Ron L. Dowell is the Writer of Original Short Story Fiction and Poems
Ron L. Dowell is the Writer of Original Short Story Fiction and Poems
Hot off the Press! Read NOW
Hot off the Press! Read NOW
My Short Stories
Job Collateral Lies Dead on Compton Creek
Early morning shift begins at 10 pm Saturday when Cowboy rolls the Vic onto Willowbrook Avenue. At 10:05, we stop well-dressed Latina millennials in a brand new Beamer, front plate missing...short story fiction
Leland Dunwitty’s Square Circle Edumacation
Taking tests always made my ear ache and ass hurt. Trouble was the 7PM community college psychology exam was that night... short story fiction
Drum Circle
We congregate here, on this little patch of Trestie Tapia Park picnic area, just as we have every Saturday morning for years in Hubiciti, a South L.A. suburb. But today we argue and don’t drum.
Professor Roach
Like demigods, cockroaches scurried across the ceiling, down the wall, and disappeared into crevices and cracks. Jubilee Washington lay on his side then turned onto his back, breathing fast...short story fiction
Tallent neal's hungry belly
You're on Compton City Hall’s chambers steps, Black Lives Matter button in plain view, your belly distends and nearly blocks out Herrera. It stretches Elizabeth Eckford's 1957 photo that’s on your t-shirt... short story fiction
A 1947 Negro Conversation
Fleetwood Walker played major sixty years before Jack
But Robinson plays baseball better’n anyone ... Poetry
Longest Journey
Before she received the pacemaker to spark her sluggish, eighty-seven year old heart, my mother never liked to exercise.
Otis Elevates
Pain shot from my soles to my brain when Booker kicked hard. “Otis——WAKE up.” Floor tiles were cold, sticky. My eyes popped open to two sets of waving antennas. Roaches were eating dried vomit that had also crusted on my face. The vomit wasn’t mine.
Dump City
Juan Carlos Martinez sits high atop a newly bulldozed trash mountain, in Dump City Guatemala, shading his eyes from the muggy stench of summer. He hates work and will tell Mamá and Araceli once he descends. Until then, he uses a rusty screwdriver, pops the lid from the shoe glue tin, puts his hand in a plastic bag as if it is a glove, pours rubbery snot-colored content onto his hand, and turns the bag inside out. Damn bags.
Otis Discovers Mysteree’s Secret
Leland Otis Dunwitty meets Mysteree, his first love, and finds how complicated relationships can be when lovers come from different sides of the track in "Otis Discovers Mysteree's Secret."
Bruised
Trina Thomas confronts intuitional obstacles when trying to rescue her younger brother from his heinous foster mom, Starkaña Wilkerson, in "Bruised."
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Short Story Collection FAQs
The above stories are samples of what you'll read in my short story collection, "Crooked Out of Compton," that's coming soon. The collection was a finalist for the 2020 Big Moose Prize and was a Chestnut Review Stubborn Artist Contest semi-finalist. "Bruised," a story from the collection, is the 2020 Tulip Tree Merit Prize winner.
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