Word for Word: Mulligan

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:

Mulligan — a stew made of leftovers. I added the final sentence after reading that Alito’s remarks about Roe v. Wade repeatedly cite a seventeenth-century misogynist who executed witches.

I took this photo in the Hawthorne District in Portland, Oregon years ago — across the street from my apartment.

The sun had set by the time the coach taking me to my new workplace arrived. Stepping out of the coach with my portmanteau, I peered up at the dark form of a manor house with a plethora of gables and chimneystacks. The coach was by the back door, which creaked open to reveal an elderly woman holding a lantern.

The woman introduced herself as the housekeeper, Danvers, and led me into a kitchen. What looked and smelled like mulligan soup simmered in a cauldron. I wondered if the leftovers included eye of neut. As I wrinkled my nose at the foul stench rising from the cauldron, what resembled the face of Supreme Court Injustice Samuel Alito bubbled to the surface.

I am delighted to announce that Cloaked Press will publish my story “Theater Patron” in Kaleidoscope — A Queer Anthology, scheduled for June 1, 2022.

Sirens Call Magazine published my story, “Starless Night,” in their Spring 2022, 57zine issue:

Sirens Call Publications