“What’s your favourite poem?” a journalist recently asked me. My answer might surprise you. Read it here.
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Tag: rolli
FLASH FICTION: Somewhere Else
We were somewhere else. The walls. We were living, in the walls.
If I moved, my mother’s voice, her whisper, grew serious. The instant I was still, she resumed her listening.
I was uncertain why she listened. For fear of what, she would even quit breathing.
I too began to listen.
One evening…
The door. It opened. We both heard it. Then the tread, the cautious tread of someone. She was stiller, my mother, and more silent, than when she slept.
Her heartbeat. I could feel my mother’s heart, in her harm. It beat faster, as the footsteps moved closer. They were soon so close…
It quivered. My mother’s heart quivered.
Someone touched the wall. I felt her hand, my mother’s hand, slide over my mouth, and hold it. Her forehead touch my own.
Her tears filled my ear. They ran, at last, down my back.
And the wall cracked open.
Rolli’s latest book is The Sea-Wave.
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FLASH FICTION: Adventures with Writers
Every writer I’ve ever met was scared to death.
“What are you so terrified of?” I asked Gordon (a writer).
“The world is terrifying,” he said.
“Could you be more specific?” I asked him.
His eyes got wider.
“I could if I had some paper,” he said.
We crossed the street.
“Coffee time?” I said.
Gordon grabbed my arm.
“I would kill for a coffee,” he said.
I could tell by the way his eyes quivered that he meant it.
*
Two men live below me, in the basement suite. They don’t go anywhere. Their conversations float up through the floor vents.
“Writing,” the one said, “is dying. Fast. By the end of the month, we’ll have no idea what to chisel into its headstone.”
“Bullshit,” said the other man. “It’s dying slowly. We have a few good years left. Then a few not so good years.”
I can sometimes smell marijuana coming up through the vents.
*
A man was lying in the street. I rolled down my window.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
It was my friend Richard. Author of Payday Poems.
“Do you need a ride?”
Richard sat up. He took off his glasses. He cleaned them on his shirt. His shirt was filthy. He slipped his glasses back on. He lay back down.
“No,” he said.
I was about to drive off when my friend sat back up. He waved his hand. I rolled the window back down.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Almost midnight,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said, lying back down.
I waited a few minutes. Then I rolled up my window and drove off.
*
Words floated up from the floor.
“I need peanuts, swim trunks, golf balls and coffee.”
“You can get all that at the bookstore. I need to go anyway.”
“What book are you getting?”
“I just need some hand lotion.”
No one said anything for over an hour.
“Why is it still 7:00?”
“I was wondering about that, too.”
I couldn’t even smell marijuana.
*
Richard’s funeral was a sad occasion. Two or three friends went. His publisher went, but left early. “I wish I could get this many people at a reading,” said the woman next to me. I laughed.
An important writer gave the eulogy. I’d never heard of him.
They passed around sandwiches, after. The woman next to me filled her purse with them. “These should last me all week,” she said. I laughed again.
*
“What are you working on these days?” I asked Gordon.
He crawled under the table.
I guess we’re all terrified. Most people bury their terror under houses and Christmas trees and wives. Not writers. They can’t afford any of those things.
“Beer o’clock?” I said, crouching down.
Gordon crawled out. He grabbed my arm.
“I would kill for a drink,” he said.
A few days later, he did.
Rolli’s latest book is The Sea-Wave.
Buy him a coffee.
RECEIVED: Slice
Received – Issue 21 of Slice. I have a short story in it. About THE END OF THE WORLD. Check it out, if you get a chance.
Rolli’s latest book is The Sea-Wave.
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THANK-YOU: Free Story
As a thank-you present for my loyal readers, here’s a never-before-published short story. It’s about writers … and the future. Click here to read or download.
Rolli’s latest book is The Sea-Wave.
Buy him a coffee.
FLASH FICTION: An Ostrich
When Dad died, I talked to an ostrich.
In the waiting room, an ostrich sat down.
“Who let this ostrich in?” I said.
The janitor stared at me.
The ostrich stared at me.
The surgeon walked into the room. He tore off his white mask and put on a serious one.
“You don’t even have to say it,” I said.
The ostrich put his wing around me.
*
We didn’t have the greatest relationship, Dad and I. We didn’t talk. He treated me like shit. I loved him. I realized that after.
When he got sick… I walked closer to him, I sat closer. We still didn’t talk, but…
Then he died.
*
I wrote a letter. It said, I COULD REALLY USE A FRIEND. I mailed it to my friends.
No one got back to me.
One afternoon, there was a knock on the door.
I got out of bed. I got dressed.
I opened the door.
It was the ostrich.
He sat down on the sofa.
“I’ll make some coffee,” I said.
*
“I don’t remember Dad ever playing with me. He was always too old. Even when he wasn’t. He loved me. He never said it. I said it a lot when I was a kid, but … I didn’t mean it. Not really.”
You can tell an ostrich anything.
*
I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t open my eyes. I kept falling asleep. I kept dreaming.
I dreamed I was the last person on Earth. I felt so homesick. Even though I was home.
I crawled into bed—in my dream. I lay there.
Something touched my hair. Something tousled it. Like Dad.
I woke up.
I looked over.
There was something on the pillow, next to me.
An ostrich feather.
*
One morning…
I looked out the window.
The sky was blue. I hadn’t noticed that. Not in a long, long time.
I made breakfast.
I swept the floor.
I opened the front door and closed it.
I heard something.
I ran back to the window.
I saw the shadow of the ostrich, on the lawn.
Just the shadow.
Then it was gone.
*First published in The Walrus.
*From an unpublished collection, Dream Museum.
Rolli’s latest book is The Sea-Wave.
Buy him a coffee.
FLASH FICTION: Vivian Jackson Bean
I have written over two hundred novels. Two hundred and five, or six. It always startles me, the number.
When I was young and dreaming, living in the museums of books we mistreat, in libraries, both there and in my imagining, I dreamed a thing that escaped my dreams. An amphibian idea. For a year of my young life I followed it, for a mad year, a brilliant year, catching it, at last, between leaves of a book, my own, which was placed in the museums of books, for others to mistreat.
An idea begins … as a spot on water. A dark spot. If it is not washed, by a wave, away, if it does not simply change into nothing, then when the tide stands back at last, when you have done with waiting, it remains. A glistening animal. A real thing, born of nothing, and yours—to capture, if you can.
I have always dreamed so easily. In a million nights of life, there have been a million dreams. But ideas… There has been only one.
I have waited by the side of water, forever. I have watched, these nights of life, for the dark spot to reappear. I have seen the deceiving shadows of gulls, above, and the roaming fish below. And when the waters retire, finally, when I am half mad of waiting … there is nothing. There is only sand.
This is my secret. It is the secret of many. One in a million, perhaps, one in so very few, is more fortunate. Such a one will sit by the sliding water again and again, and each time will see first the spot, then the animal. Will reach for the last with that shaking, trepid reach. Will hold it. What life must be for such a one… It is beyond my imagining.
I have written over two hundred books. But really, I have written only one.
Perhaps one is all one needs.
Rolli’s latest book is The Sea-Wave.
Buy him a coffee.
