Pages

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Flash fiction: Disorder

She keeps her pretty laminated
recipe cards pristinely stacked upright
and ordered inside boxes that are
in turn organized by ethnicity.
Some do try to defy her too
categorical mind. These end up
alphabetized without a grin and put
within an apologetic little
catchall that, collections completed,
she'll not visit willingly again.

Each ensuing night, fingers spiral
down dimples stamped on a cardboard-cutout
globe she leaves standing on her marbled
granite slab of a counter. One place
chosen from among those she's never been,
she lifts the hunter-green translucent
lid of its corresponding container
and pulls out a single card that her eyes
feast on, ticking off precise measures
in the savory worded list.

Sated so, she pours big bowls of cold
cereal thickly coated. She doesn't like
to cook.

3 comments:

gerry boyd said...

Certainly wielding the sword of language like a master in this one Francis. It's just drives to a conclusion that has to be. That is to say, the tone of the ending is spot on and seems inevitable. That's a nice sneaky trick and harder to pull off, IMHO, then it appears on paper. I ike when you do the longer stuff, BTW.

Francis Scudellari said...

Thanks Gerry. These are a bit of a hybrid form for me, so I'm glad they are working as a narrative. I prefer the longer pieces too, but I like to use the shorter ones as exercises. Some may be too uneven and uninteresting to post here, but I tend to air on the side of including too much rather than too little.

gerry boyd said...

Sure. Once in cyberspace, never lost.