Taking Wing

Short Fiction

Before sitting down to write a story

I’ll think up a character with a few

miles on him but not so many to put

him to sleep by nine, leaving our eager

third person narrator little to do

but describe the layout of the bedroom;

furniture of uneven pedigree

clutter enough to suggest spiritual

disarray well within acceptable

limits but worth keeping a close eye on

opining sotto voce a second

character, someone with a few hours

to kill in Wiesbaden or Banda Aceh

poling a spoon through black coffee gone cold

in a spider vein cup, the slightest shift

of a knee twisting the plot around the

discovery of a memory stick

taped to the underside of his café

table, Marnie-LA labeled in red. 

I write some muscular verbs to wrestle

him onto to the overnight train to Split

and shift to an unreliable first

person singular narrator who finds

himself wincing into a coffee cup

at daybreak, words crumpled in heaps outside

confused by their reflections in the window.