mini-flashes o’ funk

The Father

  The sun cut a slice of light into his head — the effulgence of stellate light streaming in through the top of the window blinded him — at the very moment the bullet fragmented in his Broca’s area — it split the infinitive making its way through his synapses there.  All he managed was “¡guao!”  His face a frozen distortion.  What was left of him — and his locked body —  made its way through the air on its ineluctable path to the terrazzo floor.  What was left of his consciousness seeped out with the type O negative flowing copiously from what remained of his ragged head.  His last thought and last partial word unnoticed by anyone else.

The shrapnel still sizzled in that now useless brain — the organ quickly losing its way in the world.  Some shrapnel tore through the curtains and jalousie panes, and some of the shrapnel was embedded in the photograph of him and the Commandante on the wall, commingled with parts of his frontal and parietal lobes: the lobes that once entertained dignitaries, wooed countless women, and gave voice to the orders to shoot 183 people in the revolutionary reprisal squads turned to organic detritus all about the kitchen’s formica surfaces. 

Pixies In The Shower

She named the cats Didi and Gogo. The cats do not respond to those names. Beckett’s “Fail, fail again, fail better” is her wife’s favorite quote. She looks like the Venus of Willendorf, but blonde. Her wife doesn’t look at herself in the mirror. They both once wore identical braids on a Caribbean vacation. They sing Pixies songs in the shower together. Tomorrow they will cry, then board the cats. The day after they will set out on a long trek. One will whisper “fuck, yeah” and the other will shout “woohoo” on a summit two thousand miles from here.

The Grilled Cheese Camorra

Henry found Mao, his mother, and Fidel at the foot of the bed. They sat cross legged on the floor. Fussing. Castro held a cast iron pan up for the Chairman’s approval.

The Chairman said, “Your mother is teaching us to make grilled cheese sandwiches with just the proper char, Henry.” Fidel turned to Henry and hummed approval.

Henry’s mother said the secret was in the breast milk wash of the bread, and the queso blanco.

“Always use white cheese, Henry.”

Then she dissolved into a mist, spiraled about the ceiling fan, and floated down in a mushroom cloud hiss.

Keeper of The Doomsday Clock

I am the keeper of the Doomsday Clock. I know what will happen to us. I know how the world ends, but I don’t tell you. I’ll keep you in the dark. I stopped the hands on the Doomsday Clock at 11:59. When we met I thought I would turn back the hands on the clock, that I might set the pendulum in reverse. But you said our fate was sealed and it was fatal. I was drawn to that. I was afflicted. I set the works in motion once more, the cogs thunder. I have chosen this minute.

“Interviewers ask famous writers why they write, and it was (if I remember correctly) the poet John Ashbery who answered “Because I want to.”  Flannery O’Connor answered, “Because I’m good at it.”

— Anne Lamott