Challenge 955

Rolling Coal

In Shauna Checkley’s The Boy Just Can’t Help Himself:
1. Is a Corvette the kind of car that would be the favorite of a driver of today who enjoys street racing or “rolling coal,” i.e. emitting noise and exhaust pollution?
2. How does the story characterize a typical problem of women in an abusive relationship? Is Phoebe justified in fearing that Eddie may be suicidal?
3. Phoebe’s calling Eddie a “one-man convoy” refers to the trucker convoy siege of Ottawa in January and February of 2022. In what way is the comparison justified?
In Richard Ong’s Shadow Dance: The poem uses assonance instead of rhyme. In how many cases are the vowel pairs not similar? In the last stanza, does the assonance follow a regular ABAB sequence in the four verses?
In Alcuin Fromm’s To Die Like a Man:
1. The opening of the story gives large clues to its ending. For what two reasons might readers expect a tragic conclusion?
2. In what ways does the author’s pen name make a double reference to the Carolingian renaissance of the 8th and 9th centuries? How does the opening of the story confirm the choice of pseudonym?
In L. L. Richardson’s Noetic Androids Among Us: Does Margo Cassidy both chronicle and illustrate the gradual replacement of the human male gender in both literature and technology?