Alban Fischer

CONTINUATION OF CHARACTERS THROUGH THE VILLA RUBAZZIANA

The petticoats are coming, Mr. Beasley.

Delightful.  This one was to help the guests from

their carriages, thus creating the diversion of

anchoring them in a kind of narrative, while the other

led the unwitting victims down the long, fog-strewn

path into nonsense.  It was in this way the laureate

was able to carry out the plot for years.

There the massive snow impinged upon the landscape,

even though winter’s locutions had been sent packing, all

eighteen miles of lucite hair crashing to the shoulders of the road.

Nevertheless, the season remained a minor masterpiece, and embedded with moments of unscripted giddiness.  A few kernels

of late-afternoon light lay scattered on the incognizant ground, the archipelago of

ideas they

might have illumined unfortunately stored away in the brain until spring.

At times, life was expected to be a sharp admixture of gnarled ambition and an

old-fashioned

standard-issue negligence, which it is, though sometimes

the watermark of reckoning tends to give one away

Building secret escape routes into each decision one made was an acceptable,

even    encouraged practice amongst our kind.

So these frayed intentions did little to quell the general, all-around

frustration of the bas relief that is those years, is that what you’re saying?

Yes and no.  You see, we are coming up on a rampart in our

day.  The mimosa can be heard for miles.  Suddenly a cure for solitude

is upon us, and before you know it, the lesson’ll be finished off in just a few bites,

altering the synaptic weight forever.  But we are condemned to repeal it,

caught as we are in emoting all up in each other’s personal space.

Well, good luck anyway, Fireplaces.  I’ll be seeing you. 

Alban Fischer is the editor of trnsfr Magazine.  His first book, Status Area, is forthcoming later this year from Varmint Armature.  He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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