pages Falling

by Richard Weems

Published in Issue No. 16 ~ September, 1998

In this white space, a dot (a red dot, yes [red not like blood {still a horror, to be sure!}, but red like cherry candy, really {dare I invoke Lifesavers and irony (quell, quell–easy, easy–there is time to be taken, a start to be made, time to set up the importance of this dot)?}, red like wild cherry soda, like all the positive things you can imagine {even the happy things not red (a puffy, overblown beach ball [granted, with a slice of red], puppies I regret to say, the joys behind various food items [scrambled eggs, pizza with black olives, flounder stuffed with lump crab meat, chicken saagwala {don’t forget the papadam}, oh the sushi at Kamakura], music of the highest sort {the conductable works of antiquity}); like the Chinese saying goes, “It’s so red, it’s purple,’ but purple here, with this red dot, would slam down for certain sinister implications, despite all my attempts otherwise, for something there is that does not love a red dot {the housewife inside us all–the one with the flowered housecoat, to be sure} and would find it vile and filthy and a soreness unbearable {woe to him who finds this dot on the carpet!} no matter how much I may build it up with the philosophies of Feng-Shui masters}, but even if this red dot held the secret to happiness on Earth for ever and ever and an ever, the fact is that it is a red dot of unknown composition, and though the dot may seem just a perfect tiny circle, and the red a shade of the juice that’s found suspending maraschino cherries, and though the horror of this red intends to be hid under a pleasing facade, the dot burns red and announces its horror despite my best efforts]–a dot most definitely red, and most definitely a dot).

Beside it, another falls…

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Richard K. Weems (www.weemsnet.net) is the author of Anything He Wants, winner of the Spire Fiction Award and finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and The Need for Character. His short story publications include North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Mississippi Review, Other Voices, Crescent Review, The Florida Review and The Beloit Fiction Journal. He will be teaching once again this MLK weekend at the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway in Cape May, New Jersey.