wake’s dark nightness will surely damn me.

Treats as tricky as Eden’s walking snake,

More fearful than the Tyger’s symmetry.

Doc! Spare me this terror for my soul’s sake!

So, to Ulysses’ daylight sun I’ll scram,

And not ensnared by Joyce’s pentagram.


Subscribe and stay tuned for more horror.

Same terrifying time, same Charon-owing channel.

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