SLIPPING ON POETIC PROSE AS THOUGH IT WERE A BANANA PEEL

"SLIPPING ON POETIC PROSE AS THOUGH IT WERE A BANANA" is a fast fiction based on an illustration sent to me by Antonio Jorge Goncalves. His site consists of 300 strangers that he sketched on the subways of ten different metropolises around the world.

Now sometimes in these fast fictions I aim for the skeletal structure of a skit, an idea that would work as sketch comedy if handled with the right amount of irreverence but today I'm in the mood for something a little more sombre. I want to handle Goncalves' sketches with care. (He's sent me four in total which will appear over the next couple of weeks.) For me there's something almost sacred to public transit; so many people in a communal ritual of movement from morning to night. So many stories being lived out in a space that moves from place to place. There something amazing about the sub-way life project.I hope this fast fiction does some justice to that.


Enjoy...

SLIPPING ON POETIC PROSE AS THOUGH IT WERE A BANANA PEEL

Try to transcribe your loneliness into pauses hovering over the paper. Your looks of contemplation are behind a paper thin wall that keeps the world outside when in fact there is nothing to hide for you are in an inner chamber of solitude inside your insides.

A child trips over himself with abandon while clinging to a mother's arm like a simian swinging from a branch as the train lurches into the progress of movement. If you peered outside of yourself you would recognize the stumblings of your own childhood. A smile would lighten your face.

"Stand upright you little fart," the mother mothers.

The child farts in response and while everyone chuckles you pass by another opportunity to laugh like a deadpan man named Ali passes gas past a gas station in deadpan alley.

Mirrored mirrors trailing the punchline off into infinity.