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Tag: prose poems

iCoyote

January 28, 2010 • • 18 Comments

After days on the road, Robbie ran out of numbers for counting road signs and clouds, which was fine since he’d already counted all of them anyway. He switched to counting things that weren’t there and ticked imaginary numbers off in his head whenever he didn’t see something.

He thought he didn’t see a motorcycle but the absence was only a mirage, he realized when a black-clad biker gang rumbled past, stirring the desert to thunderous life before returning to the kind of silence that inspired Robby to consider counting things he didn’t hear as well as things unseen.

He thought he didn’t hear a coyote, so he eased his pickup off the highway to make sure the animal wasn’t there before adding it to his tally. Robby was scrupulously honest with himself about all things and wanted to ensure the accuracy of his count especially since the coyote, if it wasn’t there, would be the 500ith item on his list.

When he stepped out of his truck, the wind tore at his hair and clawed his jacket. He looked around trying to see if there was nothing there to count, but the desert, much to Robby’s disappointment, was full of things and besides he wanted that coyote to be the 500ith thing that wasn’t there. Nearly i0 hours from the road, he didn’t see the coyote, which wasn’t sitting in a three-legged chair. He resisted the urge to count the chair’s missing leg.

He approached iCoyote slowly and knelt before his absence, staring up at the thin clouds in the sky where iCoyote’s head would have been.

“I thought I’d be able to see you,” Robbie whispered, his voice nearly lost in the wind as he added iCoyote to his tally.

“Divide out the i’s,” iCoyote didn’t say.

Robbie thought back to half-remembered math classes, wondered if i worked like a variable, could be solved like x. “I’d have to do that to both sides of the equation, wouldn’t I?” Robby asked and noticed that he’d lifted his hands like an equal sign between them. “To balance it out, right?”

iCoyote didn’t say, “You’ll get your proof.”

Robbie divided out the i and saw the coyote grinning at him from the chair. The coyote hopped down, walked through Robbie as if he were a mere fraction reduced to the lowest terms of what he had been, and trotted off in the direction of Robbie’s truck.

Robbie looked around and saw all the things that weren’t there. He subtracted frantically, his list cratering before his open eyes. In the distance, he didn’t hear his engine start and he didn’t hear it drive down the highway without him.

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This is a response to Read Write Poem prompt #111, a picture of a guy kneeling in front of an empty three-legged chair. It’s a remarkable photo.

I never know what to label stuff like this. Short story? Flash fiction? Prose poem? Prose poem feels right since that’s the intention I started with.

I have no idea if I got the math right. As with Robbie, my math classes were a long time ago.

Be sure to read what others did with this prompt.

God Hates Grackles

January 19, 2010 • • 9 Comments

They drove down from some mega church in Kansas with signs reading, “God hates grackles,” and “Grackles spread disease & crap on everything.” One little girl with blond pigtails tied with blue ribbons carried a sign saying, “No more icky turds.” They marched up and down the street outside the capitol chanting verses from Leviticus about unclean birds, occasionally stopping to extol the virtues of godly American fried chicken and turkey club sandwiches. From their trees, the grackles watched with little interest. They heard the repetitive nuk-nuk-nuk of the chanters and wondered at the rusty-hinge noises they made on the street below but mostly, they preened their shiny purple feathers and craned their necks toward the open sky above.

This went on for most of the afternoon and as the heat increased, the protesters grew more desperate, more willing to go beyond the veil of free speech. One man cast a stone. There was a moment’s pause as the world waited for the grackles to craft a response. Seconds grew to minutes, and the protesters glanced at one another, nervous, waiting. Suddenly all the grackles exploded skyward in a storm of wings and wild hallelujahs. The protesters watched with squinted eyes as the birds flew ever higher, each beat of their dark wings carrying them deeper into the sky and closer to God than anyone on the street below could imagine.

Blinded by the summer sky into which the grackles had disappeared, the protesters fumbled for their signs, packed them back on the bus, cursing the ugly grackles for their filthy ways and for not being blue birds or cardinals. Resentful and wishing that they too had wings and beautiful iridescent plumage, they drove back north, never once leaving the ground.

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“God Hates Grackles” was one of 3 poems originally published at Thirteen Myna Birds in July 2009. Poems don’t stick around long over there before they fly away, so I’m posting them here for those who may have missed them back in July. This is 1 of 3.

The Crow’s Lesson

September 17, 2009 • • 16 Comments

A multitude of hungry words, scribbled on a scrap of paper, begs for just the merest pittance of the greater meaning bestowed by syntax. I stare and hear their cries, but next to hip, husk just looks like flask, for crying out loud. Besides, it’s clearly an empty one at that. The cat suggests that swilling single-malt could be the remedy of meaning that might make these words conform and stand in ordered lines.  Then he knocks a bottle off the bar, which is irksome, but not critical. I mean, what good is a cat’s advice on writing anyway? Sure, they’re decent spellers—everyone knows that—but for paragraphs, they don’t have much to offer. He looks at me with something like pity in his green eyes and asks if I’d like to help him lick up a puddle of Oban 14. I shake my head—not now, I’m working. I clean the broken glass and wrestle those words, but like scofflaw dreams on fitful nights where sleep, forgetting its starring role in the late show of my mind, lurks beyond the limelight in the shadows by the curtains, the words just lie there, scattered on paper, plum forgotten and ignored much like the clover extending across the lawn, dotted as it is with the wrappers of some confectioner’s dreams, reduced now to just the faintest sparkle, piquing only the interest of the passing crows who pluck them off the ground,  take them back to their nests and read the lists of ingredients to their children warning them away from words they don’t understand and can’t pronounce.

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This is the result of staring at the word list from Read Write Prompt #92: Word Gems. I think I used them all. Go here to see what others made of the same list.