Author: Douglas Imbrogno

It was a Baby Jesus Thing

  • December 21, 2022

What do you do when Baby Jesus is Missing in Action — but you have a decades-long Christmas family tradition to enact, with children awaiting? You go with what you've got, even if what you've got is a bit ridiculous.

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Categories Video

‘I Am Too Serious’

  • December 13, 2022

'Hey, here you go. What's your name? Where'd you serve?' He nods in thanks. Stuffs the bag into a pocket. Tom. That's his name. He takes off his black knit cap. Syria. Iraq. 'A shell took off part of the top of my head.' I wince. He points to a jagged line. 'The Med Evac was the best. Saved my…

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Categories Essays Memoir

Figures & faces from traveling places

  • December 6, 2022

Here is some iPhone portraiture from recent travels around and about Huntington and Charleston WV, people and scenes that struck the eye of one or the other of my Muses, a cantankerous posse who sometimes pay attention and sometimes are gone for months, if not years, at a time.

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Categories Photography

‘A Dream of Perfect Motion’

  • December 1, 2022

I've spent years collecting footage of trains rumbling through West Virginia's hills, dales & valleys. I also scribble poems that play on Buddhist allusions. And there's this electronic music maestro I know named Lucas the Flow, who composes ethereal tunes. Mix them together and this is what you get ...

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Categories Art Poems

It’s no longer a mall thing

  • November 30, 2022

Heading to the local mall used to be one of the social highlights of the week even ten years ago, much less 20. A recent visit to the Town Center Mall in West Virginia's capital city reveals how much the idea of the mall has faded.

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Categories Essays

Miss Francis’ First Birthday Party

  • November 23, 2022

As she approached her 77th birthday in the year 2018, Frances Buzzard has never once in her life had a big birthday party. That was all about to change for the Belle Elementary School custodian one afternoon in Belle WV.

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Categories Video

A Horny Encounter in the Neighborhood

  • November 19, 2022

Do auspicious omens from a deer encounter extend to the semi-suburbs? I have zilch expertise in gauging their racks, but this 2-, 3- or 4-point young buck showed up recently in my backyard, which butts up against a narrow spit of woods. I got a closer look at him last night upon returning home from an outing ...

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Categories Essays Photography

‘8 Foot Notes from a Dancer’s Diary’

  • November 6, 2022

We prance across the floor & close / the space. Until I see your back to me, those hips, an intoxicating / whiff of shampoo, the outline of your lips, an accidental touch, / matched rhythms, yes, our bodies talking on a wavelength our / minds cannot access ...

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Categories Poetry

‘Nathan Brings the Light’

  • November 1, 2022

When a father steps into and then down from the pulpit as his son brings the light and then snuffs it out at the end of a church service, watch for the moment of grace between father and son ..

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Categories Video