fiction by Trent Walters
Short Stretches of the Imagination
I. Lost in Translation
The acid poets of Turd were different. The other residents did not understand who the poets were or where they came from or why. They were obviously alien. They showed up like changelings in a normal
person’s crib and baby carriage. They did not bawl. They did not babble back their parents’ inanities as good babies should. They did not crawl underfoot. (The residents, however, did find the poets the perfect size for punting.) The poets did yodel: nonsensical operatic overtures at full moons. The yodels sounded like flesh-crawling howls to gather
together. The poets grew to wear the same perishable pigskins of wolfish pull-wool. They ate the same ground potatoes and mashed carrots and moles sautéed in onion sauce. The other residents did not
understand how. A resident could breed with a poet. Residents did not want to breed with poets. Who would? The other residents did not understand what the acidwords meant. The words were dark. The words were innumerably few and far in between deep white spaces. The poets slapped words on words. The words joined in different ways. The words impacted, compacted, and composted in different ways. The words sounded like turds. The words sounded like a man fed entirely on extra fizzy sodapop, prunes and jabañeros. Who wanted to listen? The residents did not. They shook their heads at the absurdity of jerks. Jerks
posed behind words. The words gave the residents ulcers and acid indigestion. The residents took baking soda. “Jerks!” the residents said, popping Peptos. “Soda jerks!” the residents elaborated. The P.R. President of Pleasant Residents asked for I.Q. tests. “Maybe they are smart. Maybe we are dumb.” The I.Q. tests made the poets happy. They thought this was the solution to their nameless identity problem. The I.Q. tests returned. The results showed the poets were as retarded as the other residents. The other residents did not understand why. The poets
lived nearby. The residents rounded up the poets. They alienated the poets in a sty they called pig pen. Pigs are different, too. They taste better. The living lived happily ever after all.The S’not aliens came. The aliens wore overly complex armor. A web of strange elemental metal made the armor. The metal dripped long strings of stringy acid through multiple pores. The alien thoughts thought differently from the residents’. Naturally, the aliens poured the complex acid down the residents’ throat to communicate. The residents’ nerves short-circuited. The brains tasted like chicken. The aliens shrugged and moved on to the pen of pigs. The aliens slimed their thoughts. The poets were ecstatic. Finally, someone understood. The living lived happily ever after all.
The Emperor aliens came. The aliens wore nothing. The aliens touched down on Turd. The natives spoke gobbledy-gook. Their universal translators did not translate. The aliens fried the natives. The natives
tasted like worms. That was to be expected. They were obviously different. The living lived happily ever after all.END of I
II. The Humans Who Knew, I Mean, Everything
The men talked in their mansion. Morning, noon and night, they talked. Wide-stage 3Vs of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, CIA, DEA, FBI and other acronymous agencies blared over the talking heads. The men had nothing
better to do with their time or money.One day, one realized the inefficiency of their dilemma and said, “As you know, Bob, we tell each other things we already know. What we need to do is synthesize all the remaining great minds of the world into ours to advance our society.”
“As I knew, Isaac, I agree. We will pay great gobs of money to Pulitzer-Prize-winning essayists, novelists, scientists, but not those damned obfuscating poets--”
“As I know, Arthur--wait, I am Arthur. As we know, we will inject the subjects with nano-tracings to etch out the pathways of their brains, then reinject the nanos into our own to fuse--”
“Science will claw deeper into big brains, making leaps and bounds millennia into the future,” cackled a mad scientist who was forever mixing things that shouldn’t be mixed and who shall for now remain nameless to protect his innocence. “Our knowledge will be limitless. We will get two thoughts for the price of one. Since our thoughts shall mingle, we will communicate at faster than light speeds. We will effectively read minds. And the whole universe will all be mine, mine--I mean--ours!”
A few hours later famous minds across the universe donated pathways whether they wanted to or not. Money talks. Technicians injected the nanos into the talking heads. Assassins killed the technicians and
the original donating minds. The assassins arrived at the talking head mansion for their just desserts and fell into a large vat of hydrocholeric acid, key lime pie, and lemon meringue. The nameless mad scientist
laughed maniacally. The universe was his.Meanwhile, in the 3V room, discussions raged on, regarding the latest in science, politics, and technology: “As you know, Bob...”
END of II
III. 13 Ways to Leave a Gray Anecdote Ajar
to Create the Idea of Order at Key Lime WestIn the reincarnated future, in the deep deep cold of our silent and entropied planet, in the mansion of In-My-Mansion-Are-Many-Talking-Heads which sits upon a
hill in Tennessee amid sprawling and slovenly wilderness, sits the triumvirate of heads in coxcombs and glass bell jars.Acid poets reincarnated are standard fare. Talk is expensive. Words are cheap. Poets are cheaper yet: a dime a baker’s dozen. The baker tosses a plump poet on the fire to heat the wasted space. The baker leaves the door ajar so that he can roll in the barrels of otherwise stripped-naked poets with ease.
“When’s a jar not ajar?” asks Isaac, the bells of his cap a-jingling. “When it’s clothed!” Guffaws echo down the hall. Wearing his mobcap like a crown, the baker imperially rolls in another poet.
“You can’t do this to me,” the nameless poet runs on, “you can’t, you can’t treat words as if they fail to accumulate meaning, flavor, and textures all cobbled together--”
“Shove an apple in his mouth,” says Bob. “We’ll do the talking around here. Thank you very much. How is he? Well, cut into him! Of course, the pig’s pink. Let me try a bite. It’s tough and bitter. Poets always are, especially these reanimated bastards. Who pulled them out of the deep freeze?”
“Listen to that,” says Isaac, leaning an ear to the fire. “Nothing beats the sound pleasure of a great sizzle-lean poet!”
“Lean?” asks Arthur, playing along with the standard joke. “What do you mean lean? That poet was a lard ass.”
“He’s lean now!” Guffaws echo down the halls. “Bring in the next poet up for bid!”
“Wait!” says another nameless poet in an opera hat. “I have a name.”
“Do you hear that?” Isaac asks. “The lady doth speak our tongue. What is your name, sweet thang?”
“Joyce Carol Oates.”
“Shut up and keep shutting up,” says Bob. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Isaac. Poets don’t have names. Besides, who can understand such gobbledy-gook? She speaks in sentence fragments.
Toss her in, Bakerman.”The next poet up for bid heard the near-success but complete failure of his predecessor. He entered to intercede on her behalf in a barrel and stove pipe hat. “My name is Stevens. Wallace Stevens.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Perhaps the supreme truth depends upon a wheelbarrow walk around the lake read in a red reality or through that reality for some nameless yet supremely acceptable fiction.”
“You’re nuts,” says Arthur. “You’re stark-raving mad.”
“This room is gray.”
The talking heads looked about them for the first time. “So it is, Mr. Wall-Ace” says Bob. “Who cares?”
“There are many ways to look at your lives.”
“Don’t try to get fancy on us,” says Isaac. “As you know, I’ve written and edited half a dozen Baker’s Dozen collections, so name thirteen ways.”
“This 1) tall, 2) round, 3) portly mansion,” says Wallace, “is 4) a jar. It is 5) gray and 6) bare. You are 7) snow men whose heads live in gray and bare 8) formaldehyde jars. I could change that. I could exchange your jars bounded in a nutshell for 9) white gowns and 10) green necklace beads. You would hear your 11) hearts beat furiously again, joining 12)
disparate voices to sing 13) beyond the beauty of the sea.”Slack-jawed, the heads stare at the poetic, numerical revelation of selves. Broken up and enumerated into a whole, the nameless monstrosity gains a name. The heads turn to one another in astonishment. Bakerman steps forward. “Gentlemen, shall I escort the poets--”
“Shut up, Bakerman,” says Arthur. “Leap us into the unbound future, kind sir!”
So the once unnamed poet does. He lifts the jars, one by one, and drops them, one by one, and shrouds them in beads and gowns in colors heretofore unmentioned and unmentionable. Science is undone, madness is made sane, entropies reverse, the living live, and no dead die again. Even Bakerman, who can’t help but be impressed by the previously inconceivably eclectic mix, whose sensibilities lack sensible sense of
amalgamating aesthetic abilities, sweats in beads in the ensuing heat of fusion, is moved to tears by the ostentatious display of sublimating snowmen singing hallelujahs to the highest.“Amen,” says Wallace donning his white frock coat and steps into the laboratory, cackling.
Background by ArtGekko