Short Shorts

I'm so glad to be moving on from poetry. I won't catch all the intricacies of fiction right away, either, but at least there are some pretty sweet stories to look forward to - right? I'm not really sure what I should be commenting on about these, but…here goes.

The first thing I noticed when reading Fiction Packet 1 - Short Stories was that they aren't too different from the Lyn Hejinian poem from Poetry Packet 1. Or maybe that poem is more like a story?

From this packet, my favorite is "Mystery Stories" by Sharon Krinsky. They are short and don't tell too much. I'm left thinking, "Uh, what just happened?" "The Record Store" and "The Red Coats" are like that. Why did she come to the party with two coats to begin with? It seems every year at a Christmas party, somebody in my family loses a coat to the bedroom. (Why is it that the coat room is always the bedroom? I'd rather keep my coat on than leave it on somebody's bed…)

"Morning News" was quite hard to read. This past year has been full of people close to me getting sick and some have passed away. Every time another person gets sick, someone does something crazy, like buy a 60" television. "I feel a failure of imagination." That's always been me. While everyone else is saying their "last words" and stuff, I have nothing left to say, except "I love you." If that's a surprise, I must have done something wrong.

"Wallet" is just so paranoid - I love it. "We are both stupid with smiles and he is shouting, 'Drive fast, drive fast.'" Sometimes, it is so much fun to feel reckless when you haven't done anything wrong.