Two flash pieces by Merridawn Duckler

On Going to the Record Store

Manned by an indifferent celestial being named Jesse or Manny in flare jeans and a chambray.

All gates to heaven open with a tinkling bell and this one is no exception. Inside long rows of

what you seek sits slotted in plastic like cheese slices. They require a machine to bring them to

roaring life. It is any day of the week except it is always Saturday. It will be raining very lightly,

the clouds huddle close the way you and your friends bend heads over the discs. The air smells

of wood and seepage. The walls are the color of elements turning into gold if they’re very, very

lucky.. There are levels to heaven and the stairs creak. You feel the goods with your fingertips,

alphabetical. You yourself sang that alphabet as a child. Now you have left childhood behind.

Here is the one you crave and have waited for. Here is the one you’d never deign to kiss. Each

one has a back and a front, fortune looking behind and ahead. Words, words spill across the page

like gambling spells, black as a stick of incense. Something wails quietly from the overhead. You

read the squares, their faces and contortions, cars and naked woman, slashes under the names,

poems for sure, with sleeves and holes no school prepared you for, Hugged to your chest you

approach Jesse or Manny, buried in reading the alternative press, You feel for your paper money,

the floor under your platforms rises up to meet you, crazed signs on the register urge

mellowness, You are allotted one day for the rest of your life and you use them all up in here.

On Smoking Tobacco

Everyone comes here. The unnaturally cheerful indeterminate secretary, the cool up and comer

young guy with seemingly everything going for him (the old guy smoked in his car) the girl so

overqualified at being a girl she was doomed. We meet outside but not hidden for this isn’t high

school. It’s the real world where the hidden live freely visible. We watched the little fire leap.

Noted how many times the winds blow it out. Reached to cup it even if the hands shake. In the

faceless thick middle of the corporate body this was the only place no one questioned that they

belonged. The overcast sky meant something to those of us fearing rain. The young guys hair

lifted in wind, presaging loss. The secretaries heaviness breathed from her chest

indistinguishable from her ankles, upper arms and waist.. The girl was always cold, her shoulders

like the pointed spires of a cathedral where all are welcome and none abide. It took the time it

took and then it was over. Nothing stayed behind. We knew we’d be judged by our remnants.

And what was I doing there? The sponge of my lungs wept. The child of myself clung to me

pleading, do not destroy your days with every breath. Your ancestors sat in the cave, waiting for

light to animate the pictures. Leave this circle and live.

Merridawn Duckler is a writer and visual artist from Oregon and author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press) IDIOM (Harbor Review) MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dink press) and the flash fiction collection ARRANGEMENT (Southernmost Books.) Micro essays in the ON series have been published in Mayday, Pembroke, Macqueens Quinterly, Fish Barrel Review, Pine Hills Review. Longer non-fiction in At Length, Buckman Journal. She won the Invisible City flash CNF contest judged by Heather Christle.