Gabriel Blackwell (fiction, ’09): Gabriel’s story “The Behavior of Pidgeons”  has been reprinted at Alphaville, a Dutch online magazine.  The story was originally published in Conjunctions in 2008.  The newest version includes Gabriel’s illustrations for his forthcoming collection of essays and short fiction, Critique of Pure Reason (November 2012, Noemi Press).

The Behavior of Pidgeons

Methods and Materials

There are seven Walter Pidgeons seated in a waiting room measuring twenty-two feet by twenty-two feet. A picture window (a) takes up most of the wall opposite the door (b). The door, serving as entrance to the waiting room and as exit to the examination rooms, fulfills all of the functions of the “office,” as the sole means for patients to be seen and the doctor(s) to see them. Four groups of chairs (numbered 1–8) paired around four knee-high, magazine-laden tables (c) make up the bulk of the room’s contents. Above a water cooler (d), there is a shelf, painted a dirty off-white to blend with the walls, which holds a bowl of peanuts and a stack of small waxed paper cups with a floral design for the water cooler. Letters in parentheses refer to Figure A, below. Not shown in this drawing are the Walter Pidgeons, whose total bulk narrowly exceeds that of the room’s furnishings. This diagram is not drawn to scale, and should only be referred to when considering the position of Walter Pidgeons in relation to each other...[Keep Reading]…