Heliotrope Blues by Leland Thoburn

Heliotrope Blues

Leland Thoburn

Twelve years at Julliard, and look at me. Playing Honky Tonk in a brothel on Heliotrope. I could play Beethoven, but these…things…wouldn’t know the difference between the Moonlight Sonata and Casparagus Fertata. Most of them don’t even have ears.

I don’t know what they see in each other. Especially old jellybags there. They say beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, but you’d have to have compound eyes to see anything in that. Which, I guess, most of them have.

Just the sight of her slithering upstairs with a customer makes me want to hurl. God I hate this job.


About the Author

In addition to writing, Leland Thoburn plays jazz saxophone and flute, and explores old ghost towns and mines in the California desert. Mr. Thoburn is working on one novel, one memoir, and a gaggle of short stories. He has been published by Writers’ Journal (both fiction and non-fiction); The Binnacle; The Griffin; Foliate Oak Review (both online and print); Opium Magazine (online only); The Vocabula Review; Flash Me; Jerry Jazz Musician; Barbaric Yawp; Feathertale.com; Defenestration; A Twist of Noir; the Rockford Review; Lowestoft Chronicle; and Apollo’s Lyre. He won the 2009 Arkansas College Media Conference award for fiction, as well as the 21st Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Contest, and was the runner-up in Writers’ Journal’s 2008 Fiction Contest.