Tag: Flash fiction

79 Word Stories

On By NW FilbertIn ExperimenctesLeave a comment

So a new formal challenge emerges.  Tipped off by Duotrope, I stumbled on this interesting competition sponsored by the Aspen Writers Foundatino and Esquire magazine: A short short story of exactly 79 words, judged 25% plot, 25% characterization, 25% theme and 25% originality.  Why not, right?  I mean many of us compose 100-word stories (rarely EXACTLY 100, but) for Madison Woods “Friday Fictioneers” photo-prompts…so why not give 79 a shot, eh?  So as a little side project over the next month or so I’ll be delivering various aborted attempts…I’d love feedback, but they’ll probably keep appearing anyway!  Thanks all.

1. A 79-word story in 78 words

             I slipped there, on my way out.  I cried.

Someone held me, shaping me thus.  That’s what I heard, but never quite believed.  So they told me other things, and showed me pictures.  It began to sound like music, that I’d made.  I played.  And continued to study.  Soon it was all words and experience and me stumbling away.  Or sailing back, on rough waters with a rowdy entourage, and fear.  And love.  In either direction, I’m here.

N Filbert 2012

The Incident

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes24 Comments

buzzard

The Incident

The evidence was stark and slim.

A photograph of akimbo’d limbs against a whitened sky.  A dark bird.

The detectives were at a loss, many losses, and uncertain of how to proceed.

They called in “the expert,” a wizened old crackpot retiree who still seemed to capture things no one else could.

He was sent for and trundled his bulk up the sidewalk later that day, grimacing and cursing his way to the station.

Huffing and grunting, he picked up the picture between leathered forefinger and cracked swollen thumb.  He squinted.

“All I can tell you boys, is that it sho’ ain’t no murder.  A murder involves always  more than the one.”

N Filbert 2012

be sure to join us at Friday Fictioneers – photo prompted flash fiction

SnapShotting Summer

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Photography2 Comments

I lived for awhile in Grand Rapids, Michigan, attending graduate school and being regenerated and grown in-vitro like a culture into the family, religion and industry of literature.  I’ve recently stumbled across a photographer’s blog who shoots many subjects in and around that West Michigan area.  If you browse her photos over the past week or two it will provide you a feel for snapshotting summer…and here are some verbal renditions…

STRASSENFOTOJOURNAL

“Dozing in the Heat: Grand Haven”
by Cornelia Lohs

Snap-shotting Summer

 

Ever the distortion of mind.  With emotion, contortion.

At times, a necessary snap.

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A young woman peddling her bicycle, unclothed for summer.  Body moving like taffy on its paddles.  Just as pliant, just as tight, and just as supple.  As salty, as mouth-watering, as sweet.

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Tumbles in the machinery like loose screws, clanking and rattling around.

A clicker, a habit, desire.

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Sun sears glares upon moments, lasering trains of thought.  Dis integration.  You stumble, you wobble, you very nearly fall.  Erasing inspiration with foul mood.  You adjust.

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Scars like the outside, on the surface of the brain.

Called memory, called dreaming, called thought.

Or so you imagine.

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Pool or sprinkler, sweat and breeze, you forgot.  Moment’s season’s change, and you were happy.  Somewhere in mountains, or North by the sea.  Without belongings.

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It emerges like a wire, a monster’s bite.

You’ll call it “me” or “I” and it’ll stand for something.  Continuity.

An inventor’s dream.

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Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

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“I” continues to sit and walk, lie and stand.  To eat.  To breathe.

Another opportunity – for collaborative creativity

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Graphotos, Photography, Traces, WritingLeave a comment

my spouse/partner etc. posted this this morning and I find it instigative – love to see/hear what comes of it for the rest of you!

http://ekphrastixarts.com/2012/05/10/ekphrastic-opportunities/

(more pix to work from at post!)

Friday Flash Fictioneers attempt

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing19 Comments

            Remembering the wolf and the maid, but never the moon in the trees, not last night.

And what of the whispers?  Not those.  Where are they?  All had been silence.  Or noise.  Perhaps an enormity turning to absence.

Now mirrored.  Must be lying down, in order to see, like this.

Yes, this: bright pupil, diseased sighs, and the webbing aging around.

“But, in fact, the eye sees itself in the above phenomenon merely as it does so in ordinary optical reflexion.

If the visual organ proper really were fire…if vision were the result of light issuing from the eye as from a lantern, why should the eye not have had the power of seeing even in the dark?”

– Aristotle, The Senses –

http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/photo-prompt-for-100-word-flash-fridayfictioneers-29/