August 14, 2010 – 10:16 am
When the filmmaker sent me the film for examination, it took me a few moments of orientation to the subjects of the work and to the surroundings in which I was meant to find, at the filmmaker’s request, what had been lost. “I don’t know what happened,” he said over the phone. “I was filming […]
August 13, 2010 – 2:18 pm
Tell me about love, signs, laughter, the child who walked through the room and out, possessions, like that list you have in the closet, the list that keeps growing and may be a burden or a master stroke of collecting, that child who grew gray at the corner of the door then disappeared, signs like […]
August 12, 2010 – 12:12 pm
In Roberto Ning’s novel, The Mexican Sleigh-bell Trilogy, it’s suggested that nothing occurs. The novel is composed of three complicated motifs, each built of elaborate expansions of shadow, sounds, color, geometry, smells, fallacies, natural reactions, and lists. However, the author by choice and ingenuity refrained from introducing plot, character, and significant events. Instead, Ning interspersed […]
August 11, 2010 – 9:22 am
I consider again the time problem but in this case from the point of view of Rosita. Because when she found Dave eating pie directly from the plate in which it had been baked and she’d asked him “are you eating pie again” he’d answered “No.” She went through options: He was correct and she’d […]
August 10, 2010 – 6:51 pm
My mother, who’s a willy-wag, wore European airs. She’d correct our applications. “Call it the loo,” she said, as she stirred syrup in her coffee. It got bad outside the house as our friends had difficulties understanding what we believed or knew. “Bring the carriage around,” she said, by which she meant what my father, […]
August 9, 2010 – 10:34 am
Jenny’s date didn’t go so well. The wrestler had fingers that reminded her of boiled wax beans and, she said, his Spanish was insistent, as if he wanted her to learn it then and there over drinks. “A sour something drifted from him,” she said. My date, however, went in a different direction. First off, […]
Imagine three people at a table. Outside the light dims. The moon rises. Somewhere far doors are locking. There are three people at the table. Two men and a woman. The sun breaks over the trees. It looks like a bowl of new lemons. It looks like a thin smile after a break in heavy, […]
Dave is romping. Out of that striped wound in the sky I see a tongue, eyes following then an affront of ants. Symbols of poetry. Stone masons might do better with words or crack addicts. The chimes turn my attention to leaf shadow where I read smoldering psalms. Kill you dead I did with sticks […]
The Banjo watched fifteen second Dave with skepticism, the skepticism of wood, twangy notes, and tight metal strings, the suspicion skin has for thorns, the care deer bring with them when they’re asked kindly to drink from this hole. The Banjo felt another Dave just beyond range, a time splitting Dave who might appear, pluck, […]
August 2, 2010 – 11:44 am
The comatose patient knew he was in a coma. When he opened his eyes, he saw sky, clouds drifting across, he saw what might in the future become a painting or a photograph or a film. He heard his wife say “Rocks.” He heard his son say “It would be painful to fall from such […]
There are great moments in cinema and great moments in fiction. For example: Wallace’s party last year when we crowded outside the door to a bedroom and heard a voice from the other side shout: “Would someone please turn on the light? I’m being sat on by an elephant.” We didn’t open the door. No […]
Billy Joe, Marshall, and Alba found hundreds of puddles on the surface of the school blacktop. The rain had come and gone quickly. The children had been eager to meet and play at the school. Water had collected in the subtle irregularities. Some of the puddles were perfectly round. All of them reflected the sky […]
