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Two Questions for Francine Witte

We recently published Francine Witte’s gorgeous “Large Bird.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story.

1)     I love “the lostest of causes. “So far gone that even the birds look at you and think ‘nope.'” How lost of a cause is this narrator?
This narrator has had her poor heart swallowed. Again. She has gone to this beautiful place to get a different kind of lost, lost in the beauty of nature in the form of sand and sea. But instead of giving in to all that potential healing, she sees yet another chance at what she thinks and hopes will be love. The bird, of course, sees the situation for what it is, another chance at heartbreak, tries to warn the narrator, but is ignored and gives up. The narrator heads heart first into yet another mess and that’s how lost she is.

2)     The environment plays such a powerful role in this story — the birds, the ocean, the beach, the “saltless rim of a margarita”: all of it bleeds into the narrator’s memories, her regrets and heartache. Do you think the effect would be the same if she had chosen to go elsewhere for vacation, say, a cabin in the woods?
I love using the environment in my stories because of the sensory richness of it. The beach has so much to see, to feel, but so do other environments. If this story were set in a cabin in the woods, another set of sensory details would be available, the scratch of bark, the splinter of floorboard, etc. And yes, it would work, but not be the same. Part of that has to do with my own connection to the ocean. I feel such a primal connection to it, and it mesmerizes me and makes me feel tiny and huge all at the same time. So the difference would be mostly an emotional one. Technically, I could add enough sensory details to make it work, but I think part of the heart of the story would be missing.

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Large Bird ~ by Francine Witte

Crash of foam against the jetty and you feel like your heart has been swallowed again. Everything craggy around you, the rocks, of course, but also love. You came here on vacation to lose yourself for a week. You watched the birds, almost too large, you thought, lugging themselves in the humid air and finally pressed down from the sky. One was trying to warn you. Instead you lapped around in the cooling blue, laid yourself out on the beach like a sheet of white paper and later, you went the hotel bar with its drinks all pink and ice cube with umbrellas too small for the rainstorm of the stranger three stools down. How his eyes, themselves, were a cooling blue and looked at you, then down to his finger tracing the saltless rim of a margarita, the same tracing motion he would later use on you, on your stomach, your thighs, and into your own deep salt ocean. And you fell in love so hard, so jetty crash that even after he checked out cold without even a text, you couldn’t answer this bird who knows more about love than you ever have, and was trying so hard to warn you, it fought its own natural need to be in the sky. And when the bird gives up, sees you are the lostest of causes, he skitters away, plops up on the jetty and hefts himself upwards till he becomes cloud and unspoken fleck of rain and anything else that belongs in the sky, you watch him getting smaller and smaller finally fading like a warning, like a wrong love beginning to die. 

***

Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is Just Outside the Tunnel of Love (Blue Light Press.)Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website francinewitte.com. 

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Matthew Jakubowski

We recently published Matthew Jakubowski’s delightful “Ghost Story.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) I adore this ghost. I want to be haunted by this ghost. I want to give this ghost a hug and tell them “you’re doing all right, friend.” Is our ghost (“our” ghost!) enjoying their haunting existence, or are they simply playing at a sense of joy that evades them?
“Our ghost” —I love that! I started writing this story with the idea of a ghost that’s sort of haunted by its own existence. In a playful way at first but I don’t think this ghost ever saw itself becoming a ghost. Who does? But there it is trying to grasp joy while puzzling things out. Then it gets tired and it’s alone and the more searching it does the more it starts to feel. And I think feelings are a bit dangerous for this ghost.

2) The things this ghost does! Time travels! Watches movies! Rides a buffalo and a wild horse! Visits Bozeman! Are these things the ghost wanted to do in its life and never got the chance? Or are they simply the whims of a ghost? 
If I had to choose an afterlife I’d want some adventure, not eternal peace and tranquility. But also not moral tasking, like in Dickens, or anything as tragic as Orpheus and Eurydice. So this ghost is making the best of it in the quasi-bardo of food courts, cowboy showdowns, and other places it gravitates to for reasons it doesn’t understand. I guess I saw the ghost as having an unresolved fate. A goofball with a good heart weathering storms of memory, still hoping it’s on the right path but also realizing it’s fading into the very idea of “a path.”

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Ghost Story ~ by Matthew Jakubowski

Ghost with a gun. Ghost in the desert. Ghost wearing a cool hat.

Ghost who can phase through the earth but prefers to walk. Ghost who wears a white sheet sometimes, and sometimes has shadowy feet, which sometimes make a slight noise, just for fun. Ghost with a good sense of humor that’s lost on almost everyone.

Ghost with a new gun. Stolen! Ghost who can drink you under the table. Old ghost in the wild west who suddenly shows up in a Honda Fit and is like hey oh sorry I time-traveled I can do that. ’Bye! Ghost who comes back to town later riding a buffalo and pretends none of that car stuff happened.

Ghost sitting out in the open eating stolen food it can’t even digest or taste but who hangs out all day at the food court ruining the food with ectoplasm and when a teenager finally gets up the courage to yell at it the ghost says, “Good-bye, cruel world!” and crawls away very slowly into a video arcade.  

Ghost having a bad day. Ghost wearing the jersey of that team everybody hates. Ghost with a shoe on its head. Ghost watching Ghostbusters and crying.

Ghost clearing its head getting away from it all, riding a horse, and the horse is pretty freaked out but later, after the ghost sets it free, it dreams of an island in Montana where wild horses used to thrive and actually makes it there, but dies the same day.

Ghost sitting at a bar in Bozeman with a few serious drunkards who are laughing and yell to the other scared patrons and ghost tourists, “See! We told you. But no, you said. Shut up, you said.”

Ghost who used to pop up out of the ground in the middle of showdowns and shout la-la-la and dance in a circle right when the duelers drew their pistols just to get a laugh out of its buddy death.

Tired ghost. Ghost of my heart. Ghost of my old self. Ghost of my old selves’ hearts. Ghosts who got lucky. Ghost who will probably be fine. Ghost of the woods and the rivers and good carpets and perfect coffee. Ghost of good luck. Ghost we hope to have, to help us cross over when it’s time.

***

Matthew Jakubowski’s flash fiction appears in JMWW, The Brooklyn Rail, 3:AM Magazine, and Spelk. He lives in West Philadelphia and has a blog at mattjakubowski.com.

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Two Questions for Olabisi Aishat Bello

We recently published Olabisi Aishat Bello’s powerful “After the funeral, your father is the first.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love how the title plays with the readers’ expectations here — “your father is the first” hints at a recovery, an acceptance, perhaps — but no, the father is retreating further and further into his guilt and grief and anger. Do you think there will be a point where the father comes to terms with what has happened? Or will he continue this heartbroken, cruel descent?
With the current trajectory of the story, it is unlikely the father will come to terms with what has happened, at least not without any external influence. That could be the intervention of his dead wife’s family that he shuns in the story or his child forcing him to face reality. However, both options are unlikely considering all parties are battling their form of grief. The only silver lining is that this father definitely cares for his child as shown by past recollections of how he always listened and how his child’s pain seemed to snap him out of his guilt and accusations temporarily, so there could be a future wherein his love for his child will supersede his grief.

2) The father’s grief is so overwhelming he not only ignores his child’s heartbreak, he contributes to it. First by his accusations and then by his promises to fix something that can’t be fixed. Do you think the child will find time to mourn in the midst of this torment?
If this child is left in their father’s company, there will absolutely be no time for them to grieve. While I do believe that a family grieving together can lead to faster healing, such healing can’t happen in the current environment of the child. If the wife’s family plays a strong role in the grieving process, then maybe, just maybe, this child will not only be able to mourn but also be able to heal.

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After the funeral, your father is the first ~ by Olabisi Aishat Bello

After the funeral, your father is the first

to eat. to shower. to watch T.V. in the dark. to have his sister call. to silence the phone and refresh his messages for the third time that hour. to drive to the train station. to come home around midnight when you’re already in bed, untucked but not asleep,never asleep. to call your mother. to end up in voicemail. to call her five times after, ten times after, fifteen, twenty…until his thumb starts to cramp. to cook her favorite meal of fried rice on the dusty stovetop of your home. to cry in the bathroom while the burnt grains soak in the sink. to cleave a smile when you open the door. to ask how you’re doing and for the first time, not listen to the answer. to fall asleep on the icy marble tiles.to yell at you when you wake him. to sigh. to apologize without looking to see the dam in your six-year-old eyes. to skip work and return to the train station. to ask strangers if they’d seen his wife with the red summer dress and almond eyes so homey they could caulk a fractured family. to spend thirty minutes in the driveway with the windows rolled up to shield in his sobs. to slam the car door. to slam the house door. to slam the bedroom door. to throw her picture frame at the rose-pink walls, a color she’d chosen but he’d grown to love. to pack up all her clothes. to unpack all her clothes. to return to the station for the fourth time. to return to the station for the fifth time. to return to the station for the sixth time. to sleep at the station. to dream of your mother running up to him after the train doors slide open, arms semi-circled in the expectation of a hug. to stop seeing half her body stuck between the tracks and the other half still in the train. to stop hearing the words of the Imam as they lowered her cloth filled with salvaged parts into the muddy ground. to cry in public. to be dragged home by your mother’s family. to throw a tantrum in the living room, toppling the scattered remainders of her—the plush peach pillows, the couch with the strawberry lip-gloss stain, your baby photo album. to blame her family for inviting her over last weekend. to blame himself for not driving her there. to blame you for surviving. to blame you again for surviving. to blame you over and over until he’s slapped shut by his now-ex-mother-in-law. to hear a muffled whimper behind your adjacent bedroom wall. to taste a guilt so acrid it stings the back of his throat. to knock on your door. to not get a response. to knock harder on your door. to still not get a response. to burst into your bedroom, heart strangled by the threat of a multiplied absence. to find you folded up like a clam, gripping the nicked edge of your mother’s picture frame, hiding behind the shadow of his grief. to swear to fix this. to return to the train station the very next day.

***

Olabisi Aishat Bello is a chemistry and engineering nerd from Nigeria who still somehow finds space in her heart for fiction and poetry writing. You can find her works in Trampset, the Blue Marble Review, Atlas & Alice, among others, and you can follow her on Twitter @OlabisiBA and Instagram @olabisi_ba.

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Suzanne Hicks

We recently published Suzanne Hicks’ daring “Crickets.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) Let’s just get this one out of the way first: Why Mormon crickets?
I live in Nevada, and some of my story ideas are inspired by things happening around the state. This past summer there was an invasion of Mormon crickets in a town called Elko. I saw pictures of them covering people’s houses and the roads, and there were so many of them that you couldn’t even see the pavement. In the news, people described their smell, the sound of the crunch as they drove over them, and how these things were just taking over the entire town and their lives. I was captivated by this event, sort of like when you’re watching a scary movie and you can’t look away. So, I wanted to write about them, and they seemed like the perfect vehicle to tell this story.

2) For me, this feels almost like a parallel universe story (in fact, the “what if” phrasing really brings to mind the Marvel comics “What If” series that delves into alternate universes!). Do you think this is a potential reality for our narrator? Or is it only wishful thinking?
The narrator is imagining that alternate universe. They’re thinking about this life-changing event, wishing something could have changed the outcome. But I like your interpretation of the story! I love Marvel and the concept of the multiverse. I like thinking that other universe could be the narrator’s reality.

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Crickets ~ by Suzanne Hicks

What if you lived in Elko, Nevada? What if this was the summer when a swarm of Mormon crickets invaded the town? What if they engulfed your house, clinging to the clapboard, blacking out the windows so you could hide? What if the sound of their chirping was the reason you can’t sleep at night? What if their stench is why you spend hours retching over the toilet? What if they could bore their way in through the tiny cracks and infiltrate your house? What if they congregated in the holes he punched in the wall? What if they invaded his room, crawling under the door you keep shut? What if instead of feeding on their own dead, they ate away at the musty clothes in his closet, his soccer jersey? What if they consumed his bed you left untouched, unmade? What if the crickets had arrived the previous summer? What if they could crawl into his ears and get inside his head? What if they fed on the thoughts that made him lash out, brought him to tears? What if they didn’t stop until everything that made him hurt was gone? What if then you could finally sleep, knowing he’d be there in the morning when you woke up in Elko, Nevada, or any other place in that universe?

***

Suzanne Hicks is a disabled writer living with multiple sclerosis. Her stories have appeared in Maudlin House, Roi Fainéant, New Flash Fiction Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband and their animals. Find her at suzannehickswrites.com and on Twitter @iamsuzannehicks. 

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Two Questions for Thao Votang

We recently published Thao Votang’s stunning “Mom, can I ask you a question.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the daughter’s questions here, how they vary from the mundane (how to boil rice on a stovetop) to the deeply personal (what if her family forgets her). It shows so much of her concern as she makes her way in this place. Do you think she has other questions she is, perhaps, afraid to ask?
Yes, many, many questions. When I wrote this thinking about things I’d learned from my mom and things I’ll never know. Answers to mundane questions like how to make rice, are places where our mothers or our mother culture are easier to access. Places where it’s possible to restore or pass down joy. As the questions morph, the narrator looks back to history but then must face the future as someone who is separate, of a diaspora, who must make their own way.

2) The last two questions hit so hard: “Mom, where is home? And now, Mom?” Where is home for our narrator, do you think? And where for her mother?
Do you remember when you stopped calling the house where you grew up home? When that stopped becoming ‘going home’ versus visiting family? For me, it must have been part of the college transition. For others, maybe it was a number of years separated from the country they grew up knowing. The word home can mean so many things and conjure so many feelings: good, bad, neutral, and/or visceral. But then it can be used to indicate creating comfort as in making oneself at home. The work ends in the fuzzy space between those meanings and the tension between having a static home and making a home. Both the mother and the narrator, despite their different distances from their motherland, have the common task of making a home.

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Mom, can I ask you a question ~ by Thao Votang

Which finger was it that I should use to measure water for rice? Was it up to three quarters of one segment of my ring finger? Not my left ring finger though, not the finger I will tie myself to a man with, but the right ring finger that I will use to measure the rice that will keep me and that man alive. Mom, I’m sorry but the man I married did not come with a rice cooker, how do I cook rice on the stovetop? What is the name of the heart shaped herb in English? What is it in Vietnamese? Can I serve it with everything now that I am my own cook? And if I grow it in my backyard like you used to, will it purify the poisoned ground that we live on? Can we live on it when I’m too tired to cook? Mom, when did you hit menopause? Does breast cancer run in the family on my father’s side? Or was that a myth that I misheard as a child? Why did my father’s mother die so young? Did she die in the first war of her lifetime or second? Did she ever know peace? Will our family forget me since I’m all the way across the world? Will I be able to speak with them if I only learn a child’s Vietnamese? Mom, what was the humidity of the city you grew up in? Is that when my hair will look its best? Mom, what are the toxins you were exposed to? What about your father? And your mother? What about my father? My father’s father and father’s mother? Mom, what do you remember and what do you miss? Mom, where is home? And now, Mom?

***
Thao Votang is a writer. Her work has been published in Salon, Hyperallergic, Sightlines, Southwest Contemporary, and Lucky Jefferson. Her debut novel will be published July 2024 from Alcove Press.