THE VIRILE HARVEST

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In town the dust gathers. In skins of yellow dust the people pray.

The chapel wilts all week, dips in the middle. An old host. Chestnuts hit the roof during service and belief thuds into the hearts of men, frightens the women. They fear the Harvest. They know the roots are here to stay.

Paint peels off an old barn in the sun. A new cat every day.

The farmers reach into the ground, dung clung to the heels of their boots.

The sun tips water in their mouths, and something brazen and heavy clatters down the road. A patch of dust swabbed over the elbow, scabbed over the heathen ground.

The people wait for wheat to curl.

They dig up the virile harvest.

Old Heart

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Cheung drew one long breath by the bleachers and coughed, setting his throat aflame. Nerves. Scorching his insides, without fail, year after year.

This year was special. Cheung’s promotion had followed a fierce string of bad luck- the loss of his mother, a cheating girlfriend- but now, he waited to usher in the new year as the venerable Head of the Dragon.

Cheung pushed through the crowd, taking his place at the head while his colleagues lined up behind him. The music began and the scarlet dragon sprang to life, undulating over the crowd’s heads like a silk ribbon threading a sea of black pearls. Cheung swung the pole deftly, in time with the drums and precise choreography that had taken weeks to master.

As the dance peaked, Cheung lost himself in the great smoking head of the beast. Tomorrow was a fresh start- the promise of a new year turned over like a leaf in his old heart.

-originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Autographic negligence

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A piece of car fell onto my head when I refused to believe in it. The gore was autographic.

The gore left a sore which I worried at my desk, with a tiny pink hairbrush and a math set compass. With a pair of slippery scissors. Without pain. For temporary decades.

There is someone named Kevin in all of my classes. He has a smooth neck and black greasy hair, and I can see from my desk that he wears glasses and eats his lunch in the computer lab, under tables.

His gaming habits, pornographic.

And as the car-song inhabits, I look for clues under his desk and nothing there is autographic.

The night that

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The night that I turned thirteen was the same night that the old man down the street died and took up skateboarding and was found almost three weeks later, down by the tracks with canary-yellow fingers and a drug habit that maybe he was just experimenting with them at my age.

The night that she locked her daughter out of the house happened to be the same night that the policeman found a loaded gun in the mailbox of the neighbour’s house, which was chaotic and boarded-up during the day and where a thin woman with blue hair lay on a mattress full of wet wounds with her ear to the floor.

The night that my father lit the corner of his apron on the gas stove, threw it on the burner on his way into the fridge for another beer, looking at me and my mother from across the city where he held the people while they shivered, having to face the snarling waste of their lives, and having to resign from the police force and shake hands with the insurance representative all in one day, and having to look himself in the eye and make a promise to still believe that it mattered if you killed a spider, that it mattered if instead you blew it lightly off your palm and out of the window into the night.

Flight 909

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The morning flight to Miami is all hungover bridesmaids and businessmen in wrinkled suits. The vibe gets frisky after take-off, which is too bad, since who is this, coming to sit next to Dave? The most elderly man on the plane. Dave watches as he pops open the overhead compartment, stashing a bejewelled tree branch, which is presumably a cane.

The old man’s beard reminds Dave of his mother’s decades-old oven mitt. Dressed in a crushed velvet robe, his blue eyes twinkle behind honest-to-god spectacles. Dave is staring unknowingly at the man’s gut, when his eyes lock onto a gold pocket watch- its chain swinging like a pendulum over the seat.

Waves of nausea slap the walls inside Dave’s stomach. He looks out the window. The sky is still so dark. A low rumble in the plane’s belly; seatbelt lights switch to ON. The plane launches smoothly, rising in the stratosphere like a ghost ship sinking for miles under black water. The stars look wet. Dave suspects his fear of flying has encouraged a morbid personality.

They have been in the air for some time when the beard finally speaks.
“Dave,” it says, surprising Dave, who has been twisting his pretzel wrapper in and out of knots.
“I am the resident wizard of Flight 909. I must introduce myself using my Holocene name, Chronus. Your species is unable to comprehend my current name, which is-”
A shrieking sound explodes into the cabin like a vicious stream of bats; their flapping dissolves in an instant and Dave’s eyes grow wide. He senses a pattern developing, in a distant land, of time switching back and forth along the arm of a giant metronome.

“Look out the window,” the old man says, and Dave obeys, feeling his will come up against something.
“There- the break in the clouds!” The old man points to a golden spray of pure sunlight, burning through a ceiling of grey cloud. It is the most miraculous sight Dave has ever seen; indeed, he thinks it is proof of heaven.
“I’ve been trapped in this epoch for ages,” the stranger continues, “riding in your planes and on the backs of large birds. Hoping to come across this very ‘window’- this golden passage through time- one bright morning and find my way back to the world I left long ago.”
“What world?” Dave asks in a voice that seems not to belong to him anymore.
“A crueler world than this,” the old man replies coldly, and a hushed silence falls over the plane.

As if cued, the plane veers sharply, charting a new course in the direction of the heavenly light. The pilot comes on over the intercom: It’s going to be a beautiful, sunny day in Miami, folks, and thanks for flying with us. Dave considers his fear of flying, which has all but disappeared.

In the seat next to him, an old man fiddles with a gold pocket watch, closes his eyes.

-originally publ. on https://luminouscreaturespress.com

Marooned

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I had made it to dry land, but the sea still swirled in my ears and throat. The memory of the mutiny was as fresh as the sabre wound on my chest.

The taste of my lover’s lips, indistinguishable from saltwater, from sand- now indistinct from that which coaxed his bright soul from its body, numb and unblinking. His pale face sinking into black water under a cruel shape of moon.

It was better not to be marooned. It was better to be both of our glowing, weathered faces- plunging deep and snuffed out along with the treacherous nature of our disgrace. You proved your love in arrogance, and I bit my tongue a thousand times trying to say it. I know this taste to be regret, and privateers’ mouths are full of it.

My love, there are things that I wish I had done differently… Beginning with: why the hell can’t two people fit on one floating door?

– originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Dollhouse

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The American had seemed kind, at first, and though his kisses rubbed her raw, she believed in some tender promise of love at their core. She knew he was a hero in his war, but not in the war of her people. With her family gone, stolen in the black smoke at Nagasaki, life as a rich American’s ningyô did not seem so terrible.

She touched her wrists, tracing the scars, invoking the unexpected cruelty of her lover: the bizarre, childlike costumes; numbing agents; the meticulous positioning of her broken joints…

Vera glanced at her watch, lowered the umbrella, and positioned the American’s gas mask over her face. She recalled her Mother’s untraditional choice of ‘Vera’, after Japan’s strongest typhoon.

As the mansion burst into flames behind her, she thought of the American trapped inside… She felt a wave surging inside of her and knew that she was strong- stronger, even, than the Vera who had swallowed thousands of lives.

– originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

The Seventh Son

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Seven sons was too many, and a girl could have helped smooth things. Ten years between the oldest and youngest. Ten years of hand-me-downs, rocks through windows, muddy sneakers and unsigned permission slips. After their father left, she kept the box around the house. With its crudely rendered front flap, it served as a reasonable disguise. She stapled straw hair to the top, and wrapped the middle with a torn blue dress.

When she dropped the box on their heads, her sons shrank down into feeble, trembling things. She longed for a daughter, who smelled sweet, like pineapples and cream.

Nine Shapes of One Woman

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A favorite short story is about a woman who climbs the stairs in her building, with much difficulty.

The short story is about a woman who wishes her husband didn’t take her for granted.

This short story is about a woman who has to drive her husband’s Mercedes Benz from her exclusive rich upper class area through the poorer districts of Kingston, Jamaica to deliver the car to her husband at his factory on the other side of the city.

This short story is about a woman who suspects her husband is cheating on her.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story is about a woman who is driven into madness because of a rest cure that gives her no room for excitement, change or work – including writing.

This short story is about a woman who suffers from poverty and borrows a necklace from a friend for the ball.

This short story is about a woman who thinks back…

This short story is about a woman who thinks back.

The short story is about a woman who receives the news her husband dies and she gets really happy, she closes herself in her room and starts dreaming about her new life.

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Kate Chopin Story of an Hour
Robin Black Divorced, Beheaded, Survived
Erin Wilson comment published on PB Works
Jack Erickson Perfect Crime
Hazel D Campbell See Me in Me Benz and Ting
Diddl WordReference.com Forums
Anon Bookbite, booktrust PDF

On 9.18.14 I googled “short story is about a woman who”. The first sentence of the abstract of the first nine links (sourced respectively) made a sort of poem.