Nutrition
by Tia Prouhet
It's four pm and the fan is clicking. I should be throwing up or running or studying the internal lay of crayfish and mollusca. I pick at dry skin around my toenails and wait for some invasion. Will or fatigue, virtue or hunger.
He invited me over on a Sunday for throwback movies and casual sex, I faked an ear infection.
7 more cigarettes and I quit. I'll smoke them all today. Instead of enjoying each one slowly, memorizing the pull in and head-tilt out, I will gobble them like tiny men, missions and things to prove.
I think I'll move. Uproot to someplace where it snows and they only know mesquite as a flavor of sauce. I won't tell them mesquite are poisonous, and it will take a while before they know I am.
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140 words
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Author's Note
Previously published at The Legendary.
http://www.downdirtyword.com/authors/tiaprouhet.html
This might be prose poetry. I waffle.
Other stories by Tia Prouhet
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Very compressed but musical. The use of i and l, for example in ... "7 more cigarettes and I quit. I'll smoke them all today. Instead of enjoying each one slowly, memorizing the pull in and head-tilt out, I will gobble them like tiny men, missions and things to prove."
Strong attention to the senses. I like this piece.
"I should be throwing up or running or studying the internal lay of crayfish and mollusca."
What a second sentence! Just brings us right into this narrator's head.
Outstanding ending.
And of course I love the gobbling line.
I really like how here and in "Summer Girl" (just re-read for the 78th time) how you envision another life, so effortlessly, one I the reader never think the narrator will inhabit, wanting her to against all hope.
Wonderfully done. Amazing how the less you tell the reader, the more complete a story can become by his own input.
yes to all of the above and what a killer last-line! like this very much.
This is shiny and sparkly with its nuance. Like a really twisted pretzel. She is one not to be messed with.
Thanks, all, for the kind words!
This is just superb and tight. Every phrase, every line hits hard. Fantastic.
awesome. FAV.
Total fave! I love this piece.
Dis be greatness.
very well done, tia.
Know the feeling. Love the economy.
This was nice like a quick shot of liquor and honey. Thanks for writing it so I could read it. I'm happier today because I did.
Rad.
i love the play of contrasting images/forces here and the contradictions...mesquite and snow, the cigarettes..enjoying each one slowly but gobbling them like tiny men. That first sentence too sneaks it in...the clicking fan.
There is so much going on here in so few words, giving this piece a certain richness. Great turns of phrase throughout.
Really nice prose poem. I think you've defined it correctly. As in your other pieces, the characterization of the speaker is really well done.
Deja vu. Cigarettes are little men in my short story, "Cigs," (with the comma, as if the title were smoking), but mine goes on and on (four pp.) and this is only 140 words. 140 words! Mine is about nicotine withdrawal; this is about that, food and other things. Other things!
I suggest taking a look at the second par. It doesn't live up to the others, quite, and in a story so brief, it must.
Prose poem, story, whatever it is, it's wonderful.
yep. no matter what it's called, it's a beauty of a piece!
lovely, tia
oh yes
SO GREAT. NO WASTED LINES! PACKED FULL OF MEATY GOODNESS!
"mesquite as a flavor of sauce"--
Tey-haus indeed. Sorry it took me so long to make my way here. Great stuff.