May 2023 Issue # 29 Flash
Sudha Balagopal * Kevin Brennan * Katie Coleman * Thad DeVassie * Gary Fincke * Pat Foran * Jeff Friedman * Molly Giles * Susan Grimm * Bethany Jarmul * Amy Marques * Pamela Painter * Keith J. Powell * Steve Saulsbury * Duncan Tierney
FLASH Launch Reading Friday, May 19th at 7 PM ET Please Register in Advance |
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Sudha Balagopal
How to Measure a Man
While Amma flits around arranging rajanigandha in a vase, I lock myself in my room. Appa knocks on the door. “Kanna, this is a casual meeting.” I swivel in my chair. “But you invited this . . . this guy, without consulting me?” Amma instructs me to wear the pink silk sari. When I emerge in my jeans and a kurta, she looks at Appa and lifts her shoulders. I pick at the embroidery on my kurta. “Appa insisted this is casual.” I don't expect a retinue. The mother leads the way into our home―she reminds me of a country's flag bearer at the Olympics―a basket of apples and oranges in her hands. Behind her, the father, a gray-haired gentleman with a lustrous mustache. The “guy” brings up the rear. He sports a sparse goatee and formal attire―long-sleeved shirt and paisley-printed tie―studies his narrow hands during the introductions. His name, I learn, is Arnav. For two-three minutes, weather offers conversational escape. “It's humid today.” The father's words emerge strained through his thick mustache. I offer an obedient nod. The mother interjects, “I want to clarify that we're very modern. Arnav has progressive views.” I squirm. Amma serves kesari and potato bondas, which she informed me, is standard fare for such occasions. She's using the seldom-used silver platter with matching plates and bowls. Tea is poured into fancy bone china cups and saucers that boast blue flowers and gold edging―cups used for special guests. “It's the right age and time for your daughter.” The mother is careless with her cup and it tips. “Nowadays, these career-minded girls wait too long.” I leap to save the china. Appa points to the painting on the dining room wall and declares I dabble. The mother rises. “I don't understand art. Can you describe this . . . thing?” I stand by her, explain it's inspired by the American master, Jackson Pollock and his drip-painting. “Who?” she asks. “He's famous for his abstract . . .” She's not listening. She places a hand over my head on the wall, like they did at my family doctor's office, except they used a ruler. When I step away, the mother―tall and thin like a palm tree―leaves her hand there, gazes at the expanse of the wall beyond. The next day the mother calls. She says Arnav would like to meet me, again. “Absolutely not,” I say. Appa scratches his head. “Huh?” “Why not?” Amma asks. “What's the problem?” I close my eyes, picture the painting, the lady with her hand on the wall. “Well, to start . . . he's short,” I say. “Don't be ridiculous. So are you,” Amma says. “At least, he's taller than you are.” “How do you know?” I stand erect. “I didn't see you measuring him, did I?” ### |
Sudha Balagopal is honored to have her writing in many fine journals including CRAFT, Split Lip, and Smokelong Quarterly. Her novella-in-flash, Things I Can't Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc fiction in 2021. She has stories included in both Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions, 2022. Find her on Twitter @authorsudha or at www.sudhabalagopal.com
Kevin Brennan
Indignity
They told me I must come and live with them because I can’t take care of myself anymore, eighty-seven and brittle as sun-bleached crepe ribbon, unsteady on my feet, dying in little increments, but they said—my daughter said anyway—You have to come and live with us, Mom, or we won’t be able to sleep from worry about you, so we’ll set you up in your own room with your own TV and a nice comfortable chair, and this will be your home from now on, okay?—and I gave in because I knew, I’d had close calls falling I never told her about, bruises like abuse, afraid she’d put me someplace I wouldn’t want to be till the end, and things were lovely for the first few months (though it might have been only weeks), all of us, me and my daughter and her husband, watching TV together in the evenings and chatting like a happy family, until that stopped suddenly, and I couldn’t think of something I might have done to cause it other than my occasional quick mouth, and now the husband can’t bring himself to look at me anymore, much less speak to me, so that we’re hardly ever in the same room now and he won’t acknowledge me when we are, exactly the thing I was afraid of before I agreed to come, because I knew him, I knew him so well by then, his calloused heart, and I knew what would happen in spite of his insistence that I come, and it did happen, it happened faster than I thought it would, and now my daughter tells me they lived alone for so long they couldn’t have imagined what this loss of privacy would be like, that they missed it so much, their precious privacy, they suggested at first then directed me to stay in my room when they were home together, and now they’re planning to finish the basement and put me down in it with a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchenette to live out my airless days under their feet, beyond their view, below ground, silent and withering and slipping away like daylight does when you’re looking out at the trees at dusk and they are suddenly not there anymore, and you’re past seeing, past recognizing, past loving, past care, past dignity, and all the light is utterly gone from life. |
Kevin Brennan is the author of eight novels, as well as stories and poetry that have appeared in many online and print journals. A Best Microfiction nominee, he's also editor of The Disappointed Housewife, a literary magazine for writers of offbeat and idiosyncratic fiction, poetry, and essays. Kevin lives in California's Sierra foothills, where he cavorts among the pines and writes anomalous indie songs for his wife.
Katie Coleman
Bright Young Sun
In January, Mum weighed out veggies for our salads and told us we’d feel like fresh young things. Valentine’s came round and Mum snipped recipes from magazines and stored them in a jar like buttons. About May she’d treat us to alfalfa salad and time us to see how many seconds it would take to finish using only chopsticks. She broke out the batteries for Halloween and we took turns creating ghoulish shadows. Come Christmas we gulped cranberry shots, and she kept saying not too fast, slow down. When Dad died, she crumbled charcoal into hot toddies, draped black ribbons from the drawers and drew gargoyles on the shopping list. After the bomb went off in the market, she placed upturned steak knives in vases and dolloped canned tomatoes in the sink. Spring rolled around and she painted the kitchen cabinets seafoam green and pinned garlic above the door. May 18th, she screwed bird feeders to the cabinets and released hummingbirds in the hall. The night after she baked teardrop cookies and crumbled them all the way to the rail tracks before throwing herself under a train. The seasons passed and we planted lavender. We nestled ornamental dragons and crimson eggs in the undergrowth and lit them a soft purple hue. In summer we perched together on cushions and wore jelly sandals with denim shorts and recited love poems in the bright young sun. |
Katie Coleman’s fiction has appeared in Ghost Parachute, The Ilanot Review, Bending Genres, Briefly Zine, Lit 202, Bright Flash, Corvus Review and Potato Soup Journal. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. She has a master’s in creative writing and works as a teacher in Phuket, Thailand. Katie can be found on Twitter @anjuna2000.
Thad DeVassie
Difficulties Walking Our Donkey
Our donkey enjoys watching Law & Order reruns on TV. He kicks the back door everyday around three and the wife lets him in to watch. He stands next to her, usually in the kitchen, as the show comes on. When the trademark dun-dun sound presents itself throughout the show, our donkey faints as if shot by a tranquilizer dart. The wife says, oh donkey, are you okay, oh sweet donkey, don’t leave me, donkey! At which point our donkey rises to its feet until the next dun-dun happens. This is their Law & Order ritual. At night, I walk our donkey around the neighborhood before bed. There are strange noises on our walks, sometimes sounding like a pop-pop or screech-screech, which drops our donkey to the ground as if shot. I try coaxing our donkey back to its feet. I jerk on its leash a little. Then I succumb to saying, oh donkey, are you okay, oh sweet donkey, don’t leave me, donkey! with less dramatic effect than the wife, and to no success. People are now looking out their windows trying to comprehend why a man is huddled over a dead donkey on a leash in their neighborhood. |
Thad DeVassie is a multi-genre writer and fine art painter who creates from the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of three chapbooks including SPLENDID IRRATIONALITIES, which was awarded the James Tate Poetry Prize in 2020 (SurVision Books). You can find more of his written and painted works at www.thaddevassie.com.
Gary Fincke
Tapeworm: A Parable
After he says that her latest diet has failed. After a morning of cajoling and an afternoon of his sweetest talk. After her reluctance at twilight, he tells her, “This one is foolproof.” After darkness sets in, her resistance wavering ever so slightly, he says, “Never again will you need a new one.” After he swears this will be the greatest gift he could give her. After she travels with him to Mexico on what he calls a “working vacation.” After she accepts the nausea that surrounds her and jabbers in her ears while she swallows the advertised meal of infected beef. After this diet, at last, has entered her, he kisses her, but not, she notices, upon the lips. When they are about to leave, no one has to warn, “Say nothing to anyone.” When she sees another well-dressed couple pass them, she is grateful for dark glasses. When they step outside, she adjusts her wide-brimmed hat, tugging it ever-so-slightly lower. Now, the heat and swirling dust announce what feels to her like cartel weather. Already, she imagines the guaranteed worm devouring her. She remembers health class, the filthy boy in front of her who sucked his fat fingers after his greasy lunch. Aftertaste flies home with her. “The future,” it promises, “is two pounds lost per week while you eat the food you love.” He reminds her that trust is what’s necessary. That a miscarried worm is the exception. When her body thins and lightens, envy will examine her full plates. Jealousy will notice that she doesn’t excuse herself from the table. Rage may even drum its fingers or clench its fists throughout the unshakable alibis of dessert, after dinner drinks, and more than an hour of conversation. “For certain,” he says, “the worm will keep its secret. What better arrangement could it wish for, regularly fed and undisturbed?” She wonders how many weeks it will take for him to be pleased. How many, after that, until he worships her. She has nothing to do, now, but wait. So, there is time for her to study. To learn that the segments of her worm are conjoined to absorb her through their skin, that it will fatten and lengthen from its greed for her without relying upon an insistent mouth. For two months, he does nothing but watch her, saying that he is waiting for perfection. For another month, the same, promising and promising like an evangelist. When she is dizzy, he says, “Trust.” When she is nauseous, he says, “Faith.” She begins to dream him thin and frail and gasping. She studies cleansing. Because she cannot announce by using bottled remedies, she learns that flushing the worm requires papaya seeds in warm water and honey. She hydrates and repeats until one promise, at last, comes true. For three days, her weight is steady. On the fourth morning, she has edged up three ounces. He hovers over her lunch. He stares at her dinner. The following morning, she begins to leave him, pound by pound. |
Gary Fincke's new collection of flash fiction The Corridors of Longing was published in 2022 by Pelekinesis Press. The title story was reprinted in Best Small Fictions 2020. He is co-editor of the annual anthology series Best Microfiction.
Pat Foran
Love Letter to What’s Left
What's left? Anything? Wrong question, but that's where things can go when things go south of right. You can’t always feel these things when they go, but you can always hear them. No matter how softly they slink. There's a story (song? docudrama? dream?) about a moon that doesn't give two shits. About anything. Yet this moon is loved. Loved. Loved. “What on earth for?” the moon asks his dog named Anything, who pantomime-kisses the moon where the sun, if there were such a thing, would shine. If anything could shine. What on earth for? Wrong question. But you know what's left. |
Pat Foran writes letters to vampire crabs and postcards to vivid dreamers. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Louisiana Literature, Tahoma Literary Review and elsewhere. Find him at neutralspaces.co/patforan/ or @pdforan.
Jeff Friedman
White Owl
In my dream, a white owl flew into our house and landed on the ceiling beam. “Do something about him,” my wife said. “How do you know it’s male?” I asked. She squinched her face angrily “You left the window open again,” she said. “I told you not to.” But the window was shut, and there was no broken glass. The owl scanned the room emitting a menacing call. “Owls are supposed to be wise,” I said. “Maybe it’ll tell us something important.” “Owls are dangerous,” she said. “It’s dangerous to believe them.” The owl shook several times, then plunged as if it spotted a small bird or a mouse. We tracked the white owl from room to room, but it hid from us and didn’t make a sound. “We’ll never be able to sleep or have a moment’s peace with that owl in the house,” she said. “But we are asleep,” I said, opening my long white wings. |
Jeff Friedman’s tenth book, Ashes in Paradise, will be published by MadHat Press in the fall of 2023. Friedman’s poems and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Flash Fiction Funny, Best Microfiction 2021,2022 and 2023, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards. Meg Pokrass and Friedman’s co-written collection of microfiction, The House of Grana Padano, was published by Pelekinesis Press in 2022.
Molly Giles
Indians
She didn’t know when she began talking out loud to her body. Perhaps it started when she was a child, and her grandmother insisted she apologize to the ground when she fell down, or to the table when she banged against it, or to the milk she spilled on the tablecloth (sorry glass sorry milk sorry tablecloth sorry sponge). “That’s how the Indians did it,” her grandmother had said, pulling a straight pin from her mouth as she knelt to turn up the hem of Jenny’s school uniform. “They believed that everything lives and has a spirit. They honored every tree and rock in the forest. They never shot a deer without asking permission first and thanking it afterwards. Stand still,” she had added, for the pin had scratched Jenny’s knee and Jenny had jumped. Jenny had been a clumsy child, her freckled skin mottled with bruises and tagged with band-aids; she had grown into a clumsy young woman (ski accident, hiking fall, miscarriage) and then into a clumsy matron (lost passport, bent fender, stove fire). Recently, overnight it seemed, she had turned into a clumsy old lady. She still breathed thank you to the shower bar when it steadied her getting in and out of the bath and good job to the few plates she dropped that didn’t break, but her monologues now were mainly addressed to her physical self. Her arthritic fingers that refused to turn the door knob? Come on, you can do it. Her bladder in one of its middle-of-the-night dribbles on the toilet? You like it here? You want to sit here forever? Her shakes and tremors? Just stop it, you know you don’t have to do that. She might have been her own grandmother, she was that stern. She scolded and scoffed and gave orders all day. Don’t fall. For Christ’s sake look where you’re going. The exit’s that way, dum dum. You do NOT need that last cookie. Wine? I do believe you’ve had enough wine, my dear. And stop whimpering. So far, her body had behaved. She had not broken a hip or had a stroke. You’ll live, she counseled, when she came down with a cold or a migraine, so snap out of it. She hoped that, when she was actually dying, she’d be kinder. Thank you, she hoped she’d say to herself. You were as good to me as you could be. Of course, you could have tried harder…no, she would not say that; she would be gentle, she would be forgiving, she would be as grave and dignified as any Native American elder. You’ll have to do without me, she would tell her breath, just as I will have to do without you. But when? She pressed one hand to the bump on her breast, surprised to find it still there. What’s going on with you? she asked it. Didn’t I tell you to beat it six months ago? The bump had its own life, she knew. Its own spirit. Was perfectly capable of taking its own time. She honored that. But still! Enough was enough. I’ll give you three, she told it. One….Two… On four, she lost her temper, snapped, ok if you’re going to be like that, and phoned her doctor at last. # |
Molly Giles lives in Woodacre, California and has new work in this year's Pushcart, Flash Fiction America, and Best Short Fictions anthologies. Molly's novel, THE HOME FOR UNWED HUSBANDS, is forthcoming from Leapfrog Press in June.
Susan Grimm
Haunt
If I wrote a story, it would have a ghost in it. And a girl with a sailor hat which no one would remark on except as it reminded them of that manga book. What kind of ghost would it be? How old protag? At any rate protag both older and younger than she thinks. She loves boarding school novels. She’s not sure how she feels about magic. Something so half-assed about it and sounding like scissors with their smooth raspetty clack. She will probably never look at the ghost, never see its shy-feeling, self-important twitch. She rides the train, not because she’s afraid of flying, but because she likes looking into the backyards of things. Could she go to art school (how many art schools are left). He’s outside the window. Or inside. The landscape gets blurry. The girl in the machine thinks it's her own breath. It's ghost eat ghost in this world. Does the ghost have a job. Does he have a message or a memory or a favorite trick. Can he cast spells. Can he freeze the girl beyond unknowing goosebumps. If he had teeth he would gnash them. Jailed in an object that has lost its use. There’s an unprompted flash, impromptu, that feels too big. To haunt has something to do with home. Recurrence. Fogbound shadowy every night. |
Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, Phoebe, and Field. Her chapbook Almost Home was published in 1997. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2010, she won the inaugural Copper Nickel Poetry Prize. In 2011, she won the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize and her chapbook Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue was published. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.
Bethany Jarmul
Freak Accident, Reports Say
Lightning. Thunder. The woman weeps. Running and running and running from him. Until she’s not running, but tripping over a log. Until she’s lying in the mud, rain pelting the freckles on her face, her swollen stomach. Until she hears his shotgun firing once, twice—and she’s running again, the baby inside her thumping along. Up a hill, down a hill, toward the river’s edge. The river is wide and deep, but she’s a strong swimmer, and she can hold her breath. She can hold her breath and disappear. The wetness swallows her, molecules fighting against the friction of her skin like stomach acid ready to spit her out. Her hearing dulls; her hair floats; her eyes cloud. Whatever is happening above the surface matters little now. She wonders if this is what her fetus feels inside her womb—suspended in liquid, suspended in time—a waiting that is both heavy and weightless. On the shore of the river, the man waits with shotgun in hand, wiping water from his eyes. He is not a patient man. He wades into the river, up to his belly button. He points the gun at the water, finger on the trigger. 300 million volts of electricity crack open the sky, striking the river, traveling along the surface in all directions, making no distinction between evil and good, between perpetrator and victims. |
Bethany Jarmul is a writer, editor, and poet. Her work has appeared in more than 50 literary magazines and been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Spiritual Literature. She earned first place in Women On Writing's Q2 2022 essay contest. Bethany enjoys chai lattes, nature walks, and memoirs. She lives near Pittsburgh with her family. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on Twitter: @BethanyJarmul.
Amy Marques
On May 4th, 1929
Audrey Hepburn was born to a Dutch noblewoman and her second husband, a British subject born in Austria-Hungary. The branches of her family tree canopied all over the old country. * The new country crowns as noble any family that clings to money and power long enough to begin to believe in their own aristocracy. I was born into bedraggled quality. My mother was too nice to divorce the husband who dragged her silver spoon into the mud. He drank his way into ditches, back alleys, unkempt fields. Her second cousin always brought him home. Lectured him. Threatened to steal his wife. Fathered me. * Little Audrey’s childhood brimmed with international travel, intrigue, culture, language, dance, and the kind of education only old money can buy. Her father left her when she was six. * When I was six and my mother’s first husband drowned in pneumonia, my father married his second cousin: my mother. There was no need to play the grieving widow. The whole town was relieved. Hers weren’t the only eyes he’d blackened. My parents had two daughters after marriage. My sisters carry my father’s name, but I am the one he loved best. The one who never left his side. * During the war, Audrey (aka Adriaantije, aka Edda) danced to raise money for the resistance―maybe did more for the resistance―survived, fled, and went on to become an actress, dancer, singer, ambassador, icon. She sought out her father. He remained distant. She supported him to the end of his life. * I should have been a star. I thought I was meant for great things. I thought I would go places. But father insisted I stay close, where he could support me, where he could forever be a hero and never without his adoring audience. |
Amy Marques penned children’s books, barely read medical papers, and numerous letters before turning to short fiction and visual poetry. She is a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net nominee and has work published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, MoonPark Review, Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, Flash Boulevard, Jellyfish Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Reservoir Road Literary Review, and SoFloPoJo. You can read more at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.
Pamela Painter
Foster's Dive
The other bartenders at Dive at Dave’s hardly talk to me. Midge just quit, but before she left, she told me “Honey, go log time at Community so you can leave this life.” She doesn’t know I’m already logging time in a creative writing course. After a recent class, the professor wanted to talk fancy cocktails. “Can a French 75 be made with vodka or gin?” I shrugged and told him all I do is pull draft beer. Once, he came into Dave’s asking for me. Said I was his student. He saw it is mostly beer and shots, not one sport coat on a stool. He had a beer and left. Now when Dave gives me orders it begins with, “Hey, College…”. Quitting Dive at Dave’s is a while off for me. I stay for the stories and I’m a good listener. Customers can tell if you’re nodding “uh-huh” just for tips. I am totally sympathetic as I hear about unfaithful wives who spend a fortune at beauty parlors or cheating husbands with spider phobias. I have a nose for stories, for the guy whose third shot gives him courage to say how he’s been wronged. For the girl whose lipstick has gone awry, just like her man. Students in the class are jealous of my stories. How I know someone is doing drugs in the ladies’ or fucking in the gents’. How someone’s son thinks he’s a bot, or a shop-lifting daughter stitched six extra pockets in her raincoat. How men hitting on me is as predictable as the frat party stories my classmates tell. Or their stories about dead pets, broken teenage hearts and aliens or zombies. Someday I’ll write my own story, my story about years of being funneled through seven foster homes. Each home had a different set of rules, sad fake siblings, a weird layout of rooms, and once a foster pedophile. I even have my title: Fosters’ Dive. But I’m saving all that for later. For now I’m practicing on the sad and funny stories I hear at Dave’s. |
Pamela Painter is the award-winning author of five story collections. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals such as Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Harper’s, JMWW, Matter Press, Smokelong Quarterly, and Three Penny Review, among others, and in the anthologies Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction, and Flash Fiction America. Painter’s stories have received three Pushcart Prizes and have been presented on National Public Radio, on the YouTube channel, CRONOGEO, and by WordTheatre in London and NYC.
Keith J. Powell
Sharp Black Teeth
The last time I saw a sunset, it was summer. Probably July. Possibly August. I remember the way the amber beams stroked the grass. Peaceful, serene. I took a step, and then I was tumbling end over end down the well into darkness. For the first few hours, I believed I could stop my fall. Or at least I thought it important to try. I stretched and groped for purchase in the yawning void, but all I ever managed to do was bash myself against the odd jagged outcrop and split my fingernails on stone walls slimy-slick with damp. Sooner than I would have thought possible, I adjusted to my new spiraling equilibrium. I learned to sleep with my mouth open to catch rogue raindrops and to sustain myself on wall moss as flavorful as wet fur and the occasional ghostly spiderweb. Several years into my fall, I joined a support group for people in a perpetual state of falling down a well. The group was divided into two ideological camps. Those determined to climb out and those anxious to hit bottom. Their endless well-meaning aphorisms zipped around the room like flies. It was all too much, and I stopped going. One day plummeting past a particularly thick intrusion of roots, I met Ellen. Aside from our velocity, we didn’t have much in common but decided to make a go of a life together. We talked about starting a family, but sex is complicated in freefall. It’s tough to get the angles right, and after a while, who has the energy? One morning I awoke, and Ellen had slipped away. I didn’t blame her. These days, I fall alone, resigned to my fate. The mouth of the well is a fading halo above me, each day, that much more out of reach. A devouring gravity has me in its black teeth and is never letting go. |
Keith J. Powell writes fiction, CNF, reviews, and plays. He is co-founder of Your Impossible Voice and has recent or forthcoming work in Roi Fainéant Press, Emerge Literary Journal, Bending Genres, 100 Word Story, and New Flash Fiction Review. Find more at www.keithjpowell.com.
Steve Saulsbury
Inextinguishable
Up our street, the fire was under control. Only hazy waves and floating black particles. Everyone knew the troublemaker. Shirtless and sooty. Long dark hair, crazy red face. He was barefoot, oblivious to the cinders. A tiny one landed in my eye, stinging even as I blinked. Prick. Two firemen were pulling the guy back. Thrashing, his eyes blazed at the hoses. This time, he’d set the garage on fire, but his mother escaped. She was bent over by the hydrangeas, coughing, holding up a halting hand, like before. Her boy shouted wildly, “I’ll do it again! As soon as they leave!” The firemen pulled harder, their fingers making marks, but leaving no impression. Just like the last time. |
Steve Saulsbury writes from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His flash fiction has appeared in The Yard, Press 53, Rehoboth Beach Reads, Loch Raven Review, and others. He enjoys running, despite an unexpected surgery in 2022, and loves music, currently digging into old Detroit bands, like The Stooges.
Duncan Tierney
Homebody
The door jam pulsed and bled. Gushed like a riot. Like sugar ants bleed into apple seeds then arsenic. You’ve got to let a house do that. Bleed. You’ve got to let a house warp tattooed and nubile like a crust-punk heir. Let it get dirty. Pubescent and sweat drenched. It’s the dirt that keeps a man warm. It’s the smell of mom’s watered-down shampoo. Of rosewater. Of dogfur. It’s the dogfur that keeps the house warm, and the scent of bone groaning cold, that undead mutt. It’s the scent of dogfur. And pipegrit. Pipegrit is important too. My mom said that there was an earthquake here once, an earthquake and arrhythmia. And she didn’t wake up to the tremor but to her dad under the door jam, reeking like booze and bad memory. Reeked like Spike TV. Reeked like his own broken watch. And she watched him watch her watch the dog, his mouth chalked grey with pipegrit. And she watched him peel away at a bit of the paint, until the door jam pitched and bled. |
Duncan Tierney lives, teaches and writes in South Florida.