short fiction

the five obstructions

ILL-WILL

I keep the engine running to stay warm, my company BMW the last in a row of vehicles idling in the valet lane outside the five-star hotel where our office Christmas party is taking place. 

It’s snowing hard, and I shiver despite the warm air blasting from the heater. My phone rings, Abramovich texting me again—WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU??—But I don’t answer because I texted earlier I was sick. I’m supposed to join him on the podium—his speechwriter, sidekick, and right-hand man—to introduce him, my remarks to be perfunctory so he might better shine. By now, I should be a senior partner, not my boss’s lackey. So fuck him.

SENSUAL DESIRE

A valet arrives, and I get out and enter the hotel lobby. I avoid the main ballroom where the dinner’s taking place and look for a pub where I might drink and contemplate my next move. The large hotel has several such pubs, and I know of one that’s especially secluded and private.

The style is Art Deco: stained glass portals, checkered black-and-white floor, mirror-paneled ceiling. The only customer there. I order a Scotch, then stare morosely at my drink, my third or fourth of the evening. I’m trying to pace myself. 

flash fiction

what have you got to lose?

I awake to find Lena no longer in bed beside me. I search for her everywhere, bathroom, kitchen, living and dining rooms. Finally, I slip on my coat and boots and go outside.

It’s still raining. Waters flood the riverbanks and surge toward our front door. Slogging through the mud, I head toward the small boat-shed where we store our kayaks and canoes. I see a lantern glimmer within.

Opening the boat-shed door, I find Lena crouching inside one canoe. Barefoot, shivering in her nightgown.

The canoe, secure in its rack, is where we keep our cache of postcards, photos, letters, tape cassettes, and old phonograph albums, both LP’s and 45’s. They’re mostly Lena’s from before we were married, she childless and long divorced and I an aging bachelor.

three poems

third eye

At night, an infant, I’d crawl 
downstairs to perform casual 
acts of violence, the radio, 
phonograph, and TV particular 
targets of my ire. To retaliate, 
my father at bedtime affixed 
chicken wire atop my crib.

Those were innocent if benighted times. 
Pregnant mothers smoked, car seats weren’t 
invented yet, no one childproofed their home.

When five years old, caught between gangs of 
rock-throwing boys, my head got split open. 
My parents rushed me bleeding and screaming 
to the emergency room. Decades later I still bear
a crescent-moon scar like an incipient third eye.

Today, on TV, again terrible news. I switch it 
off and sit in darkness while a drone hovers 
outside my window. Observing me, it buzzes,
squeaks, butts against the glass. 

The world is never safe. In the bathroom mirror, 
I touch my scar willing that eye to open.

flash fiction

news of sputnik

The world’s first satellite has just been launched, and my brother, tuned in last night to the shortwave radio he and my father built, shakes me awake at dawn.

“Weather conditions for a perfect launch are now.”

I dress quickly and hurry downstairs where we grab our new diamond Hi-Flier from the hall closet.

The neighborhood’s quiet, a few stars still out. Our kite rises and aims toward the treetops at the end of the block. Jerking the bobbin in one hand, he reaches into his jeans pocket with the other.

“Here’s a quarter. Go to Pressman’s and buy more string.”

My brother Jerry’s fourteen and I’m seven. Pressman’s is the corner grocery/variety store. The kite flutters and dives toward the treetops; my brother yanks the string and it reels upwards again.

“Go!” he yells.

two poems

black egret

The trapper follows the creek,
wet boots ringing with each step,
the sky like an iridium clock.
All traps are empty save one,
the weir-net strung like jewelry
across the creek’s neck before it
plunges toward the falls.

The trap glints, bulges, a large
black egret entangled within.
The trapper kneels, slowly
extricates the creature, which
nips at his hands, drawing blood.
He carries it then drooping
in his arms back home.

Night has fallen, his wife and
children already in bed. Gruel
for dinner, a bowl saved for him.
Later, lying beside his wife, he
hears the egret’s cry from the shed
where he’s confined it, wing
broken but on the mend.

His wife also hears and kisses her
husband, and draws him nearer
her breast. Toward dawn, careful
not to wake her, he goes to the
shed. The egret, quiet, stirs,
lifts its long neck, catches his
eye. It will live, he thinks, then
shuts the door.

flash fiction

in the city of k.

I had never been to the city of K. before, having just flown in on business the other night, and so imagine my surprise at seeing my parents, waiting at a bus stop just a few blocks from my hotel.

They looked older and frailer than the last time we had met. They huddled against each other on the bench, their clothes too thin for the cold climate. 

After we kissed I said, "Mom, dad, you can't possibly be here on vacation."

"Of course we'd never leave Florida ordinarily," my mother said through clattering teeth. "But your brother is in town on a stopover—you know how little we see of him!—and he bought us plane tickets so we could meet."

Another coincidence! But I felt slighted and angry that he hadn't also told me about his plans. My father, guessing what I was thinking, said, "Look, son, how could your brother possibly know you also would be in the city of K.?"

"Can't you join us for dinner?" my mother said.

flash fiction

this is not a ghost story

The last rescue chopper clambered upward, mud and wet sand skidding in its wake. It aimed for the mountain, half of which had slid into the sea and buried a mile of highway. 

We held hands and sang around a bonfire. I’d come with Natalie but when the music ended the woman standing beside me wasn’t my wife. 

Her name was Wendy, and she wore a bridesmaid’s pink balloon-sleeve dress. It trailed in the sand as we passed a listing wedding canopy and rows of empty folding chairs. We entered a restaurant cafe still strung with streamers and paper lanterns. 

five microfictions

snow blind

He meant to take a powder, another run at it, despite “it” not looking so good. Snow blinded, clutching one pole (the other one missing, as well as one glove, one boot, one ski), he clung to the precipice, swaying on one leg. In the distance Sally (lovely Sally!) leaped and flapped, her whole body a semaphore—was she trying to tell him something or just making fun of him Then Quizno flashed by, tall and dashing, followed by Sam, Rick, and Schlomo, handsome all, laying down a single trail of powder like a bright zigzaggy arrow angling toward oblivion.

open city

Arrivederci! Tom yelps, waving his mangled hand, projector strapped to scooter as he angles off into the juttery night. “Open City” is our next scheduled feature save for a fused sprocket and shredded lamp: our chalet flattened, the bomb meant for the red cross clinic one valley over, where (it’s rumored) Il Duce, though hanged, now rests and recovers. Tom’s Nurse Nell’s beau: like us, she’s spy, cinephile, assassin, and—lately—film star: thirty feet tall without the screen, in a costume a cross between a nurse’s and ninja’s, wielding a scalpel like a scimitar.

Bombardiers salute, their weapon bays closed, and fly right past her.

flash fiction

dragon’s tongue

Cicada shriek and the bare trees tremble, blazing in the sun like an engorged eye. I stare at my ruined garden and swing wide the gate. Only one plant still stands, my last dragon’s tongue, the soil all about trampled and strewn with twisted roots and limbs.

Claw prints lead to the briar-and-nettle fence. Bloodied fur dangles there and I smile. I retrieve a trowel and pot from the garden shed and gently uproot the plant: its red-speckled leaves droop and stinging hairs writhe and flutter in the wind. I hold it aloft and take inside where I set it on the mantelpiece beside my parents’ twin burial urn.

~

“And you’re here why?” Liana says, hunched beside the fire outside her hut.

Night’s fallen. I tremble from the long, steep climb. 

“My garden’s done for, but I’ve saved the last dragon’s tongue.”

The door ajar, wreathes of green mist spill out, redolent of lavender, mugwort, sienna, rose.

My nose quivers and eyes tear. Liana herself smells of clay, ash, woodsmoke. I try to stroke her long skeined hair, but she swats my hand away.

“Stay here,” she scolds and goes inside.