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The Patron Saint of Fury ~ by Carolyn Oliver

First came the miracles: all the guns melted, the forest fires quenched, one child unwrecked, then three, four, thousands. When she appeared, her halo so deeply rainbowed it gleamed luscious black, the oceans shivered. Riot and strike, emblems of her right hand; text and rough song, emblems of her left. Tenderly, so tenderly, her holy gaze gathered beheaded mountains, plains soaked deep with oil, water-poisoned cities. She stung our lips with the nettles of her mercy until we whispered her newborn name over the bones of our untroubled dead, and rose to save our lives.

***

Carolyn Oliver’s very short prose and prose poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Indiana Review, Jellyfish Review, jmww, Unbroken, Tin House Online, Copper Nickel, Midway Journal, and New Flash Fiction Review, among other journals. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family. Links to more of her writing can be found at carolynoliver.net.

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Two Questions for Francine Witte

We recently published Francine Witte’s thoughtful “Cab Ride.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

 

1) That opening sentence is such a great way to introduce us to this narrator, that they think of both numbers and love as made-up things. What do they believe in, do you suppose?

This narrator is cynical of most things when the story begins. Having been disappointed in love, they believe that love is not a real thing, but a made-up thing in the same way that humans developed numbers as a way to count things. To narrator, there is probably nothing that truly exists except that we decided it exists.

 

2) I like, too, that we’re never really told what the situation is, but we are given hints: “My mother, of course, is dying,” the cab driver’s 5-year-old daughter. This is such a subtle style of storytelling! Were you ever tempted to out-and-out tell the reader exactly what is going on?

No, I am never tempted to explain more. I like saying as little as possible. You can say very little and the reader will get it. I like reading stories that work that way. When I read a story like that, I feel like I’m part of the construction of the story. The trick is to find the right thing to say. But that’s what makes the writing fun.

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Cab Ride ~ by Francine Witte

The meter starts, numbers twisting and ticking away, and it doesn’t matter because numbers are a made-up thing like love.

The city outside whirs by, men hammering buildings together, baby carriages, and store signs, all of it blurry and Monet. I’ll put this painting in my head with the others.

The cab driver is 55 or 80, a hug of gray hair around his head. I don’t think much about cab drivers. I figure they like it that way.

My mother, of course, is dying.

The cab driver drives past the hospital. “Wait,” I tell him, “I said St. Elizabeth’s.”

“I know, he says, switching off the meter. “Let’s go look at the river instead.” I’ve heard of things like this. Kidnappings, hijackings.

One minute, my mother was asking if I wanted my eggs scrambled or fried.

The cab driver’s eyes in the rearview. “Hospitals can wait a few minutes,” he says. “My daughter,” he continues, “she was only five.”

When we get to the river, the slap of an autumn morning as we step out of the cab. All around us, the usual joggers, the seagulls climbing the sky.

“Those birds,” he says, “they have this sense of direction. It’s built into their wings.”

We get back into the cab. We head to the hospital. I open the window and let in a whoosh of air, a sudden swoop underneath my arms.

***

Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton) Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her full-length collection of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This was recently published by Blue Light Press. She lives in New York City.

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Two Questions for Melissa Saggerer

We recently published Melissa Saggerer’s lovely “Begin with an Ice Cream Cone.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

 

1) I love how this story opens with such a specific moment and then goes broader, drawing us into the narrator’s life, and then circles back to the beginning. What made you choose to “begin with an ice cream cone”?

A: Thank you! I wanted to start with a small loss, something that was easy to recover from, something from childhood that could feel universal. I thought of King Kone, the soft serve place where I grew up. Although I don’t remember ever dropping my cone, I could picture it as if I had. This little piece was born in a Kathy Fish Fast Flash workshop, and it was originally titled “How To Cope With Loss,” but Myna Chang suggested I title it “Begin With An Ice Cream Cone.” I liked how that reflected the circular nature of the story, and was a little less on-the-nose for pointing out the driving meaning of the piece.

 

2) Though there is a lot of heartbreak in this story, there is also a lot of hope, of going back, of finding your way. Do you consider this to be a hopeful story?

A: Yes, I do. It’s impossible to avoid sadness and heartache, but they aren’t always isolated. I used to be better at shifting my focus to the positive. I remember taking a very sad friend to my favorite abandoned barn and walking through the dangerously undulating second story, trying to share every strange happiness, trying to fill him up with enough joy to crowd out the pain. It didn’t work, I used to be overly (annoyingly?) optimistic. I think some things get easier, but not everything. Now feels like a strange dark time, so I inspect shards of memories looking for small ways back to feeling good.

 

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Begin with an Ice Cream Cone ~ by Melissa Saggerer

When you drop your ice cream cone, you can ask your mom to share hers with you. Yours was a twist, but hers is vanilla, and even though it’s not your favorite, it’s sweeter now, more satisfying. While you’re still prickling with longing for the melting lump on the pavement, you’re okay. When you’ve used up your favorite watercolor brick – Prussian Blue – the color of the northern sky as it darkens, the sea when it’s deep, but not too deep, and the boat in your dreams, you can try to remake it with other colors. A different blue, a purple-r blue emerges, might you like that too? When your first boyfriend stops calling, you can put a dinosaur band-aid on your heart, tending to your pain, something tangible to touch, say, yes, this happened, but also, you will heal. When you move, when you miss all of your friends, when you even mourn your post office attendants, the trees you no longer see, you can begin again with new routines. Find a coffee shop where they always smile, find someone to go to a laughing meditation with, laugh it away until you’re crying, ha ha ha, ho ho ho, hee hee hee, and when you wipe the tears away, you feel a little better. When you get married, and your father isn’t there, you almost wish you had asked him to walk you down the aisle, but you thought it was too paternalistic, you asked him to read a poem instead, but now that he isn’t there, you wish you had given him that request. You can put one foot in front of another, and you can smile, you try not to cry, you look at all the people you love, you try not to cry. When your first pregnancy does not result in your first baby, you can hold a pillow at night. Imagine all the things that would have followed. When loved ones die, you can think of the good times, you think of their hard times. You wonder if they’re floating in the ether, if they’re meeting angels, if they’re mingling with grandparents, past pets. When you lose your job, you can make lists, reassess your strengths, try to reinvent yourself. In your doubt and your struggle, you try to find hope. When you lose your way, you can try to follow the breadcrumbs back to the beginning, and start again, with an ice cream cone.

***

Melissa Saggerer has been a bellhop, a museum curator, and a library director. You can find her flash in Leopardskin & Limes. On twitter @MelissaSaggerer.

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Two Questions for R.A. Matteson

We recently published R.A. Matteson’s shimmering “Galatea.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

 

1) This is a myth that has always bothered me — no real woman is good enough for this man and he falls in “love” with a statue, which is then made real for him. There’s something so uncomfortable about the whole story for me. How do you interpret the source material? 

Pygmalion doesn’t seem to know how to deal with someone who has agency. And I don’t think he’ll be happy with Galatea for long, now that she’s a living woman with opinions and pimples. Maybe the authors of the myth intended for Galatea to still be a mindless statue, just made out of skin this time. Maybe it never occurred to them that she might grow a personality, or that she might think or want anything. But if we assume that Galatea turns into a woman with a mind and a voice, either Pygmalion is going to get tired of living with someone who can speak up, or Galatea is going to learn to hide her heart. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of women (and people in general) discover that it’s just easier to pretend they’re not people or to let someone else dictate their humanity to them. In this piece, I wanted to explore the pressure that our relationships (romantic, platonic, and parental) can put on us to play roles. People do this to each other all the time without even noticing. For Galatea, this pressure must be even stronger. She only has one person, and he knows exactly what he wants her to be. It’s the kind of “love” that can crush a person.

 

2) I love that the narrator here dreams of being rock again, disappearing into the ocean to someday become “some finger gem.” Do you think there is any escape for her other than this?

When I wrote the ending, I imagined the process of becoming a “finer gem” in two different ways. One was figurative and hopeful, the other literal and darker.
The biggest trouble Galatea faces is that she has already been told who and what she is. She’s never been separate from this one man. I can’t help but wonder if Galatea can even hear her own voice in her head, or if Pygmalion has shaped that part of her as well. So, yes, I think there are other options for her, but I don’t think any of those options involve Pygmalion. As long as he’s around, it’ll be too easy to slip back into performing the personality he expects of her. She’ll need to find some way to shape herself, to become “self made.” And she’ll need people to support her while she’s figuring these things out. And maybe she’ll become something more, something “finer,” than Pygmalion imagined.
On the other hand, this type of growth is difficult and complicated, so I can’t really blame her for getting overwhelmed. She might sometimes wish it would all go away, or that she wouldn’t have to notice the way people think about her. As long as she doesn’t have the ability to shape herself, being conscious probably wouldn’t feel worth it.
I can only hope she learns to see herself through her own eyes, because without that change from within, she’ll carry Pygmalion with her no matter where she goes.

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Galatea ~ by R.A. Matteson

No one asked her if she wanted to be real. Just as Pygmalion tore her from the earth, battered her shapeless form with his chisel, scraped her skin smooth, dressed her (undressed her) all without asking, he had not thought to ask if she wanted to come down off the pedestal. The fickle goddess, too, had forced breath into her, had given her no warning.

And now she knows that she is not the first woman to dress as she’s told, to smile the smile someone else has given her, to stand, silent as stone, watched by people who think they love her. She is not the first and this company is the last thing she wants.

Sometimes at night, when the wind is hot and salty, she imagines going down to the water as it laps hungry against the sand. (Oh, she hates the hunger). She imagines walking into the waves. Letting the water drag her down like the rock she was.

Maybe she could once again become stone, like the white fingers of so much coral. Maybe, in the secret dark, where he cannot see her, she will be crushed into some finer gem.

***

R. A. Matteson lives on Lake Superior with a cat who often sounds lost even when all the doors in the house are open. She has been published in Molotov Cocktail and would like to tell you a story if that’s ok with everyone.

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Two Questions for Xenia Taiga

We recently published Xenia Taiga’s intense “And The Clouds Never Stopped Coming.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

 

1) This story opens with a relatively brutal scene, the mother melting the daughter’s dolls. What led to this moment?

The story was born from two threads. One was a conversation I had with friends, both married and unmarried, about controlling sexual desires. If one was cultivating self-control, how does one go about finding entertainment that doesn’t involve a. too much drama (cause already got enough of stress, thank you very much!), b. too much violence (squeamish), and c. that doesn’t have any romantic tendencies. My immediate thought was of those Disney cartoon movies! Disney movies are great! Cute and entertaining. Then, wait a minute, I realized most of them revolved around the love relationship theme. The second was a discussion I had with a friend, whose girl I occasionally helped babysat. We both were disappointed that her three year old and a half kept choosing movies that were on love and weddings. The mother tried her best to steer her daughter onto other topics. Such as look at this cool place! Wouldn’t it be awesome to travel the world with friends? The girl always returned to the same subject. To comfort the mother I said it was a phrase and that she’d outgrow it, but so far she hasn’t. As for the mother in the story, she was out back smoking a cigarette. She snapped. She got tired of hearing her daughter singing. She got tired of the dancing princess. She got frustrated with society.

 

2) The difference between the narrator’s moment with her mother and her moment with her grandchildren — I love the contrast here. She has grown such a beautiful soul and she shares that with the children. Did you ever think she might have turned out differently? That this story would have a different ending?

I never did entertain that thought. Most of the time as people grow older and experience life’s struggle, they’re reminded of the struggles their parents went through or the difficulties their friends faced; as a result they develop empathy and a tenderness as well when they realize that life is short and must be celebrated each day. Of course, this doesn’t always happen and those kind of people are usually miserable and have few friends. But the mother in the story is different. She learned. She is still learning and wants to continue learning. As a result she’s sharing what she learned with the children.

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And The Clouds Never Stopped Coming ~ by Xenia Taiga

Her mother clicks the cartoon off. She ignores her daughter’s pleas. She was in mid-chorus; singing along with the princess, dancing when the TV’s screen went blank. Now her mother heads to the bins where she keeps her toys. In her arms she carries all her dolls with their pretty dresses, the princesses and princes. She follows her mother to the kitchen. She plops them on the counter and one by one removes the dolls’ clothes. The pink heart-shaped dresses and golden tiaras lie next to the naked dolls piled on top of each other. It’s an obscene scene and the little girl blushes. Her mother ignites the burner. Under the flames, the tiny-stitched clothing melt. The smell of burnt plastic stinks up the kitchen. When the mother finishes, she turns around to reprimand her daughter. “Don’t cry.”

She takes the girl’s hand. Out in the backyard she places her daughter’s hands on the oak tree. “This is your husband,” she says. She plucks a flower. “This is your lover,” she says. They lie their backs on the wet grass and watch the wind blow the clouds. “These are your friends,” she says. In the kitchen, she removes the Diet Coke from the fridge and takes a half of a packet of Mentos. Dropping the Mentos in, the soda explodes twenty nine feet high. “This is your life,” she says. Days afterward the floor tugs the bottom of their feet and their arms are covered in the sweet brown liquid that drops from the ceiling.

The girl grows up. She forgets. When she arrives home crying over a broken heart, when she bursts through the front door sobbing over her divorce, the woman takes her by the hand and leads her toward the backyard. She spreads her hands and says, “This is all yours.”

  Years pass. The girl remarries and gives birth to more children. They both grow older, but the mother grows older still. And when the girl, now a woman not worth your salt, hears the news, she arrives at the burial site. Her hand reaches up. From the sky she plucks wisps of clouds and sprinkles them over the grave. The grandchildren standing by her side grow impatient. “Nana, why must we be here?” they ask. She leads them to the tree standing nearby and wrap their hands around it. “This is your spouse,” she says. Among the weeds, she collects flowers and twists them into crowns of glory. Placing them on their heads, she says, “These are your lovers.” They run to the creek that sweeps along the graveyard’s edge. There they fall on their backs to count the clouds. When they reach a thousand, she rises and spreads her arms. “These are your friends.” They laugh and laugh and laugh, for never before have their hearts been filled with so many good things. It feels wonderful.

***

Xenia Taiga lives in southern China with a cockatiel, a turtle and an Englishman. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and is part of Best Microfiction 2019 Anthology. Her website is http://xeniataiga.com/. Her abstract artwork is available on Etsy.

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Two Questions for Derek Heckman

We recently published Derek Heckman’s gorgeous “Revelations.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

 

1) I noticed on Twitter, you were kind of spitballing this story as”a ‘Left Behind’-style story where the good Christians all get raptured and the End Times begin on earth and everyone just kind of makes it work.” Do you often think of your stories like this, or was this an exception?

Of the stories that I’ve written, the ones I’ve wound up liking the best, and the ones I’ve had the most fun writing, all kind of started as jokes. I don’t necessarily mean that as like ba-doom-tss, laugh out loud kind of jokes, but just that there was something sort of odd or offbeat about an idea, and it made me kind of smirk. It’s a little like when you’re hanging out with your friends and you all start riffing and doing a bit. Somebody says something and someone else expands on it or adds something new, and each new little joke just keeps the momentum going. That’s a lot of how I write. The story itself doesn’t usually turn out funny. I have a story in The Collapsar called “Accidents,” and while the finished thing is really pretty heavy, the germ of it was this kind of jokey thought of “a cheerleader has an existential crisis,” and I just sort of riffed it into a longer, more serious piece. The same thing happened with this one. I made a silly, early-morning tweet, but then saw all the ways it could keep going and, well, kept it going.

 

2) I love your take on Death — he seems like such a nice fellow! Actually, I just love your take on the apocalypse and that beautiful, beautiful imagery at the end. Do you think, with all this, that the people who got raptured might be envious of those left behind?

I’d say probably yes and no. The conceit of the story is that there is no cosmic trick or anything: The people who thought they would get capital-s Saved end up being right and they get to go to Heaven and be with their creator. On the one hand, I’m sure they were pretty happy about that, but on the other hand, can you imagine having to spend eternity with those people??? Even if you were one of them??? I think there’s a spinoff story to this one with Heaven as this kind of bitchy suburban lane where everyone’s trying to undermine and backstab each other all the time, because that’s what I think it would be like. The flip-side of that is that, back on Earth, the End Times are serious stuff. The rivers are full of blood and there’s all this disease and death. But I think if you got all the nay-sayers out of the way, there are people who could do some really amazing things, who really could figure out how to clean up all water and put an end to all the pestilence. I think more than anything that the people who would be left would also be the people who could see each other through all that. It’s all those people in Italy singing out of their windows during a lock down, you know? I think that that community aspect is something we have in us and is really something to strive for, apocalypse or no.