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Holes in the Sand
December 7, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Kill, Politics, Terror, War | by davidbdale | 14 comments
The brain has a fuse. After years of threat and terror, the fuse blows, leaving a scar behind, a charred little plug of once-animated tissue. It can turn a person mean. The bombs hover over our heads, almost within view. They cast their shadow over all our choices, smart bombs in search of a policy. From the rooftops, we make out, just beyond the harbor, smudges on the horizon, the ships that would deliver the missiles that would deliver us. Where we live, with our heads inside the cannon, the outlook is dark. Every year or so we hear the rumble of guns massing against us. When the international cameras arrive, the ambassador vaults the secretary-general and tramples the prime minister to be first to the podium to denounce us. Just before the elections (everyone else’s; we don’t believe in elections), surgical strikes cripple our ability to make spermicidal jelly. Meanwhile, the blockades turn back dangerous baby formula from our ports. There are more of us every year, and we’re sicker and tireder. Yes, we see the guns. We hear the planes in the no-fly zone. We thumb our noses at the guns. They move closer, they move away, they blast holes in the sand. Meanwhile another generation blows its fuse. Our children don’t know what it is to live without the threat of instant annihilation. On the other hand, they’re not tormented by nostalgia. There’s no going back for us. We would sooner give our wives what they really want than capitulate to the demands of the world. The world can take what we offer or it can kill us. We don’t divorce, and the threat of the big strike no longer means anything. You can kill us, you may have to, but you’d better kill us all.
Copyright © 1999
The Mural Project
December 4, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Art, Child, Death, Society | by davidbdale | 5 comments
Rain gathers along the edges of flat rooftops, pooling in the depressions, sheeting along the slick flashing until it overfills the bead along the bottom edge and trickles onto the building face, seeping down the freshly-painted surface like a slow waterfall, like time running down, like the red pool spreading on the pavement around another accident. Memorial murals of our departed children, fifty feet, a hundred feet tall, dwarf us. Their stuccoed walls and dedicated lighting are the only new construction here for years. Our children, made famous by bits of quick metal, gaze to the left or right of us, no matter where we stand, at something just beyond us that we never saw coming and could not have prevented. The local way to put it is it serves the kids right for being born here. And it’s surely criminal to live like this. They have no business being here, and nobody can make a case for wanting to. In their memorial poses, the new celebrities are rendered with doomed but hopeful looks like the faces of martyrs. Mural artists compete for the top commissions, not just big walls with clear views but the best stories, too, the subjects who were most vulnerable and haunted, like the children selected for milk cartons. What serious child of these streets could see those serene images lit from above and not think they might be the best shot at a legacy. We tell our children to make their own opportunities, but they know exactly what they have coming. They only hope to be worthy of their walls. In my nightmare they make deals to audition for them. Behind the drugstore, broken streetlight, wear your black cap backwards. My brother will do you after you do me. They’ll paint us a city block.
Copyright © December 4, 2006
Very Short Novels 