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 3 Word Story Gambit. Refused.I think we have more than few poets here. How many times do we we rework a chess line that results in something less than poetry? Anyway.....so the rules are free form. Here we go. **************************************** On the porch after dinner the wind shifted notably. But who appreciates that? The porch was ideal- located on an eastern facing slope. There's a creek down in the bottom. Might be trout in that creek....but you can't see the creek in the morning what with the sun coming up in your eyes. Maybe 90 minutes of good fishing, but lots of pretty stuff to see. Like deer and spider webs. and dew. lots of mosquitoes in the morning and lots of mosquitoes in the evening, too. when the fishing is best, the flies and mosquitoes simply buzz on the screen of the porch. hmmmmm. to catch a trout is to get bit by flies. they'd been camping and fishing. Jones, Black, Steward, Louis, Jazz, Murphy, Alek, and Bahst. During the heat of the day, when fishing was sad, they played chess and cooked. Mr. Jones felt the wind and played pawn to king four. |
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green fly gambit Liz Smith would look out, check her screens for holes. She’d be seeing those mosquitoes, gorged fat, sleepy, crawling all around the edges, squeezing through the wire to edge themselves in. And the green, fever flies. Those hot nights breathing air sifted through screens black With mosquitoes too puffed up with blood to get in here. This house of hers, such as it was, saved her, saved her family. Once. Shut out the fever. At night while it slunk along the windows. In town the poor were laid out in gullies. I.G. Tedford and his boy dumping dirt to bury them all night long, eating and sleeping there, tar fires protecting them night and day. Were you here, Jones? Did you have that knowledge? If we stayed, she thought then, death would claim us. No stopping it. So the only escape was to escape – if we could – if we could get away before it would take us. She had wondered, then, could they get away before it would take them. And hadn't one of us, or both, right then, in their blood, had the blood of the Fever? Out there, silence – darkness, no moon those nights – just a good man’s hand warm and good in her hand, his arms holding her close. Out those windows, just the Fever slipping up along their creek. Wondering, then, how many already have it? Their last trip into town seeing the green flies streaming after the furniture wagons with the red cedar coffins stacked so high: another friend gone. . . In the road ways fever fires burning. Yes, a person could go outside: but only in the daylight you could touch, and dress, and walk, and breathe, and bury kinfolk. You could be with your dead all day long and never catch it! But nights! It was a night disease. Just as much part of the night as darkness, and like darkness, strikes a body when he’s at his lowest. You don’t want a woman with that fever in her with you, she thought. She plucked up a black pawn, black like a fat mosquito, the Queen’s bishop pawn, and plunked it down one square forward. |
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6 weeks past was the last he'd seen of his mother. She was full of light that day. Everyone was full of light. A little circus came to town for the holiday. A bear and his trainer, an acrobat who walked a wire, a 4 piece band and a couple gnarly clowns held the ring for the first act. His mother laughed and teased both Tedford and the boy during the intermission. The second act began with a new clown and a small gray dog. The clown carried a brightly colored pail of lollipops and would direct the dog to carry a treat to a child just outside the ring. A dozen or more children collected a pop. The dog mugged and posed and pulled the clowns pants down when she wasn't delivering treats to a lively, laughing audience. The dog wore a small bell around her neck and carried it silently for the most part, but she would toss her head to advantage and ring the bell when a child accepted a lolli-pop. And then the bear was back, but now on a bicycle. The boy remembered thinking...some things shouldn't be done and teaching a bear to pedal a bicycle is one of those things. The bear fell off the bike and lumbered bear style out of the ring to be replaced by jugglers with knives. Silk pantaloons and blouses of darkest black and scarlet and tourquoise and yellow and forest and night sky. The knives flew like stars . The show was to finish with a man shot from a cannon and much was made of preparations. Safety net and rigging. The fuse and charge. The cannon angle. The band played a vamp, but in the end the boy could only hear the drum roll. Then a fizz and a bang! Whoosh. The Human Cannonball shot out and across the ring and hit the net squarely with a sommersault flourish, flipped and landed rightside up....then bounded head over heels once again, caught the edge of the netting and flipped down to the the ring dust. |
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d4 Late into the black night, Long after the mosquitoes had quit whining. He crashed in bed like a giant wet trout For whom it is foretold; The blackness, the darkness, forever. Though red gilled, glass eyed, Floundering variations On a sodden pillow This is not the time (the bear tells him) for idle chat, nor pedalo porn And digging the mulch. Sentient beyond a magical nostalgia A whimsical downce Unwinding gently to the bottom, His heart like a drumroll now Jones is hooked on the main line Snare and d4 |
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