Posts Tagged ‘Chunks Of Story’

art day 13 – [story fragment] Joist

I don’t know what i was thinking.

Ray mentioned his riff on James Joyce, “Rejoice” and i thought, “i’ll do that too!”

The only problem was i’ve never read Joyce. So, with five minutes research on wikipedia and a vague idea that Joyce didn’t like punctuation, i present “Joist” (Get it? Get it?!)

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The nail chipped through my skull I thought ridiculous you always loved my hair but your mother you were never to marry a construction man the skull cracked in fractures that crystaled out like supersaturated salt splintered bone finding pores in the stainless steel the flash of light like God or alien beams of solid information head wounds bleed most hair hennaed like a long haired punk with slicked dreads Bob and Joe watching clenching their work gloves Bob crying not five minutes after calling Joe fag both look at me at each other clenching hands tapping denim pockets scream the cell phone the cell phone you sit with your mother in bored conversation a restaurant we can’t afford wondering if we’ll ever talk about you and Joe we both know but never speak Joe wondering if it was an accident the nail gun slipped Bob is crying your mother is wishing you had picked a lawyer or a doctor or some other cliché wishing you spoke of Joe even if I knew already our dinners would have been easier with Joe on the table and the air cleared the light so bright everything in shadow naked building bones in black contrast as the sun gets brighter and brighter and brighter.

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Experiment done. Let us never speak of this again.

art day 9 – [story fragment] Shaman Of The Cardboard Hills

I should do something with this some day.

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Pero worked his paws over the carbon tip of the matchstick, licking and smoothing, licking and smoothing. He paused to rub at his black eyes and push back his whiskers. When the stick was sharp, its tip damp, he lifted it to resume his drawing on the box in front of him.
General Cow looked iconic and angular, blocked out in light carbon strokes, hooves crushing squirming masses of cats and snakes and hawks. Her head was lifted with purpose toward the black clouds, as if in rapture. In the background Crusader Raven bowed his head approvingly.

art day 6 – [story fragment] dizzy pig

For my 5 min exercises, i usually pick a verb or an adjective, and a noun.  It’s probably pretty obvious what the pair were for this 5 min prompt.

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Uncle Buddy was the kind of man who would attend functions in his best overalls and walk on the street side of a woman. He was the kind who would hold open doors for older men.

He wrote letters to my sister and I with tiny stubs of pencil delicately clutched in his enormous hands. He told us fanciful tales of farm life, each wrapped like a gift in a translucent shawl of gentle lies.
The hero of his tales was always the Dizzy Pig. The Dizzy Pig was a coward of epic proportions, a sneak, a scoundrel. The Dizzy Pig often meant well for his brethren at the barnyard, but something in his nature kept him from living a life of Christian honesty.
The Dizzy Pig was lonely sometimes. Sometimes he was jovial and mischievous. Often the Dizzy Pig missed my sister and me, for we didn’t visit nearly often enough and then eventually not at all. Long after our parents stopped visiting Uncle Buddy, he wrote us still.
Uncle Buddy was sometimes impatient with the Dizzy Pig, other times he envied him.

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Hmmm… a little more Americana than what i usually do. Dunno if i’ll do anything with this one.

art day 2 – [story fragment] life’s a joke

I try every day to do a couple of five minute writing exercises, just to keep my brain working.

Here’s one:

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Underneath a steamer-trunk in an attic in a house on a street in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan is a leather-bound book with your name in it. Next to your name is the day you will die, the exact time, and a sentence that describes perfectly your favorite thing.

The trunk belonged to someone’s aunt who had survived some war long ago. It is covered with stickers of the places she’s been, and quite a few she never visited. The book, of coarse, belongs to God.

God lives as a Filipino-Irish youth in a working class neighborhood. He laughs at younger children, sneers at teenagers, and ignores adults.

The worst thing God can imagine is passing a Halloween without getting in the paper.

He finds dog poop in a flaming bag trite. Phone calls from dead relatives became boring years ago.

Last year he had turned the Detroit river to blood. Just before city officials tested it, he transmogrified it to red food coloring. That was the funny part.

But you, you are His favorite. God thinks about you every day. Sometimes he pushes the trunk aside and flips the book to your page. He gets out his eraser, changes a number here, adds a word. Then he chuckles to himself.

Life’s a joke.

Get it?