The Workshop at Sarah Doyle
Online Recital
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with hosts and editors,
Countdown Stories
These stories were the result of a class writing exercise in which the writer practices extreme discipline by forming sentences with decreasing numbers of words, until the story ends with a single word.
by Ruth Nelson Bailey
The daffodil in the window vase has turned to parchment--
each shrunken petal, pale and delicate as ribbed silk,
penciled lines clearly visible in the morning sun.
The leaf tops are yellowed, like thieves
who have stolen the spring gold
of the season's first blooming:
Each morning a token
that different kinds
of beauty
pass.
by Nancy Greene
On Sunday I had to give the gerbil a funeral.
He was to be buried next to his friend,
The other departed rat who shared his cage.
I put him under a budding tree
In the Swan Point Memorial Park.
It was a simple ceremony.
He lies in state
With famous men
And rats.
Amen.
by Gary Bolstridge
Ten little words began a journey to express human emotions.
Nine were left when one broke down and cried.
Eight carried on until they met a sentence,
Seven perfectly formed notes of simple beauty.
Six modifying adjectives were edited out.
Five became detached and transcendent.
Four fell in love.
Three fought until
Two became
One.
by Kathryn Kulpa
Yvonne was in his room again when he wasn't there.
Yvonne eavesdropped: it was how she found things out.
There were things he hadn't told her yet.
She couldn't wait; she opened the drawer.
She found the letters, the pictures.
She saw the other girl.
She'd known she would.
She looked familiar.
His ghost.
Herself.
by Camilla Lee
(Inspired by a New York Times story about a woman who adopts stray dogs and rents them out to vacationers in Hawaii.)
Once again, it is a beautiful day, only I wish it would rain. I'd like to sleep in for a change. Of course I'm deeply grateful to Christina, yet I am tired, and my joints are not good; especially my hind legs. But I'll never forget that she saved me, so I should stop whining. It is hard to forget.
My earliest puppyhood memory is nuzzling against my mother, surrounded by the wiggly warmth of my litter mates. Then the shock of being pulled away by that couple, and adjusting to life in a condo. Right from the start I could sense the tension. One time she threw a glass of water right in his face. He shook her by the shoulders and banged her head against a door. Although I was full grown by then, I kept myself hidden under the desk. It was so upsetting. When it got really bad, the police showed up. The next thing for me was the animal shelter. Two nice ladies ran the place, who tried to make you feel good. But it was very scary, being led into a cage, and the clank of the chainlink door. And so much barking.
And then, Christina. I was recommended to her by the shelter lady, because of my good disposition. That I overheard when she came to get me. Now I'm in foster care with eleven other dogs. The deal is, we are loaned by the day to vacationers on Maui, who miss their dogs at home. Every day there's a new situation. It is stressful, always having to be polite. You have to be attentive and doglike. Yesterday I got this macho man trying to impress his bikini lady. He kept throwing a tennis ball out into the surf. Over and over. Even though I'm part retriever, I get tired of retrieving. And I'm almost five, so not the dog I used to be.
Time to go. I hear my name. I'd better get up and wag. Wag wag wag. A mom and a couple of girls. I love little girls. This'll be a good day.
Reclaimed Desires
by Gary Bolstridge
He woke thinking of chocolate as he did every morning. Not of Russell Stover and Hershey’s - drug store chocolates - but of imported, handmade chocolates that were good only on the day they were made. The unsold ones had to be thrown out at the end of the day. It was these he thought of. Sweet manifestations of desire unrealized, wasted. He vowed to rescue as many as possible during the ensuing year.
But for now he had to go to work at a job he regretted taking twenty years ago. He worked to live rather than lived to work. He regretted that he hadn’t followed his instincts to become a writer. That life ended the day he gave his poem - his heart - to someone who didn’t laugh directly in his face, but told others so they could laugh together.
Everything had been special; he even used his favorite pen, the one where, when you turned it upside down, the girls' bathing suits disappeared. There were three girls on the pen and he knew each separately: the blonde who shared his interest in sports, the longhaired brunette who liked to read, and the redhead who loved chocolate. In fact, the poem had been as much about chocolate as it was about the feelings he had for the girl he wrote it for. Rich creamy words of delicate flavor and freshness reduced to the laughter of cheap candy. Now the pen lay at the bottom of a forgotten drawer, impotent from disuse, ink as hard as his protective shell.
After serving his day in purgatory at work, he stopped by the mall. While in the department store, he saw a box of Godiva’s. At first he was tempted to indulge - to buy just one or two. Richly satisfying at first, but not completely fulfilling, they dissolved into memory. Those chocolates did not compare to the uniqueness of the handmade confections.
Forgetting, or not caring why he was there, he returned through the mall. Suddenly, there, in the window of a novelty shop, he saw it. The pen - his pen - even the same three girls he had lost so long ago. Not realizing it, he ran his tongue across his lips as if words were trying to escape and find their way to the written page. He immediately went in and bought one.
Anxious to get home, he started writing without thought, without purpose. He was as much an instrument as the pen. Tongue darting, he could taste the word he saw on the paper before it appeared: chocolate….
by Carol Curry Briden
Henry was not a survivor, so it was a shock but not a surprise that someone very gently killed him. I say gently, because it was not difficult to wound Henry.
Asphyxiated, the report said. The police declined to make an official statement but said there were no signs of struggle on his body, no drugs in his body.
A certain instinct was gone in Henry from early on. We saw how he was never quick enough to miss the blows of his father, and how the children made him the center of cruel games.
The police urged anyone who might know the man to come forward to aid the investigation.
Who knew him?
We do not know who exactly killed him, whether it was one person or many. It's unlikely we ever will. Henry was not important enough for the investigation to extend beyond the formalities. Officially he will remain a man's nude body found in a desolate section of the bay called Deep Hole.
Henry was not a survivor, but all his short life he was an audience. "He was always like that," people said. "Not like his younger brother who was more regular."
"When he was just an infant we could always quiet Henry with music," his mother said. "Caruso, a symphony, the Andrew Sisters, any of the big old records would do. Blue Bird of Happiness would put him right to sleep."
What else could you say of Henry? He wasn't a lover of mankind. Nor pacifist by intention. Do not imagine he was a Christ. He didn't care about the sufferings of others. He cannot be made heroic. He cannot be made tragic. He is simply a nude body found on the beach.
As for me? I loved him as much as he allowed and now I don't want to care that his body was found naked in the middle of the winter in a place called Deep Hole, far from the gilded theaters that nourished him, far from any sound but the roar of the water and the noise of the birds.
What else?
Only that he was found hidden in the high grass. Such a romantic description, high grass, for such as ugly place.
The body was badly decomposed and what the papers did not say was that the birds had eaten his face.
No signs of struggle on his body. No drugs in his body.
Left on the beach, because the body was found 300 yards inland, too far to have been washed up by the tide.
Those are the facts. So much left unexplained.
Was he killed at the beach?
Was he killed and brought to the beach?
That makes a difference.
Why was he naked in that desolate place where the nearest street is a private road?
And in the middle of winter?
That makes a difference.
Was he killed in an act of love? Did he take his own clothes off, or was his body stripped? Did he feel the cold?
That makes a difference.
If he was stripped, why did they leave the ring? Was it just forgotten?
That makes a difference.
Did he hang onto the ring, a last gesture, a last link with something? Someone?
That makes a difference.
If he held on, was he still alive when he was left, stripped of everything, left on the beach in the high grass at a precipice overlooking the peninsula. Precipice, peninsula, I want to hang onto the words, they sound so romantic, like high grass. I want to hang onto the words so I will not remember how ugly a place it was, spoiled by junk metal and litter. Hang onto the words like Henry perhaps did to the ring. Or did they just forget to take it?
That makes a difference.
Did he reach out and only get an underworld where someone gently killed him? And again did his instincts fail him? Should he have stayed in his music? Did he know? Did he?
That makes a difference.
Did he know? Did he watch that last scene calmly as though it was just another spectacle? Was it some action removed from himself? Oh God, I hope he died with music.