#FridayFictioneers: Shadowed Kitchen

Hi readers and writers,
Time for a new 100-word fiction piece inspired by www.madison-woods.com #FridayFictioneers challenges. This week's photo is by Raina Ng.  If you go to Madison's website, you can join in...it's fun to write these and even more fun to see all the different responses to the same image.

I would love any input readers have for me on how to make this snippet better, as well as (of course!) any comments of enjoyment.

Shadowed Kitchen

Here I sat every day in the sweet-smelling shadows after school, after the bus dropped me off.  The smell of the cumin, coriander, ginger, cinnamon from the jars on the wall always made me daydream of food while I solved the math problems or English analogies.  In those days, every teacher gave us 25 short answer items a night.  Their mantra was "homework works."  In today's world, Adam only learns from the focus of his attention: his computer.  He almost doesn't even watch television any more.

Friday Fictioneers: Faucet Fancies

Hi readers and writers,

Here is my 100 word response to Madison Woods' photo prompt of this week.  If you'd like to try writing a response (it's fun!), you could go over to her blog, get inspired, and write your own 100 word piece to share and compare with the Friday Fictioneers.  Cheers, Laura

Ideas for improvement or general comments on Faucet Fancies are welcome!

“Bill, this faucet needs a new washer.  It keeps on dripping.”

“Who cares?  A little more water won’t hurt.  The strawberry plants could use more.”

“But it’s  desert and we’re wasting water and…”

Bill had folded his newspaper and left the room. 

I decided it was time to learn about drips myself, so I went to Home Depot.  A nice young man with a blond brush-cut told me what to do.  I bought a few different sizes just in case, and the wrench he recommended.

“Hey, I thought you said this dripped?”  Bill said the next morning.  

I just smirked.

Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction

This past semester, I had a lovely class from poet/novelist Marilyn Chin.  It's the first class in my MFA program from a woman, and she reveled in being a woman!  I really enjoyed the massive reading list, which she told us was partly for our future reference.  It's fine with me that we couldn't really define what's a prose poem, what's a flash fiction.  We even found out that certain pieces are celebrated and have won awards in both categories.

I was more interested in the poetry half, since it was so different from the kind of writing we practice in the fiction workshops.  Intense images, sensory to the max, steeped in layers of meaning, and highly condensed prose with every word carrying a double dip of meaning, those concepts go with prose poems to me. I think of one centering about an image of a small basket of dead bees, covered over with a thin layer of red rose petals.  Or, a bag of dried human ears, dumped out on the dining room table.  Or a full moon noosed on a black cord, hanging over a house. But not all prose poems have an indelible image, an appeal to senses, power-packed verbiage where every word must have resulted from intense debate in the author's mind.  Some capture a scene with minimal poetic devices, with spare prose with simple beauty or starkness.  I might call them flash fiction, but perhaps there is not enough story line to make them count as stories.  The dividing line is assuredly murky and indistinct.  Our collections of each genre only made it less obvious that the two are distinct, while enticing us to write our way into the mystery.