Ken Poyner ~ Three Drabbles

The Subterfuge

To dis­guise the fact that she is car­ry­ing the plans for the assas­si­na­tion of our town coun­cil, she decides to cross the open space between con­spir­a­cy sites wear­ing her biki­ni.  Not just any biki­ni.  The one with bodice cups the size of post-it notes, an under­car­riage not much big­ger and trail­ing off to bare strings that appear too insub­stan­tial to hold any­thing togeth­er.  Citizens, she pos­es, will focus on her and not what she is car­ry­ing – the plan, the list, the mur­der­ous knit­ting nee­dles.  It is the bru­tal brisk of win­ter and all the town finds remark­able is her limp.

~

Transfer of Guilt

His wife has been to war.  All he knows is that she sat in a room in her uni­form, col­lect­ed with oth­er sol­diers, and used joy sticks to fly some­thing about, watch­ing what it was watch­ing on the bat­tle­field.  Every so often, she would press a but­ton and the fly­ing thing would kill.  Sometimes peo­ple, some­times things with peo­ple in them.  Now and again, she would kill an inan­i­mate object, and of these she was proud­est.  She does not tell him much.  But she says if Artificial Intelligence could have done her job, it would have been bet­ter for everyone.

~

Useful Reversal

He wres­tles with the fact that the invis­i­ble girl is more appeal­ing dressed than undressed.  Natural light slips around her invis­i­ble fem­i­nin­i­ty and he does not know which way she faces, how con­tort­ed her ori­en­ta­tion is.  When she wears any­thing, he can at least see the clothes, know that ele­ments are hold­ing them in place.  Naked, when he works by touch, he does not know if he is mov­ing his hand up or down her body, if what­ev­er crevices he at last reach­es is the cor­rect one for his cur­rent mis­sion.  To watch her dress is the begin­ning of passion.

~

Ken Poyner has eleven avail­able col­lec­tions of poet­ry, flash fic­tion and micro-fic­tion, the lat­est The Lechery of Fish Tuners, drab­bles. He has suf­fered ten Pushcart nom­i­na­tions with­out a win, and has taught on an NEA Poets in the Schools grant.  He spent 33 years herd­ing com­put­ers.  He is mar­ried to a world class female pow­er­lifter, who is still set­ting raw world records. www.kpoyner.com