Crash
Four tires rotate on their axels, paired off in a dance in memory of the pavement’s reassuring touch. They spin with a haggard gait, limping almost; they peddle feebly at the falling snow. The car lies on its back with its final breath escaping the hood in a puff of magician’s smoke, its life extinguished forever in the dissipation of gases.
No.
In the cab, a man stirs, his eyes opening and closing in rhythm with the creaks the cab makes as it begins to buckle. He is the color of ashes, wet with rain or tears, and long past their lives as embers. He lets escape a groan as he watches his friends leak from their brown paper bag onto the ceiling-floor and suddenly his priorities change.
His arm finds the seat belt clasp easily enough, but he is not prepared for gravity’s embrace. He lands on his back in a pile of wet glass, and for a moment lays there in silence. The dead beer churns under his coat as he turns to reach past the driver’s seat, pulling with strength not for one with such a sluggish heart. Through the passenger-side window he drags his prize; a case the size of a child’s coffin with worn leather straps, and painted black for a funeral.
Looking up, he can see the pines from the inside out; a perspective he is not used to, but is oddly comfortable with. He seats himself atop a fallen tree with the trunk beside him, watching the smoldering truck as the temperature steadily drops.
Childhood
He was grey, the present was not.
He tore the paper off the box,
Its ribbon fell red, as curiosity
Became the primary motive.
It came with everything a little boy should have.
Glass marbles for eyes ,
A smile white as pearls
And lips painted red like a fire truck.
It was the solution to the problem
Of apathy in a child.
Cold
Man: “I hate you.”
The doll glares at him, lusty fire dancing behind its eyes, licking the inside of its wooden skull. If it didn’t share a set of lungs, it’d scream at the oaf for driving off the side of a cliff, rant about not having been born into a more satisfying profession, like firewood.
Man: “it’s so cold out here. At least you have your box.”
To this the dummy acknowledges the frost creeping around his open lid. Perhaps he kicks a clump of it away with his miniature dress shoes, brushing off the shoulder of his black tuxedo with a fluid movement of his hand. He watches the man for a while, as with his face in his hands a muffled sobbing pries a path through frostbitten fingers.
Man: “Go to hell, little wooden man.”
The creature in the casket smiles; showing off every one of his hungry wooden teeth.
Career
From the ventriloquist’s scrapbook:
Four tires rotate on their axels, paired off in a dance in memory of the pavement’s reassuring touch. They spin with a haggard gait, limping almost; they peddle feebly at the falling snow. The car lies on its back with its final breath escaping the hood in a puff of magician’s smoke, its life extinguished forever in the dissipation of gases.
No.
In the cab, a man stirs, his eyes opening and closing in rhythm with the creaks the cab makes as it begins to buckle. He is the color of ashes, wet with rain or tears, and long past their lives as embers. He lets escape a groan as he watches his friends leak from their brown paper bag onto the ceiling-floor and suddenly his priorities change.
His arm finds the seat belt clasp easily enough, but he is not prepared for gravity’s embrace. He lands on his back in a pile of wet glass, and for a moment lays there in silence. The dead beer churns under his coat as he turns to reach past the driver’s seat, pulling with strength not for one with such a sluggish heart. Through the passenger-side window he drags his prize; a case the size of a child’s coffin with worn leather straps, and painted black for a funeral.
Looking up, he can see the pines from the inside out; a perspective he is not used to, but is oddly comfortable with. He seats himself atop a fallen tree with the trunk beside him, watching the smoldering truck as the temperature steadily drops.
Childhood
He was grey, the present was not.
He tore the paper off the box,
Its ribbon fell red, as curiosity
Became the primary motive.
It came with everything a little boy should have.
Glass marbles for eyes ,
A smile white as pearls
And lips painted red like a fire truck.
It was the solution to the problem
Of apathy in a child.
Cold
Man: “I hate you.”
The doll glares at him, lusty fire dancing behind its eyes, licking the inside of its wooden skull. If it didn’t share a set of lungs, it’d scream at the oaf for driving off the side of a cliff, rant about not having been born into a more satisfying profession, like firewood.
Man: “it’s so cold out here. At least you have your box.”
To this the dummy acknowledges the frost creeping around his open lid. Perhaps he kicks a clump of it away with his miniature dress shoes, brushing off the shoulder of his black tuxedo with a fluid movement of his hand. He watches the man for a while, as with his face in his hands a muffled sobbing pries a path through frostbitten fingers.
Man: “Go to hell, little wooden man.”
The creature in the casket smiles; showing off every one of his hungry wooden teeth.
Career
From the ventriloquist’s scrapbook:
Collapse
Conclusion
Cold, he turns decided, there is no fight.
A match is found, the doll gasps, Hot.
Conflagration
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