Brendan Praniewicz

Brendan Praniewicz earned his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State in 2007 and has subsequently taught creative writing at San Diego colleges. He has had poetry published in “From Whispers to Roars,” “Tiny Seed Journal,” “That Literary Review,” and “The Dallas Review.” In addition, he received second place in a first-chapters competition in the Seven Hills Review Chapter Competition in 2019. He won first place in The Rilla Askew Short Fiction Contest in 2020. He was a 2023 Pushcart Nominee for poetry. He can be found on Facebook (Brendan Praniewicz), Instagram (@praniewicz), and his website is brendan-praniewicz.com.

Jean Pierre

In 2008, for my college graduation, my family and I took a cruise on the now infamous Carnival Triumph. I don’t recall what we ate for dinner that first night, but I still remember our waiter. A dashing black man with a French accent dazzled us with a card trick before taking our drink orders. Glimmers of chandelier light reflected in his glasses as he introduced himself as Jean Pierre, and his name tag said he originated from Haiti.

I Didn’t Want my Last Conversation with my Dad to Be about Trump

There’s no proper reaction when your mother tells you over the phone, “Your father is dead.”
And how words hang in your throat as she explains, through sobs, he died in a tractor accident, when the vehicle flipped, and the rear tire ran over his head—he took his last breath in your mother’s arms.
So you book the fastest flight from San Diego to Pittsburgh.
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