Fiction Posts

• 10.10.03 We (decided that staying awake) (Fiction)

  …we decided that staying awake as late as possible was the way to write new and creative things. This to be accomplished without the aid of stimulants since the goal was to be as sleepy as possible. In ideal circumstances we would actually fall asleep while typing without stopping, finding ourselves squatting in a gray hypnogogic landscape still tapping on the keyboard finishing up priceless new thoughts. The dream-laptop could then be carried along throughout … MORE

• 06.23.03 Apricots Are Falling (Fiction)

  
  The apricots are falling, bit by bit
  helped along by interfering squirrels.
  Though not yet ripe, they roll upon the bricks,
  all with tooth-marks, some with chewed-up pits.
  This fruit debacle fills us with dismay,
  as we had hoped the ripe fruit to preserve
  and so retain the sweetness of the day
  In far December when light’s gone away.

• 04.07.03 Silver “S”s (Fiction)

  
  Arranged on a torn out page,
  silver “S”s of old wire pulled from broken clocks.
  A razor shadow scratched by halogen behind each,
  tracing its shape in intersections with blue ink lines,
  a curve modeling stresses and crystal faults.
  Exhausted by years of funneling pulses from a quartz chip,
  the wires relax now bit by bit,
  slow motion snakes,
  emitting sub-audible scritchings against the paper fibers.
  As it unwinds, each proudly imagines itself a mainspring.

• 09.04.02 A Koan For Video Gamers (Fiction, Games, Humor)

  The Zen master Yoshi was playing a video game. Seated in the lotus position, he expertly maneuvered the controller with his gnarled hands. Nevertheless, on the screen Mario failed to leap from one block to the next and plummeted screaming into the void.

  Again, Yoshi began the same level. Again, the moving platforms eluded the sprite onscreen.

  Seventeen more times, master Yoshi caused the hapless plumber to fall into nothingness and lose another life.

  Still, … MORE

• 01.28.02 We are all snakes (Fiction)

  We are all snakes. We have a tail and onetwothree mouths. The middle mouth bites the tail to hold fast to form, to keep the extra blessings from dropping off one end and becoming lost in the untidy æther. Leftright mouths are perhaps free to latch onto other snakes should the local geometry and snake density so permit. When our fangs sink into each other we exchange blessings. It must be so. Blessings endlessly recirculated … MORE

• 01.12.02 Fulfillment (Fiction)

  Eli finally entered the Fulfillment Center at dusk, through the wide metal doors opening into the chilly space within. He had been waiting in line since dawn, shuffling slowly back and forth through the cracked remnants of the old parking lot under the eyes of the security guards. The Center was an old, damaged warehouse – this had been an industrial area before the war – and was lit within by banks of fluorescent tubes … MORE

• 12.20.01 Splendor (Fiction)

  We stepped out our back door into splendor:
  – the rain-choked hills casting off their muddy carapace of topsoil
  – uprooted trees shedding their last dead leaves like ticker-tape
  – all of up heading for down…… MORE

• 06.21.93 Glass Lizard (Fiction)

  The beach that fall was overrun by glass lizards; I had never seen them before.… MORE

• 03.03.91 The Cow Telescope (Fiction)

  WHEN I stick my head out of the skylight and look to the left I can see the Cow Telescope atop its hill, red light at the tip blinking to ward off low-flying aircraft. You can see it from Interstate 280; from the back of my parents’ Volvo I used to watch it as we drove past, a big metal parabolic dish pointed at something in the sky, on a grassy hill alone except for the odd ruminating cow. And so it was obviously the Cow Telescope, searching for radio emissions from peaceful cow civilizations across the galaxy—… MORE