lucky find gazette
 
The Adventures of Ugly Pie by suzy rust crancer this is ugly pie. that night, ugly pie counted up her savings and discovered she had just enough cash to buy a hot asphalt tar kettle. one day she got fed up with her job at the nursing home. she lives in a shack on the wrong side of the tracks. her yard is full of weeds. meanwhile, on the other side of town, cutie pie was about to become the first customer of the hot tar asphalt company. she tracked down her cousin eddie at pavement’s end, where he was working on a road crew, and pestered him into starting up a driveway business with her. when her business partner finally returned, ugly pie had written a body of poetry which she was ready to share with the public at a local coffeehouse’s open mike night. while eddie took a few days off for his adulterous fling, ugly pie made use of the free time by writing about her favorite things: driveway stains, the asphalt lake of trinidad, the far corners of parking lots, where no one ever parks. by the end of the job, cutie pie and eddie had decided to continue their relationship on a less professional level, and so disappeared into an area motel together. it was ugly pie’s finest moment, and, in a rare gesture of respect, eddie offered to let her climb behind the wheel of his prize gto. in the coffeehouse parking lot, however, the atmosphere turned threatening. ugly pie and eddie were assaulted by a couple of off-duty welders who wanted to turn the gto into an art car! the hot tar asphalt company soon kicked some sense into those two goons. the next day, ugly pie drove up to the oil refinery in wood river, illinois. there she lit a whole box of “strike anywhere” blue tips, one by one, in celebration of victory, pyromancy, and petroleum by-products.
©1994 cold dirt press