Angels and You Dogs

Short stories are a process of keeping juggled balls or perhaps, fiery torches aloft. They must, like any juggled object, remain constantly in play; one cannot falter when executing a work of short fiction. Timing the adept catch and pass of word, image, nuance is everything; without perfect cadence, the writer s efforts drop out of the sky. Constant motion is imperative, although it can be as subtle as a second s silvery bow of a grassy meadow beneath a whisper of wind. No matter how quiet-seeming the tale, good stories embody concentrated, incandescent energy that may be hidden until the last word reveals the meaning of the just-read work, igniting a fire in the mind, compelling the reader to retrace the points in the story that are now luminescent, infused with allusion that was always there, but not yet discerned just like much of life. Short stories are effervescent, for their life is hardly less fleeting than a round of juggling, gone in a month, flashing in and out of existence with the speed of a subatomic particle. A short story is a remarkable thing indeed.


Genre: Literary Fiction