Four Drabbles
ALL THAT IS REQUIRED
They told us to go to a certain town and watch the jugglers. Splendid, they said: four balls in the air, standing on one foot. Rings spinning about arms. Those who disparage jugglers have a change of heart. We went. A low town with long flat streets, and corners invented even where there are no intersections. And, at every corner, a juggler, sometimes two. Outside storefronts, at the base of the plank to the public restrooms. The park and cemetery so thick with them as to be twins. And, however briefly, we had been tricked into being an unfettered audience.
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ALTERNATIVE CONSEQUENCES
We have the Adopt A Clown program. Citizens contract to have a clown board with them, perform privately, gather for occasional neighborhood shows. It introduces townsfolk to clown ways, places clown antics in new context; clowns briefly experience the normalcy of citizen life. Over time, the entertained and the entertainers will not abrade as much. Unfortunately, with the lady-clowns, there has been some dithering. Citizen wives do not see it as adulterous when it is husband with clown vice husband with the hussy next door. No one knows what the clowns think. No one has asked. Still, they mindlessly perform.
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BELONGING
Quibble understands the irony that he, a member of the Flat Earth Society, has won the society's lottery prize – an around the world cruise. He has prized his membership in the group. Camaraderie in beer consumption is an effective support for excess. Half-way into a meeting, tongues are looser, insults about rounders more obscene and caustic. Each member feels better about his membership and the space for importance it creates in our world. Quibble resolves, that upon return from the cruise, he will relate how the ship reached the edge, the captain announcing do not believe what you are seeing.
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COURSE AND EFFORT
Everyone hears the ringing. It sounds like the bell in a church tower, keeping time. But we have no church towers with bells. It is not a fire station klaxon, or a town hall summons to assemble. Town Hall has no bell. From the sound, it would be impossible to hide a bell that can issue it. Though we put by what else we are doing and search, no bell is found. There can be no ringing without a bell, so we collect our resources and go to the bellsmith one town over, contracting a bell to match the ring.
Ken Poyner offers currently four collections of poetry, and four collections of flash fiction. The two newest collections of poetry, Stone the Monsters, or Dance and Lessons From Lingering Houses emerged July/August 2021. He spent 33 years working in the information arts, and lives with his power lifting wife, several rescue cats, and multiple betta fish in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia. His stories have appeared in The Cafe Irreal eleven times previously, most recently "Five Micros" in Issue #89.