Author Archives: scorpion8903@gmail.com

More Flash Fiction #fiction

     In catching up on all the things I didn’t do last week, I’m still too behind to post anything new. So here’s another old piece of flash fiction. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it. Perhaps you’ll have a theory.

     Her lover had come back from the dead and was standing in her kitchen, drinking a cup of herbal tea and eating one of her homemade scones. He was holding the cup with three fingers, as he had done on the mornings after their lovemaking had been most intense and memorable. Steam rose above the rim and drifted toward his face, disappearing in his beard, now flecked with gray and bushier than she remembered. He said

     Hello

     and she screamed. The fear in her voice startled him. He managed to hold onto the scone but dropped the tea, the cup turning slowly one and a half times before it hit the tile and shattered, the liquid spattering his boots and the legs of the table. It spread across the floor like blood, running into the cracks between the tiles where it formed shallow, linear pools.

Missing the Kids–A Poem #poetry

Today I had to take my son and my youngest daughter back after having them at my place during their spring break. I’ve been doing this kind of thing for nearly twenty years, and it never gets easier. This is how it feels.

Non-Custodial

You wave goodbye as they drive
Away, already mauling video game
Aliens and tapping their feet to
The rhythm of a song you’ve never
Heard of, forgetting their promise to
Look back before they vanish this time.

Or perhaps you sprint madly for the car,
Slam the door and clasp the seatbelt,
Reverse gear down the drive and
Rooster-tail through gravel to the nearest bar,
Leaving them to wave at your taillights
As your façade collapses in their wake.

You cannot betray their belief in
Your stoicism, your ability to take
The separation with blank aplomb.
You must remain an optimist, the
Guardian of their right to devastation.
But you can never cry.

Instead you must spout cheerful platitudes
That echo false in your throat.
They might as well be slogans
Advertising incremental hells:
“Only two weeks” and “next summer”
And “before you know it” and “soon.”

If you say it long enough,
One day you might believe yourself.

February 20th, 2004–Flash Fiction #fiction

February 20th, 2004

     I signed an online petition today. I don’t know what it was for. Perhaps I was trying to save something. Maybe I was helping kill someone. Maybe it was a petition against me. I don’t know. All I remember is clicking on a button and then shutting down my browser. It was all over in a few seconds, and it might have been the most important thing I’ll ever do.

Here’s another poem #poetry

I hope all my readers (both of you) haven’t lost patience with my posting some existing creative works here instead of regular blog entries or brand-new stuff. I’m enjoying the time with the kids, and hey, why CAN’T I post some stuff like this if I want? Right? Anyone?

Sometimes

In the barn she floats
And worships motes of dust

Raw and big-boned
Country girl nursed on
Jack Daniels breasts
And corn bread suppers

Contemplating splintered
Nails and virgin beds of
Unspilled milk at breakfast
Falling through her hair and

Never dreaming that
She dreams of pitchforks

More Flash Fiction #fictionwriting

February 2nd, 2004

     A cold front settled in the skies and blew down on their heads in short bursts, rhythmic and hollow like a backwoodsman playing tunes on a half full jug of whiskey, and while their ears turned bright red and the tips of their noses numbed, the band broke into their biggest hit, the one that played interminably on the radio so that the chorus sounded in your memory like an echo.

Flash Fiction #fictionwriting

Here’s a several-years-old piece of flash fiction that may actually be an Allen Ginsberg-ish poem in disguise.

February 8th, 2004

     Her cell phone rang, its tinny electronic voice spitting Mozart into the pre-dawn blackness of her bedroom, shattering her vivid dream of eating a hot dog at the opera in Florence while Richard Marx massaged her feet with a butternut squash.

Flash Fiction

Here’s the first draft of a flash fiction piece. It originally appeared in unedited form on the now-defunct Mischievous Prophet website. Thoughts?

January 1st, 2004

     Your favorite show was pre-empted tonight by the Orange Bowl. I watched you nestle down into the cushions of your sofa, feet tucked neatly underneath you, your legs forming half a Z. The remote control was in your hand, and as you pointed it at the set and pressed the buttons, I knew that this was a moment to remember, the single instant between anticipation and the frustration you were about to feel. I could see the colors of your thumb as you changed the channel: the pale white of your skin, the pink hue created by the pressure, the white iris under your nail. I could even see the three blonde hairs growing between the joints. The moment seemed frozen, caught between what was and what was about to be.

     And then the channel changed, and you saw two teams from Florida clashing on a field of green. The crowd roared as one team threw a long pass, the ball arcing up and out and down in a perfect parabola, falling neatly in the arms of a receiver, his legs pumping comically fast like something out of cartoon, the defender leaping as high as he could and missing by inches. The crowd rose to its feet.

     And you rose as well, spiking the remote control like a football. It hit the carpet and bounced end over end, landing underneath the ottoman. You shouted

     Oh, for Christ’s sake

     and fell back on the couch, scowling. In Miami thousands of fans sat back in their seats, slapping each other on the back or shouting obscenities at the lone defender whose outstretched fingers were exactly one and one quarter inches too short.