Incendiary Lit

This little piece originally appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, then in her collection Tumble Home, or, seven short-short, or just plain short stories and an 86 page novella. Very good stuff. There’s an image of an owl’s face, I won’t ruin it for you, but I’d been attributing it to Li-Young Lee, someone who I was also reading a lot of at the time. I just remember walking around the hotel I worked at thinking about how perfect the description, how apt. I also like that she (Hempel) doesn’t connect the dots for the reader, she just presents them in a clear pattern and says, essentially, “Have at it!” More after the story.

Church Cancels Cow
by Amy Hempel

Pheasant feathers in a plastic jack-o’-lantern–this is the way people decorate graves in October across from my house. In winter they tie wreaths to the stones like evergreen pendants in December. The halved-apple faces of owls on a branch will spook you, walking at dusk as I do with my dog who finds the one real pumpkin, small on a stem, and carries it off and flings it and retrieves, leaving on the pumpkin the marks of her teeth, the only desecration in these rows of tended plots.

Or not, according to the woman at the wheel of the red Honda Civic that appears from behind the Japanese maple and proceeds past the hedge of arborvitae where she slows and then rolls down her window to say, “You should keep that dog on a leash.” She says, “That dog left faces on my mother’s grave.”

When I realize she means feces, I say my dog didn’t do it. She says yes, my dog did it. I say, “Did you see this dog leave feces on the grave?” She says, “I found faces on my mother’s grave. I had to clean them off.” I say there are other dogs that walk here. I say my dog goes in the woods before the place where the headstones start.

I leave her talking to me from her car. I walk away with my dog in the direction of my house, and she follows in her car so I turn back around and lead her through the cemetery and sit down on a random grave and take a wire brush from the pocket of my coat and begin to groom my dog, brushing slowly from the ends up to the skin so as not to tug and hurt her. I stay where I am until the woman drives away, and I stay until she reappears. When she leaves the second time, she leaves rubber in the road.

For days I see her car across the street, parked on the little-used access road, her at the wheel just watching my house where my dog patrols the yard, unmistakeable dog. I write down her license plate number, so what. I pull weeds with my back to her. And after thoughts of worse things than bricks coming flying through the windows of my house, I pull off grass-stained gloves and cross to her car and say, “You know, I’m on your side about this. I have relatives buried here, and I don’t want to find faces on their graves.”

She says, “You have relatives buried here?”

For peace of mind I will lie about any thing at any time.

In fact, she says, she has counted three dogs the other day from her car. Like counting cows, in the game I played in cars when the family went out on long drives. My brother and I were told to count cows in the fields we passed along the way, me counting cows on one side of the road, my brother counting cows on the other. But if we passed a church, the person on whose side the church appeared had to start their count over again.

Why did church cancel cow? The question was not a question back then, and when I try to think why, the best I can guess is–because we were having fun? Until I mention it to my brother who says, “Don’t you remember? You don’t remember. It was cemetery, not church, that cancels cow.”

And why it comes to me now.

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Right? Take it in for a second.
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OK, I just wanted to talk a little about the layering and parallels in this piece. There’s the obvious parallels: Cemetery from the cow game and from the Japanese lady’s face-stained grave; the counting of dogs and the counting of cows, both from a car. What really got me was the profundity of the game these kids were playing, and whether or not they were told the cemetery cancels cow rule or they made it up themselves, they clearly understood the concept of death at a young age. And though the narrator clearly thinks the Japanese lady’s absurd, her behavior in such a close proximity to death is humanized by the remembrance of mortality’s early place in even the lighter times.

Also, come on, faces/feces is pretty funny, or, that the narrator calls them faces when she confronts the stalker in her car. I love that. I always think of the Big Lebowski, how the Dude took phrases or unique words he’d heard earlier in the movie and says them. Or more recently in Hot Fuzz when Danny repeats Angel’s vocabulary guideline corrections immediately, and often incorrectly (”What made you want to be a policeman officer?”). The narrator here, was being more wiseass about it, which is funny also. Then the repetition of faces with that amazing “halved-apple faces of owls” which is so accurate. See:

Then of course there are other little things, like: “When she leaves the second time she leaves rubber in the road” which is a pretty crafty way to make “she peeled out” artistic. Small details like that are things that you need to pay close attention to in your own writing. Saying things in an easily understandable, but unique way. Something that the reader hasn’t read fifty times. The formatting is also a little off from ’standard’ with the dialog (normally each . This choice helps the reader breeze through the dialog a little more smoothly, I think. Though if it would slow the reader down, who knows, unless someone’s really curious, I guess they could reformat it themselves and report back.

This is a little too long to submit to the Indiana Review 1/2k prize, as it’s 591 words, but it’s close. A lot can be done in 500 words, as the notoriously brief Amy Hempel proves yet again here. My favorite, and many people’s favorite Hempel story is “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” which is in Reasons to Live as well as her collected stories… but I also found this little article about the story and a little research about the, apparently semi-autobiographical story. Very interesting, posted at the Hipster Book Club.

Since it’s on their website, I’d rather link to it than post it, but “How me breaking up with you is like Jon Lester pitching a no-hitter against the Royals” is a hilarious story in the form of an email. Here’s a short selection from the analogous piece:

Yes, I know we were together two years. Did you know the Royals hadn’t been no-hit for 35 years? Yes, I know how much you’ve committed to the relationship. Do you have any idea how much my collection of George Brett jerseys cost? Yes, it will be awkward for you to see me at work. You know what will be really awkward? The Royals finishing a four-game series against a team that just no-hit them. Can you step outside your own selfish world and imagine that for a second?

So check it out, it’s pretty short and really funny. Also browse around McSweeney’s while you’re there, they host copious amounts of great stuff. And you can even make a donation to help Sudan’s Lost Boys.

Capp Street Incident
by Jon Boilard
(Caution, adult subject matter)

She stands under the 101 overpass on Capp Street. When I pull up she sticks her head through the window, parting my legs with her hand. I ask her how much. She tells me and then gets in. We pull around the corner to a spot she likes. She looks vaguely familiar but I don’t say anything. She puts the condom on me with her mouth. After a few minutes she says, Baby, you got to hurry; I got to get back out there on the stroll. I tell her not to worry about finishing me. She is relieved. She cleans her mess and puts everything–the money, the limp rubber, the soiled tissues–in her little black purse. Then I remember. Her name is Del and I recognize her from high school. We had Spanish together. She had a crush on me and I never gave her the time of day. When I mention this she laughs and says, Boy the tables are turned now. I laugh, too, and then she gets out. She says, Baby you shouldn’t drive in that condition. I smile and ease away from the curb. I smell her from ten blocks away. Cigarettes and sweat and dirty feet. Then I get sick some more in the Office Depot parking lot. With an old newspaper I clean what ends up on me. I try to picture the girl she used to be and I cannot. It is difficult enough to remember what I was like back then.

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“Capp Street Incident” was originally published in the Summer-Fall 2006 issue of Fugue, literary magazine from the University of Idaho. The prose poem/flash fiction is very resonant. Everyone imagines what people they once knew are doing now, at least once in awhile. And the juxtaposition of the girl having a crush on him, and him paying her for sex is terribly ironic. Also, it’s about sex,in a way at least, but it never gets gross or very graphic, which is nice. I’ve read my share of bad, bad poetry sex while working on different literary journals, and this was a nice, understated example. And the end feels so right for the situation… so human.

Now try a ‘reminiscent’ poem of your own with a dramatic twist. Like in “Capp Street Incident” see someone that seems familiar, realize where you know them from (at least eight years before) and remember a little anecdote between the narrator and character. Have the anecdote be ironic considering the present, somewhat drastic situation (be it during a robbery, a traffic accident, jail, whatever).

Click here now. (audio file)

Kurt Vonnegut is sort of a religion to me, and if I didn’t have so much school to blame it on, I could very likely commit Hari Kari for not knowing about Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s new and uncollected writings. Mark relates a few anecdotes from his introduction the posthumous book. Never has an egg metaphor been so sad. Learn a little bit about American literature, listen to this excerpt. Then buy his books and read them all (but don’t start with Galapagos. You need to work your way up to that tremendous, but very odd novel). I’m a huge fan of Bluebeard, Player Piano, and Cat’s Cradle, and Siren’s of Titan too, but I’d say read one of the other three I mentioned first. Plus, if you don’t care which edition you get, pretty much all of the books I listed can be found for about $1. So spend the ten dollars that would use to buy a burger (without tip) at Chili’s, and get three books that will make you laugh a minimum of ten times, as well as have interesting and imaginative plots. Do it. Go Vonnegut.

I’ve been slowly working on a novella/novel for the last 4 or so years. Or, I wrote a version that became more of an outline back then, and after 2 major overhauls, the last one just finished which added almost 10,000 words, it is finally just about ready to go out. It is a good feeling. An accomplishment. I’m definitely very happy to hopefully have the major work of my first long project done. I did kind of steal an idea for the formatting from the novel I just began, of telling it in short vignettes, which worked because it was already formatted like that with only an extra break to indicate a time break. OK, that’s probably more than you needed to know, but I just wanted to share, and offer the suggestion of vignettes to people who may also be struggling with formatting their own novels. It’s fun, and if you have any time breaks after something particularly poignant, by having that as the end of a chapter, meaning your reader has to turn the page to read anything else, and in that break they’ll be thinking a little bit longer about what just happened, which hopefully will ingrain your words a little deeper.

After the break, there’s one of the couple very, very short chapters pulled from the middle of my book, “The Smiles Are Killing Me.”
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This audio clip is from The New Yorker, yes, the Atlantic, I mean, New Yorker. *Giggle* OK, enough foolishness. This is a cool little podcast, TC Boyle answers a couple questions, then reads the great short story. Not sure why, but since I re-read the story again a couple years back, I can’t help but picture Anders as the film critic Mr. Farber from Lady in the Water. Enjoy.

Moving Water, Tucson

Thunderclouds gathered every afternoon during the monsoons. Warm rain felt good on faces lifted to lick water from the sky. We played outside, having sense enough to go out and revel in the rain. We savored the first cool hours since summer hit.

The arroyo behind our house trickled with moving water. Kids gathered to see what it might bring. Tumbleweed, spears of ocotillo, creosote, a doll’s arm, some kid’s fort. Broken bottles, a red sweater. Whatever was nailed down, torn loose.

We stood on edges of sand, waiting for brown walls of water. We could hear it, massive water, not far off. The whole desert might come apart at once, might send horny toads and Gila monsters swirling, wet nightmares clawing both banks of the worst they could imagine and then some.

Under sheet lightning cracking the sky, somebody’s teenaged brother decided to ride the flash flood. He stood on wood in the bottom of the ditch, straddling the puny stream. “Get out, it’s coming,” kids yelled. “GET OUT,” we yelled. The kid bent his knees, held out his arms.

Land turned liquid that fast, water yanked our feet, stole our thongs, pulled in the edges of the arroyo, dragged whole trees root wads and all along, battering rams thrust downstream, anything you left there gone, anything you meant to go back and get, history, water so high you couldn’t touch bottom, water so fast you couldn’t get out of it, water so huge the earth couldn’t take it, water. We couldn’t step back. We had to be there, to see for ourselves. Water in a place where water’s always holy. Water remaking the world.

That kid on plywood, that kid waiting for the flood. He stood and the water lifted him. He stood, his eyes not seeing us. For a moment, we all wanted to be him, to be part of something so wet, so fast, so powerful, so much bigger than ourselves. That kid rode the flash flood inside us, the flash flood outside us. Artist unglued on a scrap of glued wood. For a few drenched seconds, he rode. The water took him, faster than you can believe. He kept his head up. Water you couldn’t see through, water half dirt, water whirling hard. Heavy rain weighed down our clothes. We stepped closer to the crumbling shore, saw him downstream smash against the footbridge at the end of the block. Water held him there, rushing on.

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Here’s an essay by Peggy Shumaker titled Prose Poems, Paragraphs, Brief Lyric Nonfiction. The 400 word story, flash fiction, narrative prose poem, short short, whatever, appeared in the collection Short Takes, which is a really cool book about the short-short in creative non fiction. Definitely a worthwhile read. It got me hooked on cnf short-shorts. Thanks also, to Sydney Brown. Word.

In reading Poe’s Purloined Letter for a short fiction class, I came across a little satirical line about how the public viewed (and views) poets from the “fictionist” Poe, who admits he is something of a hobbyist in poetry. Anyway, thought it was pretty funny.

“Not altogether a fool,” said G., “but then he’s a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.”

“True,” said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, “although I have been guilty of certain doggerel myself.”

This is one of my favorite short stories, and I mean it’s short. Take Hills Like White Elephants and break it in two, ouch. And, well, yeah, you’ll understand. A very powerful piece that is under 500 words. Enjoy. Oh, and if I’m not allowed to post this, someone let me know and I’ll take it down.
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