Category Archives: semi-fiction

THE SEASON FOR GIVING by Peter Nolan Smith

December 26, 2023 – 4:01 am

Early on the morning of December 24, 1985 Vonelli, Lizzie and I entered the Gard Du Nord. We walked down the platform to our train. Our breath hung in the frosty winter air. Lizzie exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. The singer loved her Gaulloises. “So tell me again why we are going le Ile […]

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Merry Yulemas December 23, 2022

December 25, 2023 – 2:57 pm

In August 2021 I woke from sleep and vomited several liters of blood. The next day NYU ER doctors diagnosed my situation as life-threatening. An operation to staunch the bleeding was my only option other than death. The staff wheeled me immediatly to the Operating Room. I was knocked out with Profopol. Michael Jackson had […]

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GUILT VERSUS SHAME by Peter Nolan Smith

December 24, 2023 – 2:29 am

Back in the last century I left work on 47th Street early on December 24. Manny complained that I was deserting my post selling diamonds, but I had been working every day since Thanksgiving. “I should pay you a half-day.” Manny was a grinch of the first-order. “Do what you want. I’m heading home.” Boston […]

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GAY BOY by Peter Nolan Smith

December 7, 2023 – 9:37 am

My first eight years were spent on Falmouth Foresides across the harbor from Portland. Summers my brothers and sisters swam in Watchic Pond and rowed dories from the dock at the end of the street. Winters we skated on an ice rink constructed in our backyard. The harbor at the end of the street was […]

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TORAH TORAH TORAH by Peter Nolan Smith

December 7, 2023 – 1:12 am

TORA TORA TORA was one of my mother’s favorite films. The infamy of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor burned bright in her memory. Her friends from Jamaica Plain enlisted in the Marines, Army, and Navy by the scores. Many of them failed to return to Boston. Their bodies rest on islands across the Pacific. […]

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