Wings of Icarus

addressing a face

Amelia Jade 

 The oysters threatened to rise towards the girl's mouth. Just a little longer, just a little longer. She raced up the stairs and towards her bathroom, but not before stopping by her room to grab a hair tie. She didn't want to get anything on her hair.

She locked the door and knelt on the bathroom floor in front of the porcelain throne of waste. She let go of all restraint and let it flow. It wasn't that the oysters weren't cooked right--in fact they were cooked well. It wasn't that she had over eaten--though it may be a bit much for a girl of her stature, it was normal for a growing girl.

No, it was something else. It was always something else in her mind. Something other than the else.

She winced a bit as water splashed upon her face from the impact. She lowered her head towards the seat to make less of a splash on the rest of the area, though it did end up making more on her face. She swiped her sleeve over her cheek before resuming again, agitating her gag reflex by a press of her tongue and throat muscles. The chunks and drops of once edible items sunk to the bottom. The girl had to grab a hold of the tub and the top of the seat to hold her balance. The task was hard enough as it is.

Feeling she could expel no more, she leaned backwards and fell onto her haunches with only her arms holding her torso and head up. She breathed a bit before wiping the area clean, flushing the toilet, and washing her hands--twice--in the sink.

She looked in the mirror and saw herself, red eyed, teary eyed, and flushed. Realizing it might look suspicious, she washed her face and then brushed her teeth. She looked up again to survey the improvement, and once approving of her face's state stood up to check everything else. Slowly, she lifted her shirt to reveal her stomach. Her friends called her normal, but she could still grab the fat between two fingers. Oh sure, she had lost weight, and she looked fairly nice--but it still wasn't enough. Replacing her shirt, she checked her posture and approached the door to leave the room.

Calmly, she took slow and purposefully sleepy strides to her bedroom, ready to do it again in the morning.
 

the snow queen's risk assessment

Christopher J. Clarke

The first freeze of winter has swept from Moscow in the north to swirl white about the bare-boned trees along the avenues of Odessa. You sit jet-lagged, feet curled under you, in the cracked tan leather two-seater in the small bar of the Black Sea Hotel, drinking black coffee and writing notes. It's 3 a.m. 
 
C1 - Environmental Matching - Relative compatibility based on multivariate analysis. 
 
The seventies parquet flooring echoes the clip of high-heels. You look up as she throws back her fur-trimmed hood, dislodging snowflakes that settle briefly on her eyelashes. She is a Russian princess, cheekbones as high as the Urals, skin as white as the winter steppe. She hangs up her coat and finds her reflection in the black-mirror window, runs her fingers through an avalanche of curls, straightens her tailored jacket, smoothes her black knee-length skirt above suede boots. You look away as she walks to the pool table. Eye contact is temptation and temptation fuels desire. You feel your body ache. 
 
C2 - Risk Species - Presence of potentially harmful organisms, confirmed or suspected (see note on pathogens). 
 
Crack!

At the sound of a break on the pool table you again look up from your notes. From a dimly-lit corner her friend appears to play - another of the 'girls' of Odessa's black economy. Your princess stalks the table, cantilevers over to play her shot - not the easy shot but the one that allows her blouse to offer you a swell of red lace. A ball rattles into a pocket and she moves around the table to settle over the easy shot. Her legs, one in front of the other, knees slightly bent, stretch her skirt to the limit, emphasizing her slender curves. She is a Borzoi - a hunter of wolves. 
 
C3 - Projected Inoculation Frequency - Historical event pattern modified by potential pattern change. 
 
You know she knows you're there - a familiar in an unfamiliar land - but you avoid her glances, concentrating on your notes. Then you feel her presence; smell her scent as she leans across you to use the ashtray next to your coffee. You look up briefly but she doesn't look at you. You feel slighted even though you know the game. Her scent lingers, timeless, and you are lost in the arms of all the women you have ever held close on a cold winter night. 
 
The Weighting Factors  
W1 -- the cost and effectiveness of prevention. 
W2 -- the social and economic consequences. 
 
 
Silence breaks your otherworldly embrace and you look toward the table. The game is over and she catches your unwary glance. She smiles and red flushes from her lips to your cheeks. She is a doe, all water-soft eyes and fine-boned fragility, and she beckons you to the table. 
 
Risk = C1+(C2xW1)+(C3xW2) 
 
As you close your notebook, take the cue from her outstretched hand, you run the calculation, do the math, but mental arithmetic fades to grey and the only answer you get is her name is chaos and she is the Snow Queen.

First published Polyphony 3, Wheatland Press 2003.

way out west

T.R. Healy

     With the noose hanging limply from his right hand, well over four feet long, Wendell stared intently at the drinking fountain in front of him.  The basin was full of brittle leaves, all the fountains in the park having been turned off during the winter.  It was exactly six feet away, he had just counted off the distance, and stood next to the park bench where he had folded his overcoat.  He took a shallow breath then stepped toward the fountain and threw the noose at it with an audible grunt.  It caught the front lip of the basin but did not hold and slipped onto the ground.
     "Damn it!" he snorted, tucking his necktie back inside his shirt.
     It was the fourth toss he had made today, and if a little better than the others, still not good enough.  Not at all.  Frustrated, he jerked the rope back, vigorously shaking the twists out of it, then shook out another noose to try again.  He was determined to rope the drinking fountain before he returned to the office however many tosses it took.  The ragged old Manila rope, almost half an inch thick, was given to him by his father many years ago when he was barely the height of the drinking fountain.  Back then, he knew, he would have had no trouble making an accurate throw.  Then he could rope anything, sometimes even with his eyes closed.
     "Hey, where's your hat, cowboy?" some kid on a skateboard hollered as he hurtled past the fountain.
     Wendell grinned, accustomed to such wisecracks since he started coming to the park with his rope.
     "Your horse eat it?" another skateboarder cried out, laughing inanely.
     Ignoring them, Wendell stepped straight toward the fountain and threw the noose again, and this time it caught the silver-smooth handle.  It appeared as if it was going to slip off but, to his amazement, it stayed, if only barely.
     He was elated despite the sudden twinge he felt in his right shoulder.  He also tried to ignore it but without success.  The pain in his shoulder first flared up a week and a half ago while shoveling snow from his driveway.  Reluctantly he made an appointment with his physician who determined he was suffering from tendinitis and recommended some stretching exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles and tendons.  He did them for a couple of days but was bored stiff and decided he could pretty much achieve the same results by throwing a rope.  So he dug the old Manila rope out of the cedar chest and put it in his briefcase so he could spend his lunch hour throwing it in the park across the street from the insurance building where he worked as an underwriter.  He suspected others would laugh at him like those skateboarders but he didn't care because he knew he had to if he wanted to get better.

                                                               *

     The next afternoon at the park Wendell began by swinging the noose around his head several times, gradually letting out more and more rope until the noose was large enough to snare a bank vault.  But he didn't attempt to rope the drinking fountain because he knew a wind-up throw was only suitable for moving targets.  Such as his son, he thought, smiling palely.
     Because his father taught him how to throw a rope Wendell felt obliged to teach his son but Richie really didn't have the interest or patience to learn the skill.  Often he would lose his temper after failing to snare some stationary object and throw the rope down in frustration and stomp back into the house to watch television.  On more than a couple occasions Wendell remembered roping his son around the ankles to keep him from leaving.
     "What'd you do that for?" Richie demanded the first time he did it.
     "For your own good, son."
     "A fat lot of good that's going to do me.  You're the one who wants to be Hopalong Cassidy, not me."
     Angrily now he snapped the noose at the drinking fountain, wishing it were his son's ankles he was trying to rope.
     Not quite three weeks ago, he received a call from the desk sergeant at police headquarters informing him that Richie had been arrested with two other juveniles in connection with a series of car fires set over the weekend in the southeast part of town.  He could not believe it, thought the call was a sick prank until the sergeant explained when he would be allowed to meet with his son the next day.  For several minutes after hanging up the phone, he remained at his desk, staring at the photograph of his son he kept on it.  There must be some mistake, he told himself, Richie was not that kind of kid.  He never did particularly well at school but he had never been in any serious kind of trouble.  It had to be the people he was hanging around with now, he decided, they must have caused him to start the fires.  And he supposed he was partly at fault for not keeping a closer eye on his son, especially now that he was raising him on his own.
     Again he snapped the noose at the waist-high fountain, hoping he could become proficient enough again to rope him away from any other bad influences that might crop up in his life.

brick

Jason Michel

     George is sat outside the steps of St. Anne’s church again.
     It is Saturday evening, after all.
He stares out onto South Lambeth road and watches the cars zoom passed the crossroads. He sees the Brixton yardies with their blacked out windows and the Portuguese in their Volkwagen’s blasting out the same Latin beat with every song. George stares at them, sighs, and takes another long swig from his can of Special Brew as some of the potent brew dribbles down into his greying bush of beard and onto his grotty jeans. He picks his nose and finds a big lump of black snot on the end of his finger. Staring at it, he wonders how much pollution goes into his lungs in one single day. He takes yet another instinctive deep drag on his cigarette.
    “Fook it,…” he thinks “if they ain’t banning cars, I’m gonna carry’n smokin’”.
     Blowing all the smoke out of his lungs, he feels his gag reflex tighten and the acidic liquid touches his lips. He swallows it back down again, pulling a face as it goes.
     George is always okay, he has his brick in his pocket.
     He begins speaking and to anyone walking by he would just be another nutter talking to himself.
     He’s not, of course, he’s talking to his brick.
     He puts his hand inside his charity shop suit jacket and strokes his broken brick. He feels the rough texture on the edge of the solid object and smiles.
     It is always with him.
     It is his friend and lover.
     It will never leave him for another.
     It will never argue with him.
     It will never accuse him of not working hard enough.
     One day it will begin to rise and take him up to Heaven.
     He found his brick in an old stairwell of a building he used to live in. It was no longer a building as it was being knocked down to make big flats for people who drove big cars and had big jobs. It was as broken as he was.
     George pulls the heavy object out of his pocket and caresses it, cooing as feels his cock harden.
     Sometimes he scraps it over his body as he wanks. His chest, face, feet, arse, cock and balls are covered in tiny scars from when the brick has been a hard lover for him.
     He never talks to anyone anymore, so he never has to explain his situation.
     Sometimes people try to speak to him but as soon as they open their mouths, he turns and walks away. He did that one too many times at the bike factory. His boss used to get angry when George turned his back on him. The dickhead thought he was fucking Caesar. George lost his job because of him, but he doesn’t care. Whenever he goes to claim his dole he shows them the applications for jobs that will never take him and looks at the soulless person in front of him, the person just doing their job, and he tries to stop himself from pissing himself there and then.
     “Can’t they see?” he thinks to himself.
     George knows that he can’t change people, and he knows that it’s not his job.
     If he could, maybe his wife would have listened to him when he told her what she had meant to him and not ran off a policeman, three years ago when he went to the pub. He remembers spending the last of that week’s wages and winking at the barmaid, stumbling back to his Streatham flat, using a lamp post to guide him as he vomited on his shoes then turning the corner and walking up the steps with red brick walls. He was wondering if his babies were sleeping.
     He remembers turning the key in the lock and finding the note.
     “I HATE YOU” was all that was written.
     He locked the door and turned his back forever.
 

untitled

Ceris Dien

Every day since the new year broke long and cold he had watched the weather, that Arctic January of her first stay there, lacing his boots with eager satisfaction whenever the great storm clouds lifted. She had not minded. Early on she had given in to the easy spell of ritual, willingly conspiring with Nans to fill the huddled rooms with the scent of warm bread in the mornings, beeswax and lavender in the afternoons and, as the night wrapped itself about the tiny farmhouse, the hot salty tang of a bacon joint or the primitive, musty pungence of simmering mutton stew.

In the evenings, always just after the nine o’clock news, Twm would make his final check on the dogs in the shed and Nans would take the short-handled shovel and with it carry half a fire of glowing coals the colour of August to warm the parlour hearth for her. Then Rhys would emerge from his improvised darkroom under the stairs, Nans would kiss each of them goodnight, and together they would lay out the day’s work on the guest bed Twm had borrowed from Mrs Ellis down in the village. She had protested at their having gone to so much trouble but Nans had said “Tut, girl, we couldn’t be letting you sleep on that old settee, you’d wake all creased up like a concertina!” And Twm had said “Duw, you’re lucky it’s got a proper mattress, better than that old straw thing we’ve got!” And Nans had slapped his arm for talking such nonsense, and Twm had grinned and winked, and Rhys had descended from his attic bedroom with an ancient eiderdown bedspread in his arms the exact shade of his eyes. “I’ve aired it,” he said defensively, when his mother tried to wave him back up the stairs, and it became the backdrop to a month of late hours whilst his parents slept.

The photographs he took grew into three rows the length of the bed then along the gleaming sideboard, propped up by Nans’s ornaments - her porcelain dancing girls in their hyacinth cha cha frocks, her art deco vases - and a fading black and white picture of Twm in a beret from his days, Rhys had explained, in the International Brigade. “There’s more,” he had said wryly, “to my family, than meets the eye.”    

Rhys’s pictures, arranged chronologically, revealed less and less : Wednesday’s coarse scratches of heather were speckled with the first light fall of snow that a hard frost crystallised overnight so that on Thursday through Rhys’s close focused lens each hummock’s huddled stems stood encircled in crackling quartz . But it was toward the heights that Rhys trained his eye most often, and once he said to her that heaven was where the snow merged with the sky.

“This last one today, the sun’s almost set, you must have run like a madman to get down before your dinner went cold.”

“I can fly. Didn’t Mam tell you? It’s the blood of the Little People…come with me tomorrow, you’ll see.”  He had stripped to the waist whilst she had tidied his pictures away.         

“But the whole point of tomorrow,” she had said with mock exasperation as he untied her hair “is to be here.”     

“You and your hippy psychology” he had laughed, “you're so naturally high I get dizzy just looking at you.”

“What,” she had responded, between running the tip of her tongue around each of his nipples, “just what, exactly, do you know about me and my psychology?”

- - - 

Elis had been determined not to let the spell of the place dissuade him from his purpose.  All the way from London, as he drove, he had rehearsed in his mind the words he would use – “Mam, I understand, ok? But there’s no running water ” There’s a well she would say “…the roof leaks ” Mrs Ellis’s boys, they’ll mend it “…and you’re not well ” – And he had practised in the rear view mirror the look of undeniable rationale with which he would reach her. His confidence had not wavered at the quirky little border town with it’s time-locked, languidly English village green where he had stopped for petrol, nor had it been squeezed by the narrowing of the roads or the looming encroachment of the trees as he twisted and turned his way through the Welsh foothills. He had resolutely texted his girlfriend when he had pulled into the lay-by at Dolwyddelan for a pee: def back fri, chill, will talk her round np.

When the road left the pass for the ground-hugging expanse of the moors he was as single-minded as when he had left the city. As the single lane plunged from the rim of the plateau and the peaks sprang up on all sides he had no sense of uncertainty, not at any rate of the validity of his mission, although he suspected his girlfriend was not deceived by his “np” – talking his mother out of anything was always going to be a problem, he knew that. Even when he parked beside the tiny village hall and surprised himself by feeling more like a local than a tourist, and when Mrs Morris who ran the Post Office greeted him with “Elis Tomos, haven’t you grown!” just exactly as she had on each of his childhood visits (and it seemed so inevitably right that she had) even then he held firm and did not think it incongruous that he felt the need to congratulate himself.   

His grandparents had lived for some years in a compact little bungalow, one of four that had been purpose-built for the elderly next to the old people’s home. Elis had badgered Nans every day of his stay one summer to take him with her on her daily trip to the shop, so that he could watch the diggers and bulldozers at work on the foundations. The last time he had visited – he would have been about 12, he remembered, because it was the year he had gone to live with his mother’s parents – they had still been up at the farm. He had not meant to call on them until the next day but for reasons he could not fathom, had allowed the car to drive past the turn off he should have taken and had driven on into the village.

“She’s a bit gone in her head now,” said Twm, the tea cup clattering on it’s saucer as he offered it to Elis. “You know, old Mrs Morris, not about her things… Duw, my English has gone boy!”

“He speaks Italian in his sleep, you know,” Nans winked, first at her husband, then at Elis. “How was the journey?”   

“Terrific, barely a hitch. Nain, Taid, I’m sorry it’s been so long…”   

“Now don’t talk nonsense,” Nans interrupted. “You young people, lives to lead, at least you’ve been writing.”   

“Duw yes!” Twm waggled his finger at him. “The vicar’s son, now he’s never writing! But we’ve kept all yours.”  

“Twm's kept everything,” said Nans as she opened a drawer of the old dresser and began sorting an assortment of papers and photographs.    

“Nain,” Elis protested, “you don't have to show me my own letters !” But he knew that the squeak that surprised him in his own voice was the first farewell of his confidence, melting.   

Nans had stopped searching. She had pulled out an old brown envelope, taped together where the corners had holes, and Elis knew they were not his letters inside it.     

He felt at once tiny and hugely ungainly, poignantly aware of the fifteen years that had passed since he last saw his grandmother's now paper-skinned fingers and the responsibility that seemed to confer on his youth. He wanted to sink into the home-scented safety of the high-walled seat that had been his by the fireside when he was a child. He knew what the package contained – the last correspondence of the prodigal son with a promise to return and his picture at a Himalayan base camp, blissfully expectant, his gaze focused over and beyond the eye of the camera . “Your father” Nans said, and Elis barely controlled the tremor in his hands, “would have wanted you to have these.”    
        

- - -  

She smiled back at herself in the window as she pulled the last of the breakfast dishes out of the washing up bowl - he had been right, she knew now, she always began at the summit, as if the miracle of being there wiped out the need for an explanation, and the ribbon-thin paths the sheep etched in the heather always wove their way home. Leaving the dishes to dry face-down on the draining board she rinsed her hands, puckering her nose at the sight of her water-wrinkled fingers.  She turned to look for a towel but stopped in mid spin, remembering that she had washed and pegged the towels to dry hours ago as the birds woke that morning, sleep having fluttered away as the waiting day trilled in anticipation. Wiping her palms on her jeans so as to grip the rattling bakelite handle, reminding herself yet again to rummage through the still unpacked boxes to find the little jar of nails and screws, she stepped out into the rambling spring sunshine.

There he was, her son, perpetually startling her with his resemblance to the boy who had leaned against that same lichen-bleached wall in the photo on Nans and Twm’s bookcase. He had turned his head at the sound of the door scraping the quarry tiles, his face tilted so that his brows ran parallel to the slow slant of the ridge behind him, hair unruly as the dark twisted limbs of the hawthorn that was just beginning to bloom behind the south corner. “Not really a garden,” he said now, unrelentingly familiar, “more of a designated sheep-free zone”.    

“Not for long, unless we do something with that gate”.   

He glanced at where the rusted metalwork clung to the prehistoric-looking iron pegs straining to break free of the stone-age gateposts, slabs of native rock stolen from their cromlech walls probably, they had once speculated, by eighteenth century chapel-goers.    

“I’ll get a hammer,” he said, but when she had finished unpegging and folding and had lifted the basket from the mountain-grass lawn, he had turned again towards the high zigzag of the horizon. For the first time she noticed the bluebells growing close by the wall at his feet, making her catch her breath.

“Where they there yesterday?”   

“Duh…Yes.”   

He turned to her.  

“I didn’t see them”.   

“You can’t have been looking very hard.”   

“Don’t tread on them.”   

“On what?”    

“The bluebells!”   

“Oh.” His eyes again, the rarest of iris hues, the colour of summer snow in the deep shade, and the generous glint of his smile, laughing. “For a moment there,” he jerked his head back to indicate the scene behind him, “I thought you meant the mountains.”
    

 
     

grinding it out for high school kids

Tony R. Rodriguez 

  
[Monday, March 26th, 2007]

Helena and I leave our place around six thirty AM. I turn on the stereo and listen to a bit of news radio. The talking points discussion focuses on the fifteen British sailors who were recently taken in as hostages by Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims that these sailors were trespassing in Iranian waters on March 23rd, though the navigational equipment on the British vessel informed the sailors otherwise. People in the West are calling this hostage debacle an act of war.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Prime Minister Tony Blair to admit Britain’s guilt.

Tony Blair maintains that the fifteen sailors were not in Iranian waters, but in Iraqi waters, and he stresses the importance of freeing these innocent servicemen.

Game time:

The West will wait for Iran’s next move, commanding it be done soon.

The Middle East will lay down their best cards and see if the West will flex its strength.

I shake my head in disgust.

I yawn and stretch and think about the day to come. I begin to search within to find that there’s a slight bit of nervousness dwelling. I’ve done readings and workshops before, but there’s an ominous feeling taking hold of me. I tell myself: It’s just high school. They’re just teenagers. It’s America’s future taking time out to listen to what you have to say. They’ll appreciate being out of class. They’ll appreciate and support a Newark Memorial graduate.

All will be fine.

I’m fully prepared.

It seems I’ve forgotten a lunch. We stop by a Safeway en route to the high school. I buy a hefty sandwich, and because it’s quite huge I split it with Helena so she doesn’t have to buy a lunch later. We arrive at the high school around seven o’clock, and it seems no one is in the main office when I enter. A passerby tells me the secretaries don’t arrive until seven fifteen. I walk back to the car and tell Helena we have to wait a bit. She becomes frustrated and complains that she’s just going to leave me here with all my equipment. I brush off her anxiety with deep breaths that are barely discernible. There’s no chance of me standing outside alone with all my equipment for fifteen minutes. It’s cold. I’m a bit tense. Helena can wait a bit longer. Waiting fifteen more minutes will not affect her morning.

And I think to myself, This is why I need to buy a new car. 

From the distance I see Mr. Oak walking toward the main office. Mr. Oak’s the English teacher who had invited me to come and do a reading/workshop with the kids. He’s a hip guy with a first-rate sense of quality literature. Helena stays in the car as I walk up to him, exchange a few pleasantries, and return to the main office. I sign-in as Mr. Oak asks a maintenance person to unlock the library. As soon as the maintenance man does, I empty the SUV of all my equipment with the assistance of Helena. A warm kiss later, I say adieu to Helena and tell her to pick me up at three fifteen sharp. She smiles in agreement and says to have fun.

Once in the library I come to appreciate the future certainty of my day’s pursuit. I’ll be responsible for hosting a forty-seven minute workshop during each period of the day. I’ll be reading and lecturing to three different English classes per period, that’s about ninety students each round. Since there are six periods in a regular school day, there’ll be around five hundred forty students, from freshmen to seniors, who will have heard my reading/workshop by the day’s end. These high schoolers will either be inspired by it, loath it entirely or careless about it either way.

I begin setting up my projection screen fifteen feet in front of the audience, so it faces forty-five seats on each side of a pathway, respectfully giving the audience a total number of ninety. There’s a podium against the library wall, which I carefully drag and place a few feet next to the screen. I unfold a mini-table and place it ten feet in front of the screen. Here, I set-up my InFocus projector, laptop, and computer speakers, carefully running an extension cord from under the table to the adjacent wall. Between the speakers I place a bookstand to hold SIMPLICITY REGURGITATED: POEMS AND SHORTS, along with some business cards for any interested students. Once I inspect all the connections, I do a quick dry run to make sure everything’s in place.

And I’m ready to go.

Mr. Oak tells me that he’s going to run to his classroom to do a few things. The clock on the wall says the first session will begin in about twenty minutes. I walk around the library and see my first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE AND THE SLOW AWAKENING, displayed at the library check-out counter. I wonder if anyone will bother to read it. I walk up and down the various isles for a while until I find myself near the projection screen. With patience and reflection, I calm myself:

I clear my head.

I slowly breathe in and out.

I listen to my palpitating heart.

I whisper a little prayer to Christ Jesus.

I open my eyes and sit on a nearby couch that faces ninety seats.

Mr. Oak returns and says, “So, the first bell’s gonna ring in about two minutes. The classes should be arriving soon. I have a note on my door to remind the students that we’re meeting in the library.”

I nod.

“So, would you like me to introduce you?”

I reply, Yeah, that would be perfect.

Some students from Mr. Oak’s class begin entering the library. A few find a seat in the back. Mr. Oak quickly tells them that his class is sitting in the front left section of the audience. The kids moan and trudge toward the chairs in the front left. The first bell goes off and more students come streaming in. Some make their way to the front while others sit in the back. Again, Mr. Oak ushers his students to the front left. I walk up and down a row of fiction to steady myself, eyeing a copy of THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T.H. White. The tardy bell rings. I ask Mr. Oak if Newark Memorial starts the day off with a school-wide Pledge of Allegiance. He raises his eye brows and shakes his head in a discerning manner. I suppose Newark Memorial has since lost that great tradition. We wait a few minutes since Mr. Oak’s students are the only ones here in attendance.

A few more minutes go by.

“I’m gonna find out what’s going on,” Mr. Oak says to me with a perturbed look.

He leaps onto a library computer and clicks the mouse frantically, his eyes darting back and forth across the screen. He leaves the computer and begins pacing the library entrance. His students remain seated and socialize about a range of things kids their ages talk about.

A few more minutes go by.

“I don’t know where the classes are,” Mr. Oak says to me. He asks a student to run down to the classrooms of the teachers who’ve signed-up for the period one session and tell them that the workshop is starting. I look at the clock on the wall and I’ve already lost ten minutes of my lecture time. A couple minutes later, both classes enter the library in a ruckus of unsavory conduct. I gather the feeling that this may be a hassle for the students. Mr. Oak quiets them down, explains that today’s lecture will focus on flash fiction and personifying one’s narration, and then he introduces me with pleasant words that immediately humble my consciousness. Unexpectedly, I’m greeted with an exciting round of applauds.

I get right to it by reading “The Man and the Serpent”, which is only around one hundred fifty words in length, an ideal example of flash fiction. I ask the audience if anyone knows of the writer. I hint that the writer was Greek. A slave. A man famous for his stories “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. A few guesses aside, I tell them it was written by Aesop over two thousand six hundred years ago. I highlight that Aesop is considered by many as the patriarch of flash fiction writing. Though it’s short, we discuss whether or not flash fiction can still carry weight. I form an analogy of flash fiction being regarded as the “Commercial of Literature”. I show the classes a video clip of the Budweiser Frogs of late 90’s commercial fame, the same trio that hit it big during Super Bowl XXIX with their catchy “Bud” — “Wies” — “Er” lines. The students and the teachers attending all appear highly familiar with these old commercial ads. The kids agree that commercials get people talking. They cite popular commercials of today. The Geico car insurance commercials that poke fun of un-evolved cavemen. The pillaging Vikings of the Capital One commercials who try to maintain modern day jobs. The Jack In The Box commercials. The Comcast Cable commercials. The students all recognize that these short bits still have the potential to endure. Therefore, flash fiction, the Commercial of Literature, has the ability to endure as well, just like the great works of Aesop.

Next, we impose the idea of writing flash fiction, but with a kaleidoscope twist to it. I challenge them to personify their narrative instead of following the traditional element of having their narrator be human. I give examples of how creative the story would be if the narrator were not human, but instead an animal or inanimate object. I pose some examples:

Imagine reading a piece of flash fiction about a dysfunctional family from the perspective of a goldfish. From within the goldfish bowl, this abstract narrator informs the reader of the family problems it witnesses from inside an algae-infested bowl.

Think about reading a short story of a little child who watches her mother and father viciously argue and retreat into their bedroom, fiercely slamming their door in front of the little child so the child wouldn’t be able to see what’s happening on the other end. Since the child can only hear what’s happening, wouldn’t it be clever to have the door be the narrator and fully illustrate what exactly happens on the other side?

A self-centered teenage girl spends hours upon hours in the bathroom, vainly speaking to herself in the mirror about heartthrob boys and annoying friends and money she’s stolen from her parents who make her days miserable. Would it not be so adept to read a piece of short fiction that highlights the teenager’s life from the perspective of the bathroom mirror?

And I give more examples:

The story of a drunken mother coming home from the dive bar, the narrator being her car.

The story of a musician bound for greatness, the narrator being his guitar.

The story of a promiscuous college girl, the narrator being her bed.

I emphasize this point further by taking a moment to read “multiple scars”, a short story taken from SIMPLICITY REGURGITATED: POEMS AND SHORTS. I begin reading with a heavy voice, and the audience attentively listens and reacts to the dichotomy of a bitter married couple and a family cat. My words are accompanied with visuals from my slideshow, each slide correlating to the heartfelt lexis that spills from my lips. I finish reading to find myself surrounded by an eerie silence. There’s a slight pause that makes me uneasy. Then, a humble round of applauds blossoms a moment later, welcomingly soothing my troubled nerves. I point out that the narration of “multiple scars” has been personified by having the family cat as the storyteller. I indicate that throughout the story the cat always remained a cat, never speaking to the characters the way animals do in fables, nor did the cat ever do the impossible with its mannerisms. The only difference was that the cat was the storyteller. The narrator was not a conventional human.

From here, I enter into the workshop portion of the lecture, where I invite the students to begin composing their own piece of flash fiction whose narration will be personified. We begin by selecting an animal or inanimate object that will be our story’s narrator. In order to provide them with ideas, I show the students slides of cars and animals and surf boards and musical instruments and trees and historic landmarks and whatever else may capture their interest. Some students know exactly what their narrator will be, while others still need more time. I project a music video of the song “Rauol” by The Automatic. I inform them that by the time the video ends, they should be prepared to share what they’ve selected as their narrator. I roam from student to student while the video plays, often hearing of clever narrators yet to be born. Though I find The Automatic to be fashionably raw musicians, it seems most of the crowd could do without them, so I stop the video midway.

With a hopeful smile, I ask, Who’d like to share what their narrator will be?

“I’m going to write a story whose narrator will be a cell phone.”

We all clap.

“I play in a band, so the narrator in my story will be my bass guitar.”

We all clap.

“Mine will be my shoe. I run track and I’d like to know what it has to say.”

We all clap.

We move on to selecting a setting for our writing piece. I show a slide of rooms within a home. I show a slide of a goldfish bowl. Of a birdcage. A slide of a park. A slide of an ocean wave. Slide of an office. Of a theme park. Some students choose their setting instantly. I run through the same procedure of projecting a music video, this time of the song “12:51” by The Strokes. I wander from student to student. Creative idea to creative idea. I cut the video short and begin sharing a few examples of what I’ve heard. Some students have their setting be traditional by selecting it to be inside a home, a park or a classroom. Others select something of the abstract nature by having their setting be inside a pant pocket or inside a dog kennel.

Next, we select a conflict.

I show slides that include failed celebrity marriages and job losses and arrests and people cheating. The students get right to discovering their story’s conflict while I project a Saturday Night Live sketch by Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell. The two SNL madmen hilariously rap an ode dedicated to the fantasy film THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. The kids seem to love it, though I cut the video short.  Students share their selected conflicts: Drug addiction. Family argument. Cheating on a girlfriend. Theft. Sexually transmitted disease infection. And so on.

I conclude the lecture with a public challenge to have these students try new motifs in narration. I know that some will. Others will be forever regurgitating what they’ve learned in grade school, which is fine in its own right.

With the exception of period five, the period directly after lunch, the day continues in this congenial fashion. Period five seemed to be filled with hecklers, burn outs and academically-challenged thinkers. Overall, I wouldn’t say I consider my day at Newark Memorial High a success, more so an opportunity fulfilled. Sometimes one can only hope for an opportunity — and Mr. Oak and the participating members of the English department gave me just that.

Helena picks me up at three forty-five. I immediately turn on 560 AM and listen to the current news on the fifteen British sailors taken in by Iran. Helena tells me that she’s sorry she’s late, that she’s been frantically running around town.

And I think to myself, Wouldn’t it be interesting to read the story of Helena and her after school business from the perspective of her SUV?