~ transcribed at the scene.
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Showing posts with label flash fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flash fiction. Show all posts
11.1.20
Flash Fiction: Rocky Embankment Stream of Consciousness
Labels:
bruise,
flash fiction,
knee,
lake champlain,
short fiction,
stream of consciousness,
video,
writing
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
8.12.10
Flash Fiction: Laundry
When you appeared to me one night as a heap of laundry ...
Looking up from underwater . . . |
Once, I woke up in the middle of the night, warm beneath the covering, and I thought you were there, on my bedroom floor, your face resting on my naked foot. So, I called out your name but you didn’t reply. "Hey," I said again. But, nothing. Remained. And then I realized, after a moment, no one was in the room. I was alone. You were only an apparition. Like when I visited Georgette in her calloused age, I washed her tired calloused feet with hard, soapy water and she thought I was George, her son. The pain for me is more acute, because I know I am alone. More alive. But alone. I drift back to sleep. In the morning I see the laundry haphazardly arranged at the edge of my bed. And I realize it was the heap of clothes that I thought was you, come to comfort me.
image source: ohaytv
Labels:
flash fiction,
laundry
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
26.5.10
"The Dispute": Flash Fiction
BMXers are better for sure.
Nah.
I say, skaters.
BMX is an art.
Skateboarders just have that one board.
Bikes are intricate. Gears. Pedals. It's a craft.
More technical and you have to work 'em out.
But skating is like negative space. It is about the nothing between you and the board.
What?
You know what I mean.
No, really, I don't.
It's like - I don't know. Fuck.
The skate park is empty except for Neil and Bryce. Neil kicks at the open gravel with his worn out tennis shoes. Bryce pumps air into his tire. The day is harsh. The air smells like turkey sandwiches and mace. The old garage-turned-park is grungy. A huge peace sign adorns the back wall. Metal siding decorates the corridors. The skate shop is closed. The place is closing down.
Hey guys, we're closing the place down. Time to get out.
One last go?
Hurry it up.
Bryce props his bike on the descending floorboard. The ground is uneven and raw. The place used to be a boat building company. Recently constructed by a Ph.D. student in urban planning to ostensibly curb violence and drug dealing, kids come to hang out mostly on weekends. Bryce walks his bike up the ramp. Saddles his bike as if it were a well-trusted friend. It is the force of gravity that propels him. The downward swoosh. His body does nothing. The bike moves with the flow of the earth's downward pull. Braced to the bike like a friend, he kicks off the ledge. The ramp takes a novice biker to the ground fast. After a few tries, you learn the ramp. You learn, like a Zen koan, the simplicity of the curves. The ramp is like a parabola. Arriving, at the other end the rider gives himself the needed push to make the trick. It is at this point the rider must fight gravity's pull and not let it take him. Bryce leverages the bike a bit to give it the control he needs, kicks it up and he is flying through the air as if he were to stay afloat forever. Nothing enters. His mind is a blank slate. As if he does not exist. That's the nice thing. The erasing of thought, he thinks. You don't have to think. Bryce hits the rough edge of the board's terminus. He spins the bike around on one wheel, bringing himself to a stop; adrenaline, like a rush from inside of him escalates and he wants to go again.
Dusk is like charcoal. Both friends depart. Neil does an ollie in front of the ice cream van, as if to say, "Fuck you." And we get it then. What Neil said. It is the empty spaces. It is the nothing that exists between me and the board; the ramp and the air; my bike and everything else. Maybe I get it maybe I don't. The dude who owns the van is yelling at Neil. Neil laughs. We all laugh and joke on our way home about Bryce's stunt.
photo credit: if this image is yours please contact me so I can give you proper credit.
Labels:
fiction,
flash fiction,
short story
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
12.8.05
Flash Fiction: Tchefuncte River, Summer 2005
One summer a boy dove into the Tchefuncte river and hit something at the bottom. When he came back up he hurriedly free-styled to the flood wall, clambered up the algal steps, frightened. We all looked and saw the corpse of a calf float to the top of the water. It had risen up from the depths. Bloated. Passed along by a farmer from downriver to here, near the mouth. Thrown in for the alligators. And a few days before that, a kid caught a nurse shark in the same river, near the same spot. Adam told me he used to swim in it, but not anymore. -- Rivers aren’t supposed to have cows and sharks swimming around in ‘em, he said. Besides, the water’s been getting muckier, disgusting. It’s not just the boats, either.
Image Credit: "Bogue Falaya River Bank" © 2005
Labels:
Fiction & Short Stories,
flash fiction,
memoir,
prose poem,
river,
tchefuncte
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
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