First Person Last: short stories, poems, monologues

First Person Last is a scrapbook of monologues, short stories, personal reveries, and poetry written, designed, and edited by Kevin Lottes. Using his home computer, from start to finish, Mr. Lottes composed this unique, homegrown scrapbook of terse fiction that ranges from the desolate to the lively. In his literary debut, he reminisces about his childhood and explores the plight of men and women as they grow into adulthood.

A young man confronts his estranged father in one last attempt at reconciliation. A desperate woman is lost behind a shower curtain. A little boy struggles to understand the quiet complications of war through his veteran grandfather. Mugged and homesick, a truck driver is forced to hitchhike back home only to find his front door left wide open. An ordinary man tries to cross the street, but the sudden burst of civilization petrifies his entrance into the uncertainty of a mundane crosswalk.

Some are clear-cut tales, some are back-pocket-sized interludes, some are intimate dialogues between two people, and others are excerpts from a struggling actor’s journal entries. All at once, First Person Last signifies the author’s personal pipe dream of individual peace, family appeasement, emotional articulation, and release.