Cannon Fire
My father’s wise words swung through the air like claw hammers hoping they might find a nail, might build something. I kept out of the way of all that startled air, always hoping for “misses.” My mother’s wise words climbed a cardboard ladder in the rain, tumbling back down rung by rung. I was a teenager and immune from failed gods and their edicts. Found my holey texts in thesauruses and dictionaries, one word at a time till I formed my own little army, war-hardened with rain-wet cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths, cursing the mud and loving it, their helmets dented, their uniforms wrinkled and imperfect, their rifles shooting out corks attached to string—suitable enough, back then, for combat.
Life and Times During the Bikini Wars
It was during the Bikini Wars that I met Barb. She had a beehive hairdo you could hide in during a rainstorm and not get wet, it was that hairspray-impenetrable and her bikinis were smaller than what the other girls were wearing, so to my 16-year-old testosterone supercharged brain, she seemed perfect. But she didn’t like to read the way I did and said my poetry made her head hurt but that I was a good kisser and that made up for a lot. We dated for a time and one night, I swear, I thought I heard a bird chirping from inside that hair mass and when I noticed her eyes glaze over I asked what was wrong, but she said nothing, that she was just thinking. I was thinking too and suggested we switch eyes for a moment and see each other that way, and I could hear that bird flapping about madly, but she said okay. Soon after we split up my poetry improved exponentially, and though I still suffered the painful side effects of the Bikini Wars, it was then I met Liz in a one-piece who could recite, with the sweetest annunciating lips, the poetry of Emily Dickenson.
The Unexpected Dispensation from a Vending Machine
There’s a vending machine in the hospital hallway and I tell it my secrets and nagging disquiets. The wrong turns and carnivorous roads I’ve traveled, the ironic grace of the ones that did not like the taste and spit me out. It’s all in a nearly inaudible mumble like a prayer and of course when someone comes to make a selection I step aside with the sheepish smile of the indecisive and continue once they’ve gone. In a bed several floors above, my mother is in a coma, umbilically tethered to a mother of machinery that will fail her in the end. The vending machine is towering and its sugary heart is on display; its only agenda is a fair exchange. For this is all a rehearsal; this behemoth is a stand-in for the stone I’ll murmur over with a pint of rum, perhaps some flowers—my mother never liked them—complained about her allergies, but I’m hoping, she’ll overlook it then.
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Castle
When she visited me in New York, she complained about the way the skyscrapers “bullied” the heavens. She was from a landlocked Midwestern state and the ocean was a wet moonwalk as she lifted her dress up and tied it in a knot, let the tide have its way with her. Told me she wouldn’t mind being a lighthouse keeper so she could watch that briny universe regularly. I told her I could visit in that skinny castle and sing sea shanties between sips of Côtes du Rhône. She didn’t find that funny or charming and the week she stayed was off kilter, our Rorschach tests of each other we viewed made us cringe. At the airport bar (before her flight back) we watched the planes taking off and finally agreed on something: how each one, with a little time and distance was small enough to fit neatly between a thumb and index finger (especially when you closed one eye) before it disappeared altogether.
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Robert Scotellaro is the author of 8 flash fiction collections including most recently: Quick Adjustments (Blue Light Press, 2023), Ways to Read the World (Scantic Books, 2022), and God in a Can (Bamboo Dart Press, 2022), as well as 5 collections of poetry, and several books for children. He has, along with James Thomas, co-edited New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, published by W.W. Norton & Co. His work has appeared widely, nationally and internationally, and is included in the W.W. Norton anthologies, Flash Fiction International and Flash Fiction America, and in 5 Best Small Fictions and 2 Best Microfiction award anthologies. He is the winner of Zone 3’s Rainmaker Prize in Poetry and the Blue Light Book Award for his fiction. Robert is one of the founding donors to The Ransom Flash Fiction Collection at the University of Texas, Austin. He currently lives in San Francisco with his wife, artist and art historian, Diana Scott. Find him at: www.robertscotellaro.com.