“The Magpie: A Key” by Kerrin McCadden (poetry ’14), published by New England Review.
The Magpie: A Key
One magpie always means watch out. One magpie in the yard means stay in the house. Two magpies in the lane mean don’t go farther than the roadside. A magpie walking with its beak open, but quiet, means go out, but come home quickly. A magpie calling means something will happen en route. A magpie on the clothesline means watch your back.
https://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Post-Fallback-Small.jpg500500friendsofwritersbloghttps://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOW_logo.jpgfriendsofwritersblog2019-11-08 21:15:232022-02-25 17:14:37“When I Say Love I Mean El Greco’s The Assumption of the Virgin” by Sara Quinn Rivara (poetry ’02)
During the service, Josh suffered. His wool jacket was fine for Denver summers but not Nashville in August. Under the weight of his seven-year- old daughter, Grace, he could feel the heat trapped under his arms, down his back, and on his chest and stomach. Looking around, he seemed to be the only one in such a state. The club was air-conditioned. Not one person used the program as a fan. Not one jacket removed. When he lived here, years ago now, nobody seemed to mind the heat but him. Josh came from the north to play football for Vanderbilt. He turned out to be a disappointment, largely, he believed, due to the heat.
Next to him Patsy sat with their youngest on her lap. Tully was fast asleep, draped over her mother like a poncho. Patsy was a Nashville native, though she lost her accent after college. Never teased her hair, no jewelry and very little makeup. Her Aunt Lucy had already told her several times that she looked like she was dying, which only meant she was fit. The Tegels were a big family. A big deal in Nashville, and physically big. Back when he met them, Josh’s size was his ticket in. He was six-two and filled doorways. Plus, he was a football player. The Tegels liked football. And they liked Vandy. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t any good; they told him so all the time.
On bad days I watch CCTV footage of car wrecks and unscathed drivers walking away. Babies falling off tables and getting caught. I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy.
I haven’t written in a while to set myself down in obsolescence and endure. Coffee brings our the brute in me, booze puts a damp hand on my eyelids and pushes gently down, down.
https://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Post-Fallback-Small.jpg500500friendsofwritersbloghttps://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOW_logo.jpgfriendsofwritersblog2019-11-05 16:00:412022-02-25 17:14:35“After Hearing of His Passing” by Rose McLarney (poetry ’10)
“Sweet Land” by Jill Klein (poetry ’16), published by Scoundrel Time.
Sweet Land
Everything’s coming up oranges. “Ollie Ollie in come free,” it’s all the statue can do to whisper. Meanwhile, cats prowl the edges of wildfires, eagles abandon their towers— dropping knee pads and hats on an underclad country.
And the FLOTUS floats above this great country, in gowns that will never be orange. The handmaids watch as she enters the tower, as children and chickens roam free— cage to cage, scratching like matches that can never light fires. Voices fall in the Capital, to lisps and backside whispers.
When I say wiretaps, I mean the kind that hears horses whisper— even assholes have assholes to let out the gas. Imagine a country where they do not. Which begs the question of who fires first. Which begs the answer. Armpits or oranges? Imagine the speed of a sea turtle freed from a six-pack ring that once held Dos Equis. Up to the seaweed tower!
https://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Post-Fallback-Small.jpg500500friendsofwritersbloghttps://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOW_logo.jpgfriendsofwritersblog2019-11-03 15:00:032022-02-25 17:14:34“Sweet Land” by Jill Klein (poetry ’16)
our son found the hollow shell snub-nosed & finned & looking like an Acme cartoon bomb where we raked for clams he wanted to keep it & we wanted to let him
even the old oysterman wanted to let him but we’d read about the shell found & kept for three weeks by a boy in Oregon before the powder dried & it went off
[… continue reading “The Unexploded Ordnance Bin” at Verse Daily.]
“Jokes can deliver information in a way that gets through to readers.” Kate Kaplan (fiction ’18) on the work of “conditional jokes” in Cynthia Ozick, Ana Menéndez, and Paul Beatty.
“The Conditional Joke, a Tool for Fiction Writers” by Kate Kaplan (fiction ’18), published by Fiction Writers Review.
The Conditional Joke, a Tool for Fiction Writers
Here’s a joke from the 4th or 5th century, CE: Shopping for windows, a Kymean asks if there are any that look south.
Here’s a joke I heard two years ago, at my MFA program: What’s the difference between a poet and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family.
These jokes are conditional jokes. That is, they’re jokes which work when listeners have the information necessary to get the point. They have something else in common: in both instances, the conditional information is supplied by the joke itself. I have no doubt that readers understood the jokes even if they came to this essay ignorant of the way the ancient world stereotyped Kymeans and unaware of the presumed impecuniousness of poets. Conditional jokes can educate, and that means that they can be used as exposition.
Done badly, exposition can interrupt a story with a lecture, change the narrative distance, or force characters into artificial behavior—reminiscing where reminiscence isn’t called for or telling people things they already know. Jokes avoid those pitfalls. They engage readers because they’re lively, short, and have unexpected endings. They don’t distort character behavior or change narrative distance, because all kinds of people—all kinds of characters—engage with jokes as tellers and listeners.
https://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Post-Fallback-Small.jpg500500friendsofwritersbloghttps://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOW_logo.jpgfriendsofwritersblog2019-11-01 14:24:112022-02-25 17:14:32“The Conditional Joke, a Tool for Fiction Writers” by Kate Kaplan (fiction ’18)
“Sharon Tate” by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19), published by Unbroken.
Sharon Tate
A lot of things happened to you but I was only there for one of them. Fall, 1989, fully 20 years after the grisly stuff, maybe a little longer after Valley of the Dolls, a boy, not from my neighborhood, dressed as you for Halloween. He wasn’t what you’d call thin, no. Fleshy, maybe. Certainly fuller than you were in the photos I’d see later. Certainly not much of what you’d call a resemblance in a ratty wig and somebody else’s, probably his mother’s, shoes.
One icy night, seven years after his return from as far
away as he’d ever been, just south of Bologna, ready
to penetrate the Axis’ last major defensive line of the
campaign, Frank walked into the extra bedroom upstairs on
Union Road and heard one hundred head of cattle lowing.
He flipped on the light and thirty donkeys began braying,
while the bleating of two hundred sheep rolled across the
room. At his next heavy step, the shrieks and wails of thirty
awakening babies found their places in the surrounding
sound waves. Frank stood stunned by the sounds, then
backed up slowly until he had left the room. They’d turned
on him for some reason, he thought.
https://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Post-Fallback-Small.jpg500500friendsofwritersbloghttps://friendsofwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOW_logo.jpgfriendsofwritersblog2019-10-30 14:00:462022-02-25 17:14:32“The Day After Christmas” by Trish Reeves (poetry ’83)
