A Short Story is not a Car

A Short Story is Not a Car.

At the writers’ group, the first one I went to,

we were issued a list of things to check

when we’re critiquing each others’ stories,

the usual things like plot, character, setting, dialogue.

We’d put a tick or a cross depending whether the requirements were met.

All well and good.

Yet I couldn’t help thinking of the checklist that mechanics fill out

when they’re servicing your car.

So I said,

“A short story is not a car!”

This put a brake on proceedings.

They didn’t know what I was driving at.

but I felt I was onto something.

I pushed the pedal even further.

We were heading for a collision,

the tutor and me.

I didn’t know what the perfect metaphor was

nor did anyone else

but I was darn sure it wasn’t a car.

Short Shorts

Breathe.

I watch the shirts

On the line

Breathe in and out

Letterboxes.

They line up along

The footpath mouths open

Hungry for mail.

Exercise.

That black bug

Stretching wings, legs

Doing tai chi on the page.

Trigger.

That rustling in the hedge

A short story

Stirring into life

Egg.

Bald and black

As an emu’s egg, the helmet’s hatched

A biker’s head.

Sleep

I sleep in short sentences.

This Time

This Time

I went back to the airport. This time I would do it. This time I would push on through.

The first part was easy, driving to the Drop Off point but once you got there, you had to keep on going. That was the tricky part. That’s where I messed up.

That time, the time I dropped my daughter off, I continued through , swinging around the roundabout but that’s where it got confusing, arrows pointing in all directions, a jumble of signs and always someone up your ass pushing you to speed up, for god’s sake.

That’s when it happened. A dark, chunky , sinister sedan pulled me over. It had AFP on the side. Australian Federal Police. An officer got out, walked up to my side window and tapped on it. I was packing it. What had I done? or more importantly what did he believe I had done. This was the age of terrorism. But did I look like a terrorist?

He questioned me briefly, took my license and walked back to his car. That’s when he got talking to someone. I assumed they were doing a police check on me, on the vehicle. All the time I could see him in the rear view watching me.

Finally he sauntered up to me, handed the licence back, and said I was free to go this time, but to be careful where I drove. What the hell did that mean? Where had I wandered?

That’s when I got the fear of driving to the airport to drop someone off or pick someone up.

But this time I did it. I made it all the way. History did not repeat itself. Woo Hoo !

Looking for Something Psychedelic

something psychedelic

I went looking for the dark side of the moon ’cause Dino told me it was good. If you can’t think of the name, think Pink Floyd, he said but I didn’t need to do that. I went to all the outlets in my area, but none had it: they thought I was having them on. So I drove to Dan Murphy’s ’cause they have everything. I looked for something psychedelic but there was nothing. Finally an attendant found it. It had some dumb ass, low key label. I took it home. I did not guzzle. I sipped. I savoured. Then something happened ….

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Too Far

After he had stormed off in his Volvo and got home to a torrent of texts, he responded with a fusillade of his own.  It was like a naval battle at close quarters, with no quarter given. Someone was going down.

He got in the last word. That was unusual, Perhaps he had gone too far. He need not have said some of the things he said. One particular insult was, in retrospect, very cutting.

He texted a partial rebuttal before he hit the sack. No response. He texted again. And again. Perhaps he had gone too far. Had she…? O God no. It didn’t bear thinking about.

He buried his head under the pillow and tried to sleep. Eventually he crashed. But the nightmares ….

He awoke at six in the morning. His mobile lit up. His arm flew across to grab it. It was from her. A volley of vitriol.

He had never felt so happy.

The Most Selfish Man

You are the most selfish man

in the world,

my Friday friend called me

some years ago.

Whoa! Big call, I said

as he stormed off

with his teacup.

• pic by Wickedly Lovely, pinterest

The Search

I felt cheated

by the short story writer

whose piece

morphed

into a

sociopolitical tract

on racism

for page after phlegmatic page

leaving the characters fumbling

in the dark

in search of a plot —

and me, with them

Two Moons

.

Look, she says. There are two moons tonight. Do you think that means anything?

Like end times, you mean?

I don’t know, she says. It can’t be good.

We move closer. There they are above the rooftops, one higher and to the right of the other.

Someone in the ranch-style house across the road switches the porch light on and joins us.

My ex phoned, he says. She saw it too. She’s bit of a sky watcher.

So we stand there out the front as one disc, then the other veer off in a north-easterly direction, silent as full moons.

Moments in Literary History 1

In the late Spring of 1891, Greenbough Smith, the newly appointed literary editor of

‘The Strand’ received a submission of two handwritten manuscripts.

Forty years later he described how he reacted on that day—“I at once realized here was the greatest short story writer

since Edgar Allan Poe, I remember rushing into Mr. Noames [publisher ] room and thrusting the stories before his eyes ….

Here was a new and gifted story writer; there was no mistaking the ingenuity of the plot, the limpid clearness of the style,

the perfect art of telling a story.”

The two stories that excited Smith’s interest were ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and ‘The Red-Headed League’