Some of our most important insights into human nature emerge with integration of literature (stories, poetry, etc.) and psychological issues.
Richard Holinger presents a remarkable example of these processes.

(Full disclosure: Richard is one of my three brothers).

At dusk the crows crowd in, black clouds swarming to beeches stripped of leaves above a creek nearly drained by summer’s heat. A pickup with a farmer and his son pulls up beside me. Some cattle got out of their pen, but, except for one lone calf still loose, the others followed the lowing home.

The radio reported this morning that in our lifetime Mars will never be so bright again. I wade through wild asparagus, spiny cucumber, and milkweed pods and with binoculars usually aimed at mud-grinding carp or slithery deer, look at the moon. Then move down, and right, the radio said. There.

***

A penlight probes my optic nerve. The doctor tells me retinas can detach in glaucoma eyes like mine. Why can’t I be a Dylan Thomas raging at the night? Instead, I sit passively, fitted for new glasses, listening to lenses click clear, clearer, clearest, heavy on my nose.

***

A black box elder bug crawls over the first black lines of a fountain pen poem. Deer loiter at the salt lick. The farmer calls to tell me the stray has not come home. He says if I see him to keep him close; he’ll scare too easily to lead back home alone.

Through open windows I hear the cattle low, frightened at being penned. The birch sapling transplanted from Wisconsin spreads smoky branches up through the oak that ants are hollowing out, its bare, skeletal limbs entangling Mars, its life three minutes past.

Richard Holinger, Midway Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 2 (April, 2024)  |   Pelekinesis anthology Best Microfiction 2025

Reflections

I first wrote “Mars” in my mid- to late-twenties, when living alone in rural northern Illinois, without a job, without a future. Surely the fiction reflects that sense of alienation in the calf that can’t find its way home, and in the questionable vision the character experiences, the lenses being adjusted to attempt clarity. The image of Mars may be a sign of hope, even rebirth or resurrection for the character, its light closer than ever before, but then, in the story’s final line, the planet is shone, literally, to be an illusion, a deception, a mere hint of the thing, not the thing itself, as if time itself deceives the character, leaving him isolated once more.

About Richard Holinger

Richard Holinger

Richard Holinger’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction appear in Chautauqua, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Witness, and elsewhere. Nominations include the Pushcart Prize (7), Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction 2025. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry), Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays), and Down from the Sycamores (poetry chapbook). Recent or forthcoming publications include the short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things and Other Stories (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), and Manure Dreams and Other Essays, winner, Choeofpleirn Press nonfiction contest, may be ordered from Amazon or their presses. He holds a doctorate in English from The University of Illinois at Chicago, a master’s degree from Washington University (St. Louis), has taught English and creative writing on a variety of academic levels, and lives in rural northern Illinois. Books and further information at www.richardholinger.com.

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