Word for Word: Disconnected

I’m in a writers’ group that meets on Zoom, though before the pandemic we met in person. Every week, we do a writing prompt: someone gives a page number, and our organizer picks a word from a huge dictionary. We write for five minutes. In this example, the word is: Disconnected.

Witchy kitty (Vita — named after Vita Sackville-West — when she was a kitten)

I barely listened to Witchfinder Alito babbling his disconnected and bizarre monologue proving he hearkened back to one of my least favorite historical eras: the Burning Times. Instead of listening, I imagined Alito tied to a wooden pole surrounded by a pile of logs. I pictured myself lighting the first log and step back to watch him get his comeuppance. I opened my eyes and observed he was still blathering overtly patriarchal nonsense.

Apparently a powerful witch sat in the courtroom. While everyone watched, Alito the power-tripping white male judge in a black robe… was now a pregnant woman with two screaming babies on her lap and with no child support. She looked down at the babies in horror.

I am delighted to announce that Twelve House Books will publish my story “The Cat of the House of Usher” in the anthology Poesque, and Cloaked Press published my story “Theater Patron” in Kaleidoscope — A Queer Anthology. Proceeds for the latter go to The Trevor Project.