AFRICAN BUZZARD?

Written By Joe Smolen

A hidden STORY struck me that the name AFRICAN BUZZARD was some sort of inside joke. The sight of AFRICAN BUZZARD laid-up along the banks of the Mississippi just really jabbed me. Considering I talk-up how I’m a fictionist, you might ask yourself, “Why, in New Orleans of all places, did he need a picture of the good ship AFRICAN BUZZARD?” Worse, if you knew AFRICAN BUZZARD was one of the few things in New Orleans that grabbed my imagination, you might truly wonder how I perceive the world. I mean, right away, I had to wonder about the investors behind this 66,000 ton bulker – that costs on the order of $1,000,000/day to own and operate. On-line, I found out part of the STORY is this Nassau-registered wheat carrier had been in an under-weigh collision at mile 124.5 just a coupla days before I got this shot – 4/12/2026. Just one of those things out of which eventually springs a story.

Joe Smolen

Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.

https://joecsmolen.com
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