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Flash Fiction Reprint: Jolene McIlwain's "Seed to Full"

2016-07-19T11:54:41Z

Seed to Full

Jolene McIlwain

After you've felled the tree and dragged it from the site and hauled it to the mill, one of the first things you do is scale it, measure to find out how many board foot it can yield.

Always measure the small end.

According to the Vermont Log Rule, a log with a diameter of 11 inches cut into a nine foot length offers up about forty-five board feet. One that's 36 inches in diameter, same length, should yield 486 board feet.

Then you have to grade it.

Check for knots and branch stubs, seams with ingrown bark, ring shake, gum spots in black cherry.

I've started to teach our daughter, Myra, how to grade and scale and she's shown promise. She has a head for numbers, for recall.

We've had this business for thirty-five years. My father sought out permission from the Bishop to start up before I was born, and he's been milling every season since. Now I'm sawyer and he's more known for his work as a hammer man or sawsmith, fixing our saws and those of nearby mills, Amish and English.

Myra's interest lies more in his job. By the time she was four, she knew the difference between a cross-peen, twistface, and a doghead. She knew how to measure blade tension and dishing when she was only eight. It comes natural to her. To right things. She doesn't even flinch when he pounds out the saws.

Then there's the saw kerf, the width of cut made by the saw. That loss has to be factored in, too. I can tell you exactly what each cut will do. I can tell you what type of cut is best for each kind of job: quarter sawn, rift sawn, flat sawn. I can tell you the type of wood or how wet it is by the sound it makes when it meets the blade.

What I can't tell you is how much my wife Hannah's been hurt by how I've cut her or how wide the kerf is that I've laid upon her heart.

When you marry, scripture says you are joined together, but in truth, to do that you have to be cut away from your family, you cut away from yourself. These cuts are necessary.

But I've done more than that.

I've given her another seed that wouldn't grow.

My wife Hannah's like a quarter-sawn board, the kind that's best for flooring or treads on stairs--it's stable, doesn't easily produce slivers or warp or cup, like flat-sawn wood. Flat-sawn's best only for visual appeal, like my eldest brother's wife. Rift-sawn's the worst cut of all, like my mother-in-law.

That's why it was so hard to take when Hannah slammed the screen door on me after I showed her the casket. I'd built it straight and true from wood I'd myself sanded and stained, rubbed with linseed until my hands were raw.

"Too small," she whispered. Only that.

But little Daniel fit into it easily, despite the thick blanket she'd wrapped him in. Perhaps she thought her love for him might somehow expand his small body, might help him to continue his growth, even underground.

"It's 31 ½ x 13 ¼ x 11 inches," I said, as if to convince her.

Myra stood at my side. Hannah just stared at us and shook her head, back and forth and back, again and again.

I used poplar, known for its straight-grain, uniformity of texture, its light weight - though that never mattered, for when I carried what I'd made to the grave, my boy inside my box, I could barely find strength.

I thought Hannah would be pleased.

She'd been the one to find the small stand of poplars near Sidle Creek. She used to go there and lie on the ground beside the creek, the swell of our son part of her silhouette, and twirl their tulip-shaped leaves round her second finger and search the tops of the trees to spot their blossoms.

But she didn't even touch the box. Turned her head when I told her it was cherry stain I'd used. She'd have none of it.

Note: Originally published in Spring 2016, The Fourth River.

∞

Author's Note

I love flash that sets me square into the unique world of a character, the way he speaks and moves, but especially how he thinks. For this story, however, with this outwardly non-verbal character (he speaks aloud only once in the tale and his wife offers up just two words), I had to use a particular kind of internal language to set the tone for this utilitarian, pragmatic, and stoic Amish man who is, we find out late in the tale, grieving and processing the death of his child in the only way he can fathom.

Early on with my writing, first with an extensive study of Jane Kenyon's poetry in my master's degree program, I learned that the most complicated emotions could be successfully rendered through the use of objects. Later, when I had the privilege of taking classes with my friend and mentor, Sherrie Flick, I re-learned this same strategy--this time with the flash form. Sherrie would say something like, "Look to the object," or "objects resonate," or "follow the object and the story will come." Kathy Fish encouraged these same ideas in the courses I took with her where I worked on a draft of this story. So, the object of this story was not just the casket but also the tree felled to fashion it. I set to work, concentrating my efforts on revealing the history of planning and building this object more than focusing solely on the history of the couple. I felt it was a necessary ambiguity for the opening--Why is the narrator telling us this? Why do I need to know?--and I hoped it would set the tale in motion, get you immediately into this man's head, so that when you find out what he is suffering from, you'll be entirely sympathetic to it. There is no time for you to follow him around in scenes. You must know his world view from sentence one.

As Randall Brown says in A Pocket Guide to Flash Fiction, "Part of the joy of writing flash is discovering the undiscovered narrative compression strategy." Long ago, in my first job as an x-ray tech, I found out early on that a fracture may be missed on a frontal view or a side view. It was the tangential or oblique view that flushed out most fractures. This story could have been told head on--set the death of the baby up first, throw this couple into a scene together, and make it hurt. It could have been told from the side--maybe Daniel's wife's POV? Instead, I used a third option, the "work-ethic view" or "the box." From that view--in this particular case, it starts out sounding like a guide to milling wood for a project--I thought you might see that the real story here, compressed within the confines of this "miller-speak," is not just that the Yoders lost another child but that Daniel had to somehow feel or somehow prove that, despite another loss, he is worth something as a man, he is competent. With this task of building the casket he could "be of use," as is the flax in Hans Christian Andersen's classic and haunting tale.

I took a risk filling this piece to the rim with the heavy jargon of a miller, a sawyer, but the flash form forces us to take those risks, forces us to cut the piece in such a way that it is small but strong, and sturdy, and, in the end, maybe even useful.

Jolene McIlwain lives and writes north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the hills of the Appalachian plateau with her husband and son. She teaches literary theory and composition part-time at Duquesne and Chatham Universities. Her work has been twice nominated (as Top 25 and Honorable Mention) in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction contests and is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner. Her flash fiction appears in Pure Slush Five and the The Fourth River where "Seed to Full" was originally published. She tweets @jolene_mcilwain.

Flash Fiction Reprint: Susan Rukeyser's "His Venus"

2016-07-12T11:42:28Z

His Venus

Susan Rukeyser

A year ago, Dana was fat in a fertility-fetish sort of way. Her tits bloomed over her belly, her belly swung down to her knees. In her museum guard's uniform she was reliably squat. A year ago, Dana was flushed with euphoria, a startling new lust. Dwight worked in Pre-Columbian, cataloguing new acquisitions. He'd developed a thing for the voluptuous female form. "Occupational hazard," he joked as he buried himself into her, as greedy for her as she'd ever been for buffalo wings or chocolate. She liked soft centers best, butter-creams and caramels. Dwight said he'd found his Venus.

Dwight moved himself in. Dana noticed some of her neighbors grinning at her that day. One of them even said Congrats.

She was a source of life, Dwight said, "Just look at yourself." He told her to undress, then stood behind her at the mirror. He put his hands on her stomach, between her thighs. She hated watching herself like this, but if she was what he wanted--? She tried to close her eyes, but he said No. He breathed into her ear, "God, your hips."

Dwight said he had powers. He communicated with all biology, his own sperm included. "I'll let them know it's time," he said. A year ago, she believed. There was no real reason she didn't want a baby, and his hands felt good. Soon she was just as greedy for him. Her skin bristled as he moved onto her, into her.

In the mornings, before driving them to work, he fried eggs. Dwight stood naked at the stove. As he cooked, Dana thought of the museum's Greek and Roman statues with their hard white marble thighs. Solid thighs, immovable.

Dwight wanted everything from her. He told her how to give it. She'd never had that; she was so grateful.

On their way home, Dwight stopped for burritos, a pizza, buckets of meat. He'd grab bags of cheese popcorn, chewy fruit candy, sliders and grinders and chips. "Eat," he insisted, pushing plates towards her. Dana was bigger each week, but not from a baby. Dwight said he'd have a chat with her fat cells, get her ovaries on board.

Dwight started filling up the house. He brought home second-hand toys and baby clothes, because any day now Dana's body would obey. He found a bouncy swing at Goodwill and hung it from their bedroom doorway. Dana couldn't squeeze past but was too ashamed to say. She started sleeping in her recliner, but not well.

"Pig," Dwight muttered one evening, as he placed a bowl of spaghetti on her TV tray. He was mad, but she didn't know why. It'd been over a week since he'd wanted her, and she burned for his fingers, for his weight on her. "That food's going to waste?" he snarled. She dug in her fork. Dwight perched on the last clear section of couch. Stacked between them were piles of stuff he'd bought, then forgot. He watched her eat.

The museum fired Dana when she was caught dozing in the sculpture garden. Her legs just weren't up to all the walking anymore. Decorative Arts did her in. Dwight didn't like to be disturbed during the workday, so she took a cab home. At the front door she took a breath, pulled in her belly and turned sideways, inched her way inside. The hallway was especially difficult, crowded with Dwight's latest purchases: a filthy old stroller, a crib mattress, a playpen with rusted hinges, and a collection of stuffed bears, matted and spilling their guts. Items had tumbled into the path to her recliner. She climbed over them as best she could. A stack of picture books toppled down. Dana rubbed her shoulder, wondered what Dwight saw in junk.

Months later, still no baby. Dwight hardly touched her anymore, hardly went near her, and Dana was relieved. On her ankles and heels were sores she couldn't reach. When she shifted, there was an odor. One night, she didn't get the bedpan under her in time. Mortified, she screamed at Dwight, "You never told my body anything!" He didn't say a word, just handed her the phone. Dana couldn't turn around, but she knew. He was gone.

Men with saws cut their way inside. Every point of entry was blocked by garbage, they said. She heard the word uninhabitable. They removed a ragged square of wall, then stepped into her living room. The EMTs loaded her onto a gurney and wrestled her out of her mess.

The night air took her breath, all that sky. The moon was a hard white stone. "Thighs," was all she could manage. The EMTs laughed, said she must be hungry for chicken.

Dana felt her neighbors spying from behind curtains. Of course they stared, she didn't blame them. Just a year ago, Dana was fat in a fertility-fetish sort of way, a shiny round Venus flush with lust.

Note: Originally published in November 2011, Metazen.

∞

Author's Note

I was briefly obsessed with the TV show "Hoarders." That is one way to retreat from life, behind stacks of failed plans and garbage. Or you can disappear into your own body. 1,000-lb. Michael Hebranko, once a Richard Simmons success story, had to be cut from his Brooklyn home and removed by forklift. I think these stories fascinate me because the isolation feels uncomfortably familiar. Many of us feel walled off, maybe by hopelessness, shame. Loneliness. We're drawn to lovers instinctively, urgently, sensing they have what we need. We expect them to know what that is, even if we're not sure. How swiftly and permanently we are disappointed. How unforgiving we can be in silence. Writing "His Venus" as flash challenged me to distill these various ideas into a spare but complete story. I had to trust the reader to see beyond the page. Each word was studied for meaning and sound: "flush" and "lust" reappear at the conclusion, echoing the story's beginning. The repetition gives the piece a bracketed, finished quality, I think, and helps infuse it with an earthy sensuality.

Susan Rukeyser enjoys art museums and chocolate and people who survive terrible choices. Her debut novel, Not On Fire, Only Dying, was published by Twisted Road Publications (2015). Her short fiction and creative nonfiction appear in Foundling Review, WhiskeyPaper, Hippocampus, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others. Susan is a lousy cook but once wrote a Recipe for compressed fiction. Find her here: www.susanrukeyser.com

Craft: Backstory Without the Whole Story

2016-06-28T11:27:54Z

Craft: Backstory Without the Whole Story

Backstory can be a tricky subject when writing short stories, especially in the realm of fantasy. An author must balance the amount of worldbuilding and backstory he or she provides so as not to overwhelm the reader, while also providing all of the necessary information to allow the reader to properly understand the story. Allison Pang manages to balance backstory with current events in her short story "A Duet of Darkness," featured in the recent collection Carniepunk. Using Pang as a model, it becomes clear that a good way for writers to balance backstory in a short story is to weave it in throughout the entirety of the tale and focus on key details of character and history so that it gives the reader sufficient information without weighing them down in the past. First, I will show how Pang uses these techniques, and then I will talk about how fantasy writers can use Pang's techniques in their own stories.

"A Duet with Darkness" by Allison Pang is a short story that tells the story of a prodigy violinist with synesthesia, Melanie St. James, and Nobu, a fallen angel she's made a deal with. The pair is currently in a band alongside an incubus, Brystion, and a werewolf, Marcus. Melanie is an amazing violinist and she knows it. This causes many problems for her in the band. They want to work together while she would prefer to shine solo. When the group attends a special festival for fae, demons, angels, and other mythical beings of the world, Melanie is drawn to the tent they will be performing in. There she meets a man called Nick who plays such beautiful music that Melanie sees it as the most alluring gold she's ever seen. The pair have a face off and, despite her talent and ability, Melanie loses. Nick offers to let her try his violin and she plays a little before he snatches it back. Later, Melanie has a fight with her bandmates, and Nobu and Brystion get into a physical fight. In the chaos, Melanie's violin is crushed, and she refuses to perform with the band. The show is going to go on anyway, and Melanie decides to watch. Nick is there once again and he offers to let her borrow another violin of his so she can steal the spotlight. She does and plays an amazing song but does not realize what she has done. She discovers she may have accidentally sold her soul to the Devil because of her prideful nature. In her earlier battle, she faced the Devil's Violinist Nicolò Paganini and her ability to use his special violin drew the Devil, Nicoló's master, to her. He appears to her and demands she make a contract with him. Melanie is terrified until Nobu appears and protects her: "The prickle of pride is something that must be borne. Your sin is now mine" (Pang 237). He takes her sin of pride into himself and makes a deal in her stead. Melanie is, however, still tied to the Devil, and she knows she cannot escape him forever.

Pang provides a wealth of backstory in few words by utilizing techniques of weaving summary, quick flow, and key details. For example, she begins by easily weaving Melanie's backstory into the short story. By using the ever-present asset of Melanie's synesthesia, Pang is able to dip back into Melanie's past while tying it to the current goings on:

But [synethesia] also makes me far more sensitive when things are played off-key. Years upon years of training, always searching for perfection. To suffer the indignity of anything less was anathema. One doesn't get into Julliard on "almost good enough," after all. (Pang 210)

This section provides the turning point to jump even farther back in time. Melanie goes on to explain how she joined the band, and the section of backstory drifts back into the present as easily as it slipped into the past. "Before we'd joined the band, Nobu and I busked together on the streets...But it was easy, the two of us meshing with a simple grace that filled me with joy. Joining the band changed all that" (Pang 210). Not only does Pang provide backstory in these sentences, she shows the current state of the band as well. It shows Melanie's perception from both the past and present by contrasting them. These past sections are quick, summarized glimpses that do not slow down the action going on in the scenes around them.

Yes, "A Duet with Darkness" is Melanie's story, told through her point of view and focusing on her pride; therefore, her backstory could completely dominate this tale; but Pang skillfully weaves it into the current events of the storyline. The stories flow together in a way that does not detract from the events going on. Pang relates the events of past and present to show how things have changed and yet how they have not. She uses current band issues to segue into own problems and provide more depth to Melanie. She also uses Nobu and Melanie's longer standing relationship to provide some more details. When Nobu teases Melanie saying "If your mother could only see you now" (212), Melanie is then allowed to think back on her mother in the next section: "My mouth compresses into a bitter smile. My mother would be aghast at how her little prodigy had escaped her, eschewing Julliard for lessons learned upon the road" (212). By placing these times side by side, Pang shows Melanie's history while also showing how she has changed. The balance of past and present helps the reader get a truer sense of the character, how she has changed and how she is going to change in the short story.

Pang also provides hints and clues to the backgrounds of the other characters. For example, she uses one sentence to provide a wealth of information on the character of Marcus: "He's in human form, complete with jeans and a wool skullcap, but there's a feral gleam in the werewolf's eye when he raises a brow at us" (210). Here, she provides a good picture of Marcus for the reader using only a sentence: he is not human but has a human form, he is wearing a certain outfit that serves to show his personality, and there's something feral about him despite his humanity. These quick glimpses provide information about Nobu, Brystion, and the wealth of other mythical beings that appear in the work. She relies on more established types of beasts that can already conjure a certain image in the mind of the reader -- things like faeries, fallen angels, demons, incubi and werewolves. When she does deviate from traditional ideas of characters, she makes sure to note it. She notes that Nobu is a "fallen angel - a sin-eater, to be specific" (Pang 211). It's a simple detail, but after seeing what happens to Melanie later on it becomes very important.

All Pang needs is a sentence to show the differences of these creatures. She does not waste time going into every detail of their individual magics or special abilities. She uses key details that are generally recognizable to her target audience to distinguish her magical beings.

For many writers, backstory can slip them up. It is often difficult to tell what should be included and what might not be needed, especially when working within the confines of a short story. Pang's techniques provide a good groundwork for writers to emulate and use within their own writing.

Summary spread throughout the opening sections of the prose can give the reader a lot of useful information without bogging down the narrative too much. It is important not to throw too much information at the reader at once about things that happened prior to the story. But sometimes that context might be needed because the story is starting post-inciting incident. Here is where the idea of weaved summary comes in. You have to sneak it into the prose with a line of lead up and a line leading out so that the backstory does not distract so much as inform. It is similar to including a half scene in a larger work. You have to introduce the half scene with a line to indicate you are moving back in time. For example I used the following: "She hadn't been able to stop him then." This line might lead into a short scene that shows the reader how the main character failed to stop her friend from doing something horrid. Then at the end there needs to be a line showing that the reader has come back to the present; for example, "With that mistake on her shoulder like her own personal devil, she knew she couldn't let him succeed this time." An example of both a lead in and lead out line from "A Duet with Darkness" comes during a quick section of summary that tells of Melanie and Nobu's harder life before they joined the band. The section begins with "before we'd joined the band..." and ends with "joining the band changed all that" (Pang 210). These quick lines serve as bookends for the section and serve to pull the reader into the past and out of it without taking the focus away from Melanie and the band.

In terms of deciding which summary to include, it may help to lay out key details about the characters or situation. Writers must consider which things are important and which of those important things needs to be elaborated on in summary. By having a list, a writer can make sure they touch upon key items that will help the story make the most sense to the reader.

Key details can be utilized within summary but they can also act as their own tool. Details by themselves can be mixed into the rest of the story more thoroughly to create a better sense of characters' personalities and backstories. They can be sprinkled throughout the story to act as keys, reminders or identifiers. They can also serve to remind the reader of importance.

There may also be question of repetition. How many times should something be repeated in a story to make sure the reader does not forget it? We as writers can remember all the details about a character but the reader, who is not nearly as close to the work as we are, may miss something if they do not see its importance. If you have a werewolf character, for example, but he is in human form for the entirety of the story, the reader may forget about his wolf side. But if it is important to know the character is a werewolf, the writer should be sure to include multiple, spread out references to that fact. This depends on the length of the story, as a two-page short story might not call for such callbacks to detail.

One of the important things to remember with details, though, is that the more varied they are the more appealing they will be to readers. To simply say "the werewolf" over and over will get across the point that the character is not human but it becomes repetitive, and the reader may feel a bit talked down to. Mentioning something like "if he had his tail, it would be wagging" or "his abundance of body hair hinted it was almost his time of the month" can show the importance of his non-human heritage while also keeping the writing flowing.

With both summary and details, it is important not to break the flow of the story. Summaries should be provided in quick sections that do not dominate the text. A quick flow of details that does not slow down the reader's eye, unless the writer wishes the reader to slow, provides a more intriguing story.

Backstory is often important to a story but writers cannot let it dominate the story. In "A Duet with Darkness," Pang shows how an author can write past and present beside one another without letting the past overcome the present. As writers, we have to figure out which pieces of information are the most important for the reader to know and we need to present them in a way that does not take away from the rest of the work. Using quick bits of summary to provide half scenes or descriptions of backstory, writers can establish important past events without distracting from the ongoing story. By placing specific details about characters, places or events within the rest of the story the writer can better establish the world and people of the story.

Bibliography

Pang, Allison. "A Duet with Darkness." Carniepunk. New York City: Gallery, 2013. 208-41. Print.

Kimberly Callan is a fiction writer pursing her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Rosemont College. She is currently working on a YA Novel, and often dabbles in poetry and short stories. She loves all things demonic, mythological, magical and fairy tale.

Flash Craft: A Critical Reading of Denis Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking"

2016-06-24T11:00:00Z

The Relationship Between Dialogue and Subtext in Denis Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking"

"Good dialogue," writes British television producer John Yorke in Into the Woods, "conveys how a character wants to be seen while betraying the flaws they want to hide."¹ To be effective, dialogue simply needs to create disparity between a character's interior and exterior selves, which in turn creates what is known as subtext, which, according to Yorke, "emerges from the interaction between a character's façade and their actual intention or goal."² Of course, all writers would be interested in writing complex, sophisticated dialogue that doesn't simply advance the plot but instead reveals a character's inner dilemma and thus creates a more three-dimensional character. However, as many writers have no doubt discovered, this aspect of craft can be very difficult to effectively pull off effectively. For writers looking for an example of masterful dialogue, they need look no further than Denis Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking." I intend to examine the relationship between dialogue and subtext, providing specific examples from "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," as well as broadening the discussion to include techniques writers can use to improve this relationship between dialogue and subtext in their own stories.

"Car Crash While Hitchhiking" follows an unnamed narrator who, under the influence of drugs, hitchhikes a ride from a family in an Oldsmobile even though he knows there will be "an accident in the storm."³ In the backseat, the narrator drifts off to sleep, still groggy from the drugs. Despite being asleep, he "[dreams he is] looking right through [his] eyelids, and [his] pulse [marks] off the seconds of time."⁴ He eventually drifts off to a deeper sleep, but wakes up when the accident occurs, just as he knew it would. At first, it seems as though the narrator "[is] the only one conscious,"⁵ but soon the family in the Oldsmobile wakes up and look to the narrator for answers, although he starts asking questions himself. He's eventually taken to the hospital, where he refuses an X-ray and, years later, begins hearing voices from boxes of cotton.

The foundation for subtext is provided at the beginning of the story, when the narrator's foresight is established. When he wakes up beside an entrance ramp to the highway, having been left there by a college student who drove a "VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes,"⁶ he is "something less than conscious."⁷ Really, though, his mental state may be more accurately described as hyper-conscious, as he tells the reader, "I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside it I knew we'd have an accident in the storm."⁸ Notice that, even though the narrator's state of mind may be altered, these statements of knowledge are unambiguous. As a result, the reader is meant to accept these visions at face value, although later on the narrator will attempt to deny them. For writers interested in creating subtext, it's critical that your main character's inner self be clearly established for the reader. When we learn about the narrator's foresight in "Car Crash," his true motivation hasn't yet been established, but if the reader questioned whether this foresight was real, there would be nothing for the narrator to deny later on, and subtext would be lost.

It's not until the accident actually occurs and the narrator converses with the other victims of the crash that his goal is established and subtext begins to emerge. Immediately after the crash, the following exchange occurs between the narrator and the husband who was driving the Oldsmobile:
          "What happened?"
          "We had a wreck," he said.⁹
Notice how Denis Johnson doesn't attribute the question because the reader is meant to assume that the husband is the one asking the questions. The narrator, after all, is the one with the answers. However, it's the husband who answers that they had a wreck, something the narrator already knew. (To be clear, the story is written in first person, from the narrator's point of view.) Later, it happens again:
          "Is [the man's wife] okay?"
          "She's dead!" he said, shaking her angrily.¹⁰
This denial becomes the narrator's main goal - to deny the knowledge he possesses. The way he elects to do that, interestingly enough, is to ask questions in an attempt to deny himself a position of authority. By asking questions of those around him, he is demonstrating that he doesn't possess the answers. Of course, by asking these questions, he's receiving the answers he had hoped to avoid. What Johnson does so well here, and other writers can emulate, is allow his character to devise a way out of the predicament, only to have the supposed escape pull him deeper into the conflict. Start with what your character wants, then consider ways to achieve that goal. What's tricky is considering all the possible actions available to the character. The narrator in "Car Crash" could have done any number of things to deny himself knowledge -- huff paint thinner to lower his IQ (he clearly has a drug habit), simply avoid all books and intelligent people for the rest of his life, kill himself -- but only by asking questions is he again confronted with this unwanted knowledge.

When the narrator isn't asking questions, he's presented with multiple opportunities to demonstrate his knowledge, and he repeatedly eschews them. A semi-truck comes upon the scene of the wreck and the driver asks the narrator, who is holding the baby that was beside him in the backseat of the Oldsmobile, "Is everybody dead?" The narrator responds, "I can't tell who is and who isn't,"¹¹ despite the fact that he's holding a live baby and he's been told that the man's wife is dead.¹² When the narrator is taken to the hospital, the doctor tells him he should have an X-ray, and the narrator says, "No." The doctor persists and the narrator says to him, "There's nothing wrong with me."¹³ These statements are unambiguous and forceful, in contrast to the narrator's earlier dialogue, and are similar to the statements of knowledge at the beginning of the story. However, the difference is that those initial statements of knowledge were in prose, whereas these statements by the narrator denying the knowledge that comes from an X-ray is delivered in dialogue. The narrator may not be able to rid himself of the knowledge he already possesses, but he can avoid learning anything more.

The key to subtext is establishing a clear intention or goal for your character. Returning to John Yorke, subtext "emerges from the interaction between a character's façade and their actual intention or goal."¹⁴ Without a clearly defined inner yearning, there's nothing for the character's façade to interact with. In the case of "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," the narrator's main goal is to deny himself both the knowledge he already possesses and any additional knowledge. The reason subtext and dialogue are so intricately linked is that dialogue functions as the character's façade ─ it's how they present themselves to the other characters.

When writing dialogue, writers would do well to read Douglas Glover's "Short Story Structure: Notes and an Exercise." His first suggestion for better dialogue is to understand "that dialogue in a story is not like dialogue in real life." Specifically, "dialogue in a story is highly organized, it's a form of action, and, as such, it must contain drama and conflict and motivation."¹⁵ Remember that this motivation is coming from within the character. The goal is not to mimic real life dialogue, but rather to think of the dialogue as the façade behind which the character's true motivation is hiding. Glover's example for "lying" is the following:
"Do you love me, Jack?"
"No," he said, lying to her, lying to himself.¹⁷
In this case, the reader sees the juxtaposition at the same time. However, the contrast may not always be in such close proximity. When the narrator in "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" asks the other victims of the crash about what happened, the reader knows it's a lie not because we're told right after he asks the question, as in Glover's example, but because of the exposition at the beginning of the story, where his foresight was established. This exchange creates more space between the juxtaposition, and perhaps becomes clearer to the reader on a second read-through, but either way, what's important is that the writer has established the contrast for the reader. And not only can dialogue be contrasted with exposition, but dialogue can also be contrasted with other dialogue to establish a character's deceit. For example, when the narrator in "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" tells the semi-truck driver that he can't tell who is and who isn't dead, the reader understands that he's lying, even though there isn't any exposition explicitly stating this, because we saw an earlier conversation where the narrator was told that the man's wife is dead.

Another technique suggested by Glover is "answering with a question."
"I love you, Jack."
"Do you?"¹⁸
Here, the onus is placed back on the initial speaker, and, as seen in this example, the questions aren't always used to show confusion in a character. This second speaker, Jack, seems to know exactly what he's doing, forcing the initial speaker to confirm her love for him. This idea ─ that questions don't necessarily need to indicate confusion ─ is used to great effect in "Car Crash While Hitchhiking." However, instead of having the narrator answer with a question, he's the one asking the initial questions. "What happened?"¹⁹ he asks just after the wreck, even though he knew it was going to happen. Here, the questions are being used to indicate the narrator's focus has shifted to denying this knowledge he possesses.

The relationship between subtext and dialogue is a symbiotic one. Subtext emerges as a result of conflict between the inner self (desire) and the outer self (dialogue). Without one, there cannot be the other. In terms of a story, this conflict is usually seen as tension between the dialogue and the prose, where the reader is privy to both but the other characters in the story are only aware of the dialogue. This disparity needs to be exploited for subtext to emerge. Consider the word "subtext" -- under the text. What's so daunting about subtext is that you can't spell it out in the story, but if you provide the right tools, the reader will be well-equipped to dig a little deeper.

Endnotes

¹John Yorke, Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story, (New York: The Overlook Press, 2014), 151

²Yorke, 164

³Denis Johnson, "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction (New York: Touchstone, 2007), 288

⁴Johnson, 289

⁵Johnson, 290

⁶Johnson, 288

⁷Johnson, 288

⁸Johnson, 288

⁹Johnson, 290

¹⁰Johnson, 290

¹¹Johnson 291

¹²Techniques for improving dialogue will be discussed later, but it's worth noting here why this interaction is especially unique. Oftentimes, a new character will be introduced who doesn't know what's going on, and things will be explained to this new character (and, by extension, the reader). It's a way to use dialogue for expository purposes. However, despite the introduction of a new character (the semi-truck driver), the narrator refuses to explain anything to him, and rather than just subverting the trope for the sake of subverting it, Denis Johnson does so with a purpose. Because the narrator's main desire is to avoid knowledge, it follows logically that he would refuse to explain what's going on.

¹³Johnson, 291-292

¹⁴Yorke, 164

¹⁵Douglas Glover, "Short Story Structure: Notes and an Exercise," Attack of the Copula Spiders: Essays on Writing, (Windsor, Canada, Biblioasis, 2012), 39

¹⁶Glover, 39

¹⁷Glover, 39

¹⁸Glover, 40

¹⁹Johnson, 290

Owen is a writer and poet living in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories and The Birds We Piled Loosely, and his theater and book reviews can be read at phindie.com. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Rosemont College.

Flash Reprint: Jon Sindell's "Dhoti"

2016-05-17T12:58:10Z

Dhoti

Jon Sindell

Dad's eightieth birthday was a costume party. I was Maria Von Trapp, my sister hid her annoyance behind Jackie O shades, and Dad's stooped wife, April, wore a burnished-orange sari and a third eye.

Dad was Ghandi, and it wasn't a stretch. His limbs were sticks, for he had cut down to just one meal a day since leaving the university three years before; his head was naturally egg-shaped and bald; his incisive eyes twinkled behind round wire-frames; and his chest showed snowy through his ... uh ...

"Dhoti, daughter."

I knew it, and Frannie knew it, but neither would risk mispronouncing the word for fear of being cut by a grin for our academic underachievement.

"It looks good on you, Father," Frannie said flatly. She had discarded Dad several decades ago and knew that Father vexed. But it didn't today. "Thank you, Frannie," said Dad in a benedictory tone. He dipped his finger in the water-bowl--we were scooping April's runny dal with banana leaves--and anointed Fran's forehead. She choked off a laugh and gaped in shock. Dad lowered his head with a soft inward chuckle.

The next day, my father was Gandhi again. He was Gandhi next week, next month, and next year--all day, every day. Frannie and I drove by and saw Dad outside in his dhoti, sauntering in a weak-legged way to the corner market for lentils and peas. "He's demented," said Frannie with bite, but I noticed myself unconsciously mirroring the grin Dad bestowed on fellow walkers.

Dad was still Gandhi when April died, and soon "nursing home" and "his own good" were Frannie's constant themes. So we sat down with Dad in the light that streamed into his study, illuminating the books he had loved for so long behind a door he had rarely opened to us. These days he merely caressed their covers.

I was the younger, favored child. "Dad," I said. He offered a birdlike hand and I took it. He beamed and offered his free hand to Frannie, but she turned with a pretense of not having noticed. "Dad," I repeated. Dad smiled with wonder, innocence, and grace. Frannie considered this childlike affect further proof of dementia, but I discerned wit deep inside his eyes. And his smile at last was mockery free.

"I can't," I told Frannie. "There are some things you don't do to a mahatma."

Note: Originally published in May 2014, Firewords Quarterly.

∞

Author's Note

"Dhoti" allowed me to utilize two of the advantages of flash, variety and sweep. As for the latter, it may seem paradoxical, but flash is great for conveying the sweep of a lifetime in a few hundred words -- perhaps because it requires you to clear out the clutter and drill down to the essence. Here I've suggested the essence of the lifelong relationship between an old man and his daughters with just a few hints. As for variety, the beauty of flash, for a person like me, is the opportunity to explore countless lives, and to do so from a variety of perspectives, as you write story after story. In this first-person tale, I was a middle-aged woman caring for her aged dad. Maybe I'll be a goldfish next.

As for the content of "Dhoti," I was the principal supervisor of my aging mother's care, so I relate to "Dhoti" that way; but I also have children, and I sometimes project into my own future as an old guy, and wonder how my kids and I will relate. Finally, I liked the idea of a very old person "coming of age."

Jon Sindell wrote the flash-fiction collection The Roadkill Collection (Big Table Publishing, 2014) and the long-story collection Family Happiness (2016). He curates the San Francisco-based reading series Rolling Writers and is a fulltime personal humanities tutor. He used to practice law.

Flash Reprint: Anne Weisgerber's "Upfurler"

2016-05-10T12:57:11Z

Upfurler

Anne Weisgerber

Nobody understood this could be a thing, until they saw jumpers at a certain height, five hundred eleven feet, tumble upward. Unlike fallers, upfurlers didn't make spectators jerk their shoulders in revulsion or crunch up faces to stave off crying.

Seeing upfurlers made the emergency responders slack-jawed the way a miracle can. Like if you woke up and had the 20-inch curling fingernails: it made no sense, but you'd seen pictures, and here they were. Philippe Petite kind of lay down in the air once, but this?

There was one woman in a skirt suit, hounds-tooth-checked, who spun like a saucer without rising or falling. Her hair swished behind her, swish, swish, like a sickle. They call her Frisbee now, but her name is Andrea Masterson Giacobazzi, and whatever magic, whatever science, whatever god kept spinning her like a barefoot plate, dispersed when the first tower fell, creating voids. Floor by floor boom-pancaked, boom-pancaked, and Mrs. Giacobazzi, in perfect Lagrangian coherent structures, trailed boom-boom down through the c-shaped vortices of air. Cause of death was an adult equivalent of shaken baby syndrome.

Maybe there was a level in the atmosphere where gravity recoiled in surprise that day. "It was a sweet pocket," science said, also concluding that any jumper below her event, at the unfortunate measure of 509 feet or less, fell. Mrs. Giacobazzi's children felt sadder.

Downfurlers made a horrible meaty thunking thud, then recoiled from their own private LZs, momentarily ghosted in sticky pink mists, before continuing to fall.

What was most interesting was jumpers at 511 feet and higher. They rose--tumbled and laughed and blew kisses until eventually they sensed the chill, understood they'd surpassed Everest, fell asleep, and crisped up like leaves on the way out.

From a distance, upfurlers shimmered like a murmuration, gently hovered there, like some air current snapped a soft blanket below their soft forms; their tears plocked down, but wore away to nothing before anyone could know. All science knew were puddles of blunt force trauma, cranberry and Burberry and snozzleberry and, listen. I get a little choked up thinking about it. It's that meat thock. Give me a minute. I'm not a hugger.

By family request, I cannot say more. But I'm up here. I'm up here.

Note: Originally published in 2016, Pure Slush Five Anthology.

∞

Author's Note

This is my September 11 story. There is a small mountain near my home, Washington Rock, an old promontory where General George Washington could survey the movements of the British fleet in New York harbor. When the news broke one cloudless 2001 morning of a plane hitting the World Trade Center, I assumed it was a Cessna and pilot error. These things happen. I was listening on the radio. I had interviewed David Halberstam the evening before, and he said in his speech on September 10: "We are so blessed, to have these two great oceans protecting us." I was writing up the interview to file it while listening to news radio. But then a second plane hit. I could not discount that to a confused student pilot. I stopped writing my report. We called our neighbor who worked on the 54th floor, but which tower we could not remember. My husband and I went up Washington's Rock, to see the plumes of smoke with our own eyes, because it was not to be believed, and we had to see the smoke drifting east over Brooklyn. We soon lost our television stations, all the broadcast antennae fell with the towers. We listened on the radio. In the newspapers, there were pictures of fallers, those who leapt, one a couple holding hands. I think still of fallers, of the decision that precipitated the jump. The heat. I wished it didn't have to end like that, for anyone, to be pulverized into some terrible pink mist hanging over the ground. A few years later, an artist whose work I admire, Eric Fischl, created these marvelous bronze sculptures. One of them, of a World Trade faller, was called Tumbling Woman. It captured the obscene and tragic humanity of the moment of impact. I recall feeling discouraged when, once those sculptures were put on display, Fischl bowed to public pressure to have them removed, as commuters found the work too disturbing. I was so happy that the fallers had been commemorated so specifically. These things happened. There is something beautiful in a suspension in air. Something beautiful in clasped hands. Something of the Pieta in how we hold grief, deep in the mud of what we are. When Twin Towers architect Minoru Yamasaki was asked about the meaning of the World Trade Center before his death in 1986, he said it was a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace, adding how it was "a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation his ability to find greatness." Steel, and bronze, in the right hands, can be lyrical. I only have words. And so here I give the fallers a new moment, a softer exit (except for the legendary Mrs. Giacobazzi). The truth, of a strong building sweating drops of life while desperately maintaining, is surreal and strange. No stranger than the human story. May someone find loving comfort in this very small fiction, which reverses some law. It means to bring peace. It means to pack that heavy day, entire, in a very light valise of flash.

Anne Elizabeth Weisgerber has recent/forthcoming stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, New South, Tahoma Literary Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and she is a Best Small Fictions 2016 Finalist. She is assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel, and writes reviews for Change Seven Magazine. Follow her @AEWeisgerber, or visit anneweisgerber.com

Flash Reprint: Jeanne Althouse's "Uncle Seth"

2016-05-03T12:56:21Z

Note: Originally published in The Hawaii Review.

∞
Author's Note
"Uncle Seth" was inspired by an old family letter. The letter describes the accidental shooting death of a cousin by a young boy showing off with a supposedly unloaded gun. Knowing many families who have been destroyed by blame and guilt over the death of a child, I wrote this story to discover how this family survived, particularly the young boy who was responsible. The slip into present tense in the first paragraph was the way the story's fictional narrator told it to me. I think throughout his life this tragedy was "ever present" in his mind. Though he never told me his name, I honored his voice

Jeanne Althouse lives in Palo Alto, California. Her flash fiction and longer stories have appeared in various literary journals, including Shenandoah, Pif Magazine, Pindeldyboz , Flash, The International Short Story Magazine, Madison Review, Redlands Review, So to Speak, Porter Gulch Review, Red Rock Review, the MacGuffin, Menda City Review, Kind of a Hurricane Press Anthology, Referential, and Jewel, a publication of Gray Sparrow Press. Her story, "Goran Holds his Breath" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her novel Children Left Breathing was Finalist in the Augury Books Contest.

Flash Reprint: Douglas W. Milliken's "Skidder & Draw"

2016-04-26T12:55:01Z

Note: Originally published in Portland Monthly.

∞
Author's Note
When "Skidder & Draw" was first published, the only change the editors requested was to nudge the timeline over a couple months, from October into December (it's a detail I've since reversed). At the time, it seemed to me that this single edit is what made the story a piece of fiction. I mean, every action described is something that I personally experienced. That makes it non-fiction, right? Yet the more time passes, the less convinced I am that I am the story's narrator. As in, I don't talk like that. At all. I'm not sure I think those kinds of thoughts, either. All my sentences cartwheel and fall down. But the narrator fancies himself a poet. That guy is someone else. And I'm curious as to who he might be, this man who's lived my life, too.

Douglas W. Milliken is the author of four books, including the novel To Sleep as Animals and the pocket-sized collection Cream River. His stories have earned prizes from Glimmer Train, McSweeney's, and the Stoneslide Corrective, and have been published in Slice, the Collagist, and the Believer, among others. www.douglaswmilliken.com

Flash Reprint: Hillary Leftwich's "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition"

2016-04-19T13:49:09Z
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
Hillary Leftwich

The women make their pies from scratch. Their hands are cracked and white with the baking flour that settles into the creases of their knuckles. They dip their fingers inside the pie filling, tasting it with the tip of their tongues. Their lips are painted red like the name on their husbands' fighter planes. Stella Sue.
For the past five months since their husbands left for war, they have learned to stretch and save, to make every scrap of food last. They know how to render the lard. How to trim the blood spots from the meat. The fat glistens like white gold.
Each of the women prepares coffee in early morning after their children have left for school. They take care to reuse the coffee grounds. The liquid is a dull brown and not black. It is faded like their roots.
The women's children press their hands together at suppertime, heads bowed. Their scalps are combed and clean. The women make sure of this. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, the children recite. Their smiles are innocent when their hands turn into guns. They point and shoot. You're dead, they yell.
The women miss their husbands. They eye the young men in the market as they bag their foodstuff. Sometimes they have the young men deliver their groceries to their homes. The women remove their wedding bands from their fingers and leave them on butcher blocks or kitchen windowsills. They want to feel the young men's skin, smooth as gunmetal, behind closed doors.
When the women gossip it is always about other women. How tight the flag is folded when it is passed to them, so it doesn't fall apart. They wonder when it will be their turn. They sip their coffee from bone white teacups, leaving lipstick stains on the edges. Even after scrubbing, the mark never seems to come clean.
Sometimes the women meet in sitting rooms or at kitchen tables and talk in hushed tones as their children sleep. They reminisce about school dances, football games, high school sweethearts. They rub cold cream on their chapped hands, avoiding each other's eyes. They massage the blisters on their feet, conceal their unkempt toenails. Their hair is tied up in kerchiefs, hiding their rollers. They wonder how long the curls will last the next day. They look out kitchen windows, past empty clotheslines, just beyond the town's center. They watch the night sky, uncertain. They watch as the lights from the factory blink a tired Morse code.

Note: Originally published in Five Pure Slush.

∞
Author's Note
I have multiple personalities in regards to point of view when I write. I rarely use the same point of view in every story because I tend to get bored easily and love to experiment. This flash was written in Third Person Omniscient and something I may never do again. Strike that. Never say never.
This piece is dedicated to my grandmother, Elnora. She kept the household together while my grandfather was fighting in WWII and the Korean War. She was one hell of a woman.
Bukowski once said, "Great art is horseshit. Buy tacos instead." I always think of this in order to remind myself that everything, art and writing especially, is open to interpretation. Actually, I just really like this quote.

Hillary Leftwich lives in Denver with her son. In her day jobs she has worked as a private investigator, maid, and pinup model. She is th associate editor for The Conium Review and the nonfiction editor for The Fem Lit Mag. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, WhiskeyPaper, NANO Fiction, Monkeybicycle, Dogzplot, Cease, Cows, Five Pure Slush Vol. 10., Crab Fat Magazine, Eunoia Review, Tethered by Letters, Progenitor, and The Citron Review. Her story "Free Lunch" was nominated by Progenitor for The Pushcart Prize in 2015. She thanks her writing tribe, The Fishtank, for their continued support. Find her on Twitter @HillaryLeftwich.

Flash Focus: Cycle of Living in "Some Cool Heaven"

2016-04-13T12:53:06Z
In Randall Brown's A Pocket Guide to Flash Fiction, author Quinn Dalton discusses how to make a scene. According to Dalton, successful scenes in flash fiction are "units of significant action that provide new information and advance a story" (212). In flash fictions such as Emma Smith-Stevens' "Some Cool Heaven" from Smokelong Quarterly, a single scene can convey a whole novel's worth of meaning. "Some Cool Heaven" explores the cyclical pattern of life and death through the experience of a mother's coming-to-terms with a fatal illness. The format of the story itself is cyclical, a format that lends itself to the message of the flash and speaks to Smith-Stevens' masterful craft.
Smith-Stevens brings the reader directly into the plot of the story in the first sentence: "I learned I was sick again on a Wednesday." This knowledge does not come as a shock and is not presented in a dramatic way: in fact, it is quite underwhelming, implying that it is simply another day of her life. Randall Brown discusses the idea of tragic urgency in his book, that "within the tragic exists two powerful competing desires, a Dionysian need to raze the world and uncover its meaninglessness--and the opposing Apollonian wish to reconstruct the world and discover its deep meaning and purpose" (201). At the beginning of "Some Cool Heaven," the reader sees the Dionysian aspect of the tragic: The use of word "again" in the first sentence introduces an entire backstory we as readers must assume; we fill in the blanks, recognizing that this is not the first time she has received such news, nor is she experiencing grief for the first time. This "again" allows the narrator to explore a different aspect of her impending sickness. Rather than showing us how she deals with her own grief and fear, we see how it affects her relationship with her son. Throughout, there is an undercurrent of hopelessness, a sense of impending loss.
Despite this foreboding, the narrator resolves to give her son memories "that would stick" well after she is gone, to provide him with a place he can go to remember her, and to take pictures that would be a physical representation of her memory. Brown writes, "Tragedy reminds us that we are doomed no matter what and that our humanity depends upon our ability to face that fact, to act in spite of it, to embrace uncertainty at the same time we must refuse to settle for it [. . .] The acceptance of that struggle we must all make frees us from our fated suffering, makes it our own rather than something imposed upon us" (204-205). The narrator realizes "the fair came every August, and my death wouldn't stop that"; she recognizes that her son's life will go on after she dies, and she has to accept that, even though she fears an existence where she cannot be part of his life. The simple fact that her son wants to go on a ride without her, symbolically growing up without her, makes her more ill than the thought of her cancer.
It is not until later in the story that the reader sees the Apollonian aspect of the tragic--the wish to reconstruct the world and find meaning within it. The ponies that the children ride are harnessed in such a way that "birdseye would have revealed a Celtic cross." According to the Lama Foundation, "the modern Irish Catholic interpretation of the Celtic Cross is that the circle represents eternity, the infinite nature of God's love as exemplified by the sacrifice of God on the cross. The circle can also be viewed as a halo, emanating from the heart of Christ." The set-up of the pony ride has a threefold meaning: It symbolizes eternity since the ponies cannot escape their positions, and they are stuck going around the circle; similarly, the cycle of birth, life, and death is eternal and inevitable. Lastly, like the fact that the fair comes every August and the ponies will keep moving in that circle, life will continue on despite the narrator's death.
Applying the imagery of the Celtic cross to the last paragraph, in which the narrator describes the circle and the ponies as "part of a great machine, the inner working of which were a miracle of technological efficiency," it seems the narrator comes to understand her mortality. Life, as mundane as days at the fair can be, is part of something greater, a machine with cogs that miraculously work together to continue forever. Herein lies the aspect of the Apollonian tragic. Optimistically, one could interpret human life as "winding up towards some cool heaven," as does the narrator. Or realistically, life is just a miraculous machine, the inner workings of which we can never know. Either way, the narrator begins to view the cyclical nature of eternity with meaning in the context of her life. She finds a way to reconstruct the world and take comfort that her son will continue without her. The pictures she takes "would be a circle to travel--to say, this was it, this was it, that was a day," rather than artificial replacements for memories. The setting introduced in the beginning of the story, where the reader learns of the narrator's illness and her intention to immortalize the day through the lens of her camera, follows the story's cyclical pattern to the end, when she decides to live in the present rather than dwell on the past and worry about the future.
Works Cited

Brown, Randall. A Pocket Guide to Flash Fiction. Wynnewood: Matter, 2012. Print.
"The History and Symbolism of the Celtic Cross." Lama Foundation. Lama Foundation, n.d. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
Smith-Stevens, Emma. "Some Cool Heaven." Smokelong Quarterly. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.

•

Jennifer Rohrbach is an English and Creative Writing student at Widener University. She is the Managing Editor for News for the Blue & Gold and is an editor for The Blue Route and Widener Ink literary journals. She prefers to write fiction and is better at analyzing poetry than writing it.

Flash Reprint: Kristina Marie Darling's "North"

2016-04-12T13:48:19Z
North
Kristina Marie Darling

A girl drove into a blizzard at sunset. Her fiancé told her not to, and she thought about making tea or cocoa, but she started the car anyway. She did it because the road glittered in the lamplight. She did it because he told her not to.
The blizzard was the exact same temperature as her heart. She kept driving past barren corn fields, watching the snow fall. She felt a numbness in her chest, and when she placed her hand there, the warmth was gone. The girl began to worry and stopped the car.
I could have seen this coming, the fiancé said when she walked into the kitchen.
This didn't happen to you, too? But as the girl began speaking, she sensed the weight of her clothes shifting. Her dress crackled with frost. The frozen part of her fell off, leaving a small scar. The fiancé smiled.
You just became a wife, he said.

Note: Originally published in Tupelo Quarterly.

∞
Author's Note
"North" was written in 2014 during a snowstorm in Buffalo, NY. Though the poem has been published and reprinted, the snowstorm still hasn't ended.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty books of poetry. Her awards include two Yaddo residencies, a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, and a Visiting Artist Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, as well as grants from the Whiting Foundation and Harvard University's Kittredge Fund. Her poems and essays appear in The Gettysburg Review, New American Writing, The Mid-American Review, Third Coast, The Columbia Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is currently working toward both a Ph.D. in Literature at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo and an M.F.A. in Poetry at New York University.

Flash Reprint: Paul Kavanagh's "Antoine de Saint-Exupéry"

2016-04-05T13:46:47Z
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Paul Kavanagh

We decided to hang Alfred. Viv went for rope. Tom went for a chair. I waited and talked with Alfred. We talked about spaceships and spacemen. Alfred was curious if spacemen ever asked, Are we there yet. Alfred was always asking, are we there yet. Tom returned with a chair. It was an old Victorian chair. It had once belonged to Tom's great-grandfather. Alfred tested the chair. He jumped up and down on the chair. The chair was sturdy. Viv returned with some wool, she could not find any rope. Alfred tested the wool. It snapped. Tom called Viv a bad name. Viv threatened to cry. Before she could fill the room with sobs, Alfred said he knew where there was rope. Viv smiled and hugged Alfred. Viv was very happy. Alfred left room. We need a bible, said Viv. Eliot and Viv's parents being atheists allowed no bible in the house. I have something in my bedroom, said Viv. We told her to go. Viv returned with Le Petit Prince. We were very happy with Le Petit Prince. I said I would read from Le Petit Prince while Alfred pushed off the chair. Alfred returned. He had an armful of sturdy rope. Eliot being good with knots fashioned a noose. He placed the noose over Alfred's head. It looked very professional. Alfred rearranged the noose; he was extremely fastidious. Tom helped Alfred up onto the chair. Alfred threw the end of the rope over the chandelier. Tom caught the rope and tied the rope to the doorknob. Alfred pulled the rope to test the rope, it was sturdy, it would hold. Viv touched Alfred on the knee, lovingly. He looked down and smiled. I started to read from Le Petit Prince.

Note: Originally published inNano Fiction Volume 6 Number 2.

∞
Author's Note
The piece is all about incongruities, juxtapositions, mainly the ugly with the beautiful.

Paul Kavanagh wrote Iceberg

Flash Reprint: Jeff Friedman's "Family"

2016-03-29T10:02:36Z
Family
Jeff Friedman

"It's the end of the world," my father proclaimed at the breakfast table, rising in his bear-checked pajamas. "Not again," my mother replied, emptying the scraps on the plates into the garbage and putting the dishes into the dishwasher.
He had that look in his eyes, and he had been up all night reading the Black Book and making notes in his journal in red ink. He showed me his notes, which were indecipherable, except for the sentence, "Get out of town quick" underlined twice for emphasis. I was used to his predictions and prophecies, used to running down to the basement with our belongings because he smelled a tornado in the air or putting on a lead-lined jumpsuit and a helmet with a breathing tube and oxygen mask to prepare for a nuclear attack.
Once my father thought the chipmunks that burrowed under the patio were the souls of his ancestors. He carried on conversations with them at all hours and got advice on how to invest in the stock market. He actually did pretty well with his investments so my mother let him continue the conversations until the chipmunks advised him to sell the house.
"Son, get the boat; it's our only way out of here." He said this with some urgency though we were landlocked and had been in a drought for two years. "He means the Cadillac," my mother interjected. "But we don't have a Cadillac; we have a Buick." "Get the car," she insisted, "and pull it up front so he can see it."
As always, I did as I was told. When I came back into the house, my father had put on his trousers and a sports coat, and my mother was dressed, but my sister was still strutting around in a nightshirt and panties. My father put his hand on Rachel's ass, which caused my mother to hit him over the head with a pan. When he came to, he ranted on and on about spreading his seed to keep the human race alive.
"Ignore him," my mother said. "Dad's a perv," Rachel responded. I shepherded everybody out of the house because I thought the fresh air would do us all some good, but the air was thick and hot.
The sun caught fire, a blaze spreading across the sky. As we walked up the block, we could hear screams and shouts coming from our neighbors' houses. Ahead of us, the desert stretched toward the mountains. My father ordered us to march across the sand, to keep our faces forward, or a disaster would befall us. But my mother turned back to see flames raining down on her house--all her things lost--and bitterness plagued her the rest of the days of her life.

Note: Originally published in 2010, Quick Fiction.

∞
Author's Note
"Family" began as a midrash* on the biblical story of Lot's Wife being turned to a pillar of salt and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but during the course of writing it, I found myself mixing the sadness of the situation with comic exchanges. The father in my story combines elements of Lot and the father in Bruno Schultz's father stories, but is mostly inspired by my own father, a terrific salesman and a terrible businessman. Like my father, this father is up most of the night, and I suppose his insomnia contributes to his visions or hallucinations. Like Lot, he thinks he's communicating with his ancestors or his God, but the son notes/remembers that the father thinks the souls of his ancestors speak to him in the voice of chipmunks. And the mother, a composite of Lot's Wife and my mother, allows him to make decisions for the family that she knows are questionable until he wants to sell the house and then she steps in. The son tells us that the father has frequently predicted the end of the world, but in this particular story his prophecy of fiery destruction appears to be coming true. In the Bible, Lot's wife, after being warned not to look back, looks back and then is turned into a pillar of salt. Forced to leave her home, the mother in "Family" sees the flames raining down, and bitterness plagues her the rest of the days of her life, but she is not destroyed and still can provide strength for her family.
*Midrash is an interpretation of or commentary on a biblical text or passage.

Jeff Friedman's sixth collection of poetry, Pretenders, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in February 2014. His poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in many literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, The Antioch Review, Poetry International, Hotel Amerika, Vestal Review, Quick Fiction, Flash Fiction Funny, Smokelong Quarterly, 100-Word Story, Flashfiction.net, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and The New Republic. Dzvinia Orlowsky's and his translation of Memorials by Polish Poet Mieczslaw Jastrun was published by Lavender Ink/Dialogos in August 2014. He and Orlowsky were awarded an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship for 2016.

Flash Reprint: Jacqueline Doyle's "NOONDAY ROBBERY AT BOONEVILLE SAVINGS AND LOAN"

2016-03-22T10:59:43Z
NOONDAY ROBBERY AT BOONEVILLE SAVINGS AND LOAN
Jacqueline Doyle

So yesterday, I kid you not, a guy dressed like Darth Vader walks in, black boots, black helmet, black cape swaying, pulls out a gun, and robs the bank. It was lunch hour. I was there.
I'm standing fourth in line with the weekend deposit from the beauty shoppe in a zippered bag, lucky he didn't take that, and the little kid in front of me tugs at his mother's shirt, saying "Is that Darth Vader?" His mother says, "Looks like it." "What's he doing here?" the kid asks, and his mom says, "That's the million dollar question, isn't it?"
I doubt it was a million, maybe a couple thousand, probably red from a dye pack by now. They haven't caught him, and I'm kind of glad, you know? Not much happens in Booneville, especially on a Monday.
The guy was tall, maybe six two. I've been looking around, I mean maybe he's somebody I know. I'd date a guy like that, a guy with real imagination.
Not like Scotty, who just sits around watching football, drinking beer, maybe takes me to the Dew Drop Inn for a few beers on a Saturday, maybe Sizzler once a year on my birthday. It gets old, you know. I mean, okay, he's hot--blond hair, tight ass, great abs, just a little belly from the beer. He lifts weights, and he's pretty strong.
But where's the future there? If we get married, it will be the same old, same old, probably without the Dew Drop Inn, maybe with an added trip to Sizzler on our anniversary each year. Or hell, maybe to The Captain's Table. Just once, I'd like to get more than fourteen miles out of Booneville.
Darth Vader could take me places. I just know it.

Note: Originally published in 2010 at Staccato Fiction.

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Author's Note
"Noonday Robbery" started with an item in the newspaper that I read over my morning coffee. I keep a folder of clippings and photos, and I have other stories that have started there. A failed robbery attempt where the perp got stuck in a chimney (which happens more often than you'd think). A guy dressed up as the Statue of Liberty to advertise Liberty Tax. An Easter egg hunt that turned into a brawl. When I read that someone had robbed a bank dressed as Darth Vader (which has happened three times, in different parts of the country), I knew there was a story there. The scene at the bank, the hair salon employee who admired his imagination and audacity emerged in a flash when I sat down at my desk after breakfast. I turned on the computer and didn't get up until the story was finished. I love all kinds of flash fiction, maybe particularly flash that "takes me places."

Jacqueline Doyle's flash has appeared in PANK, Monkeybicycle, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Vestal Review, The Rumpus, Café Irreal, Literary Orphans, Front Porch, Corium, and other fine online journals. Her flash sequence on Freud's Dora is forthcoming in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (White Pine Press, 2016). She has earned two Pushcart nominations, a Best of the Net nomination, and Notable Essay citations in Best American Essays 2013 and Best American Essays 2015. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at California State University, East Bay.

Flash Reprint: Nneoma Ike-Njoku's "We Won't be Illegal Forever"

2016-03-15T10:01:47Z
We Won't be Illegal Forever
Nneoma Ike-Njoku

They found Aunty Kemi. Someone said that they picked her up on the street, on her way to work one morning. They wouldn't let her take anything from her apartment, just took her phone away and put her on a bus to detention camp at Ketziot.
After the protests at Hativka, people started to talk. Oz, the police unit that rounds up illegal immigrants in Israel, came to our neighborhood almost every day. So we left our apartment on Etzel Street and moved here.
Even here, everyone is scared. No one leaves their houses much. If the police see you, they take you away. Anyone could inform on you. Even fellow immigrants.
I'm a smart girl, though, and I know how to survive. Mother likes to say that I pick up languages ''like water''. I speak fluent Hebrew, and my Tigrinya is good enough. I started learning English three years ago, from an old woman next door, because my father is an Englishman. He was a medicine student at Tel-Aviv for eight months, moving back to London just before my birth in 2000. I don't want to be speaking Hebrew when I meet him in England. The mathematics teacher at the Shevah Mofet School, Ms Katya, said that the way I learn languages, I could get a job as a translator for the UN. She tried to teach me Russian last summer, but then the riots started and I couldn't leave the apartment.
I've started saving to see my father. I hear the news. Netanyahu wants to drive us away. All illegal immigrants. First from Tel-Aviv. Then from Israel. So I've got to have somewhere to go if he does. If they drive us away, I will go to England and find my father.
Mother came here from Eritrea. It's a country in Africa. She tells me stories about her journey to Israel. She talks about the endless walking, through the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula. She tells me about the cruelty of the Bedouin smugglers, that though she had saved about 3000 shekels when she started off for Israel, she arrived penniless. She tells me of a pretty woman who dished out food to all the immigrants at Levinsky Park every morning, saving her from starving her first few months here.
To save money, I do a lot of things. I still have some of the bottles of perfume and scented soaps Aunty Kemi gave me when she worked as a cleaner at the hotel in Eilat. Aunty Kemi used to be our neighbor back on Etzel before she found hotel work at Eilat, but I've called her aunty so long I can't remember why.
There are twenty-three bottles in all. I sold five of them to some kids at Shevah Mofet School. They paid me a half- shekel a bottle. Last year, I hosted a neighborhood toy car racing tournament with David, whose father owns the local pharmacy. We made the cars ourselves, using pieces of string, bottle corks and matchboxes, and charged a shekel for two matches and an optional re-match. About thirty people showed up in all: immigrant, legal, rich, poor, children, almost-adults. David and I split the money half-ways, and I got forty-seven shekels and fifteen. I also do some translating for three Eritrean families in the other block who speak only Tigrinya, for ten on official documents. Personal letters are free, and an excellent source of news.
At our old apartment in Etzel, there was a poster telling people to inform on their immigrant neighbors. Playing one summer, David and I doodled and drew funny faces all over the poster. The next day, Oz took away a Sudanese- Ivorian family of seven three apartments down. No one left their apartment for days.
At Etzel, we had lots of stuff. There were nine of us: mother and I, and two Ghanaian families. Two of the kids were twelve, about my age, so I had some company when we couldn't go out. I taught them to play boats; they taught me to make bean cakes. We had three bedrooms, a toilet, and a kitchenette which all the families took turns using. Mother got a radio. One of the families had a refrigerator, so we could always store food.
Now we live above a restaurant. It is a small room, almost like a closet. No windows. Mother works as a waitress downstairs. Besides waitressing, she does a number of other things. There is a popular hotel in town so we go together once a week to see pilgrims from Africa. People in the neighborhood pay to send letters and money to their relatives in Nigeria and Ghana and Sudan and Eritrea through the pilgrims, as illegal immigrants cannot bank in Israel (many people, including mother, sew their money onto their clothes). She also buys dried stock fish, egusi seeds and Oha leaves from them, selling them at a profit in our neighborhood. On Saturdays, she braids some of the neighborhood women's hair.
She used to let me sleep on the bed while she slept on the floor. But she moaned and yelled in her sleep and complained of constant backaches, so I took out some money from my England savings and bought a used cot for myself. When mother saw the cot she shook her head and said ''Now we have no standing room''. But she sleeps soundly now.
Mother sold the radio and bought a cabinet which she's started to stock with books. Novels. History books. Science books. Old books. New books. Books written in Hebrew and in English and sometimes, in Russian. ''Read, Asmara'', she says. ''Read. We won't be illegal forever.'' I believe her.

Note: Originally published in 2014, DoveTales, an International Journal of the Arts.

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Author's Note
''Illegal'' was second place in the 2013 Writing for Peace Prize and was inspired by my mother's anecdotes following a pilgrimage to Israel in 2001. I was about six years old when she returned, and the stories she told, of the immigrants' losing contact with everything before the present, of daily humiliations too many and too much to write about made me wonder, too simplistically perhaps, why the immigrants did not just up and go home.
When I started the research on this story just over a decade later, it shocked me how many people still held on to the view that maturity and experience had taught me to discard. These immigrants could not just up and go; Israel was theirs as much as anyone else's, for better or worse.

Nneoma Ike-Njoku is a Nigerian writer and freelance editor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Transition Magazine, The Kalahari Review, Ya Afriika, Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, and Afrikana.ng.