Monday
In Sandra Cisneros's "Pilon," she writes, "How before my body wasn't my body. I didn't have a body. I was a being as close to a spirit as a spirit. I was a ball of light floating across the planet." Cisneros is one of many voices captured within Sudden Fiction Latino, a collection connecting the United States and Latin America through writing. Cisneros reminds us of the moment of time when existing doesn't hurt. It's pure like when a reader engages with a text so passionately and completely. Editors Robert Shapard, James Thomas, and Ray Gonzalez bring together short stories that feel unheard, new, and forgiving of first time readers. The entire collection makes you feel like "a ball of light floating" page to page, entering places almost close to the heart. Your eyes will squeeze through a pair of lips where all the secrets are tucked away, and feel the need to make them yours. There's something so hauntingly familiar yet disconnected happening, the reader feels torn at the border of these continents like many of the voices trapped in these stories like hopeful ghosts. Each translator has magically constructed language and built a bridge for readers to cross--right into the heart of culture and soul, borderland and humanity.
It is in the brevity of these stories where heart is located. Alicia Rodriguez's "Imagining Bisbee" is a story about a place that may or may not exist. People live there, like "Crazy Nancy" the junkie, "Library Girl" the girl who reads and looks for forest fires, and "Bible Bob" the eighty year old man who only eats carrots, but they want to disappear. There's a quiet loudness that lives in this town, but it's said that Bisbee "often does not appear on maps. It is not there." Her story lasts a mere page and a bit more. Whether the reader is imaging this place or not, it exists on the page and in the landscape of our minds.
Another story, "Devotion" captures a particularly sharp moment in time, which hurts and passses by quickly. It is a story about a girl, her doll, and another character, death. Alejandra Pizarnik creates a story in just over 100 words, which paints two portraits of two characters, one just happens to be death, "an orphan." This story barely looks like a story, but never lets up. There's nothing brief about the story. There's a fullness that stops your breathing. The opening lines read: "Below a tree in front of the house, death and a girl sat at a table drinking tea." Pizarnik subtly places the reader at the same table, and we merely observe and listen to the girl and death converse back and forth, something as natural as wind and as uncomfortable as shark infested waters. These are territories readers rarely go.
Virgilio Pinera's story "Insomnia" is another story about crossing uncomfortable lines--this poor sleepless man does everything he can to fall asleep, and in the end will never do it. Instead: "At six in the morning he loads a revolver and blows out his brains. The man is dead but still he is unable to sleep. Insomnia is a very persistent thing." Sleep is not a friend; it has the uncanny ability to lose the cruelest of wars. Though short, Pinera's story builds a tiresome, unresolved tension which the reader must carry from now on.
These stories awaken the eyes, and the entire body, and perhaps the body in which we didn't realize was our own. Reading so many voices in a collection like this makes the lingering whispers hard to ignore. Something has been learned, and some things will not be forgotten. Spanish flavors continue to settle on your tongue and shape your mouth. The editors of this collection have given readers of short fiction a true gift.
About the Author
J. R. Bouchard, originally from upstate New York, is an alumni of Concordia University in Portland, OR, and is currently in her MFA program at Rosemont College. She mainly writes poetry but is recently very involved in flash fiction and prose. Currently, she's working on a book of poetry in her attic bedroom.
For further reading, check out FlashFiction.Net's suggested readings of flash fiction and prose poetry collections, anthologies, and craft books, by clicking here.
Subscribe to FlashFiction.Net by Email
on have given readers of short fiction a true gift.
