A Failed Photograph of the Night Sky

It began at 3 a.m. as another failed experiment. She wrote her shopping list on the back in hard lead pencil, sighed, and shoved it into the pocket of her tweed skirt. That day, she handled more invoices for the Milliken account, stubbed her toe on the filing cabinet, and – it must be confessed – nodded off into an inchoate dream, in which tidy rows of figures became gentle, supple shadows. That evening, when she took out the list, she saw a few lines had appeared on it from nowhere, suggestive of a figure. Over the years, she watched her emerge.

Image: Edgar Degas, Danseuse ajustant sa bretelle.

Dans l’estomac de la Loire

The river swallowed
her, turned
her into a bolus, slid
her into a slow stomach in
 the middle of pre-primeval Nantes.

    And waited.

      Time churned, silts settled,
       her tender toes now tap twenty
        thousand leagues beneath
        the Jules Verne Museum beneath
        a dancing salon named
         Sea of
          Dreams.
            Her serpent twines
              expectant near her cunt – ou,
                       disons-nous, near the école élémentaire
                                    named after Gustave Roch, scholar
                                        of surfaces topological until he
                                          died untimely in the coils
                                           of tuberculosis . . .
                                           Her nipple
                                          perks the Palais
                                          des Sports de  Beaulieu,
                                            where Real Madrid played
                                                PAOK Thessaloniki
                                                    in a beautiful ’92
                                                       Eurocup
                                                        game.

Image: le jardin, by Max Ernst. For other stories it inspired,
see Magpie Tales.

A Real Doctor

“Huh,” said the technician and left, which wasn’t exactly how Maggie thought pre-natal ultrasounds worked.
     After half an hour, an intern stepped in, nodding hello furtively. He looked about 16 and shifted the ultrasound wand around like he was learning to drive stick. “Huh," he said.
     “Isn’t my baby okay?” Maggie asked.
     “Baby?” said the intern, wearily. “That’s an island inside you.”
      Thankfully what looked like a real doctor arrived just then. “Diagnosis?” she asked, calm and crisp.
     “Island," said the intern, uncertainly adding, “The bridge looks manmade."
     “Huh,” said the real doctor. “I’d say archipelago.”
     Maggie began to scream.

Image (and additional stories inspired by it): Magpie Tales. 

The Shadow Stranger

Behind you, a stranger waits in the shadows. Not with a knife in hand, not with oiled whispers, nor with a trenchcoat lined with knockoff watches and a tale of woe. A quiet stranger, a stranger like you but unlike, with a left side like your right and vice versa. A stranger who kneels beneath your chair and leans her forehead against the wall, who licks at its white leaded paint and tastes the white as darkness, and dark as light. She hopes you’ll play a record soon. The sound of all that silence in the room just deafens her.

Photo by Melodie McDaniel
For other posts inspired by this image, see The Mag.

Moored

She was moored, tied up for good, bogged down, laid low, swamped, flattened, vegetable and mired. Cathy came to her funeral, and Heathcliff, the sisters Brontë, and even – it was said – the reclusive brothers Bell, who wrote. Thrushes sang to cover curates, who talked behind the church about their livings. Her admirers subscribed to lay a wreath upon her stone and, ’cross the centuries, acorns leapt up into oaks to view it. The scrollwork pleased them, as did the little stone leaf canopy that shielded her from the coral spread of liverworts and lichens. Her vessel rested in peace.

For other writings inspired by this image, visit Magpie Tales.

Distraction

He staggers and he falls. A fanged imp, drawn by fresh hemoglobin and gunsmoke, splatters through the wall, clamoring that men’s blood is less than sweet these days, that molasses taffy has lost its shine. A goldfish of crumpled paper puppet-swims against the grain, laying low to spy beneath the Coronet for MI5. Soon it’ll sense the currents that swept the sheets stage left. Hear the footsteps of the maid who’ll make up that bed and lie. About stealing her sweetheart’s pennant that had once hung the rented wall. Leaving one nail stuck off-key, driving a dead man to distraction.

For other writing inspired by this image, visit Magpie Tales.

A Hard-Boiled Bird

Another nickel, another crazed midnight with Cleotis Hammersley. She insisted, the way only the lace-gloved, silk-trained rich can insist, that she was being spied on; she wanted, the way heroines always want, to leave the mansion and draw the watchers out; and it was raining, a way it never rains in southern California. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance . . . I needed a night alone reading Raymond Chandler. What I had was a coat of feathers, a black feather hat, a headache like a gun. I put them on and escorted Miss Hammersley to the granite shores.

For other writings inspired by this image, visit Magpie Tales.

The Snake Charmer

“My right pinkie, I have stretched her 13 years,” Leeah said, but Monsieur Rousseau still looked mostly junglesick. Kevon peeped from behind the mangrove where he was hiding and gestured, “Sex it up!”
     “My flute, I alone have polished him, naked but for light of the Moon we call Snake,” perked Monsieur Rousseau right up. Kevon was choking back giggles, the bastard.
     Leeah applied the flute to her twitching lips and began a two-note semi-mambo. Kevon managed to release their pet pythons on cue. As Monsieur Rousseau began sketching, mesmerized, Kevon slipped behind him and began to raid his rucksack.

For other writings inspired by Henri Rousseau's The Snake Charmer, visit Magpie Tales.