christopher cocca

Months ago, I wrote a short piece called “I Love You When You’re Pretty.”   I submitted it widely and got strong feedback from editors who suggested other editors I might submit to.   Yesterday, the piece got accepted at Pindeldyboz, one of the venues from the fist round of submissions.   This is good news for more than the obvious reason.  I’ve wanted to have something run at Pindeldyboz for a while now.  I’m not sure when it will run, but I’ll let everyone know when it does.

The freshman boys’ room is crashes and cologne-sweat and white-boy lucha libre. Army surplus beds are piled matting. Body checks that last year hurt into dry rot panel and broken chairs and complaining peace church Christian neighbors saying it kept them up or ruined their devotions. The Bible Camp director with your names on a clipboard confronts you in the morning and says he’ll send you home but you know they want you here too much to mean it. Your straight-faced promise to be better is stand-off penance. Vassal deference and authorities you tolerate. You laugh at him through breakfast.

“The Sharecropper’s Son” was originally written in response to a prompt at 100wordstories.com. The image comes from badjonni via Flickr (Creative Commons License, attribution/noncommercial/share-alike).

Zimmy doesn’t care why they’re booing. “That’s it. Let’s go man, let’s go.” The devil disappears. Yarrow comes out: “Bobby’s going to get his axe.” Someone makes a Seeger joke. “Bobby’s going to get an acoustic guitar.”

“Does anyone have an E harmonica?” He picks one from the footlights. More self-conscious poetry. No stray-cat-whisker strings curling the machinehead. No Woody Guthrie work shirt but everyone is clapping. The first set was too short and he says “It’s all over now, baby blue” like someone planting a bomb. In 2007, Dunkin’ Donuts sponsors the Newport Folk Festival. The chimes of freedom flashing.

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The “From The Comments” pick from Friday at 100 Word Stories was good, not because it was clever or funny, but because this is how people talk and it’s fruitless. I love the deconstruction of repetitive small-talk and consensus in this piece. It makes me wish Beckett wrote scores of 100 word stories.

Didn’t do very much drabble this week. The daily prompts at 100 Word Stories weren’t hitting me between the eyes, though I did love the one from Monday.

This week’s Rolling Stone has Led Zeppelin on the cover and a very good feature story inside. The last paragraph is the best. Robert Plant looks a bit like old Donar from last week’s drabble on the cover. I’d probably shell out money I don’t have for some Zep tix.

Diego’s hair is white and thin-wreathed above his ears, thick and hard around his muzzle and spotty in deep valleys between his temples and his chin. No metaphor does justice to the slow death we all fight for even at the Mission; there’s no sex in the details and we’re not well worn leather or dry mud brick or other things with function. Old age is pain and medicine and penance for our youth; we are wise now but too weak to right the many wrongs we did on purpose. Old age is futile Purgatory and we sin in preparation.

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Winfrid taunted the tree like a woodsman Elijah, sucking the god from it like stubborn red sap. When his ax gorged wet wood like good teeth in ripe apples Donar’s tribes knew he’d lost them to Christ-god. That the cult-prize of Wodin, their war god, and Donar, his thunder, built a strong Christ-hall meant Winfrid’s were the right Father and Son lords to worship. Winfrid became Boniface, this people’s Patron, and Christ-god became in their thinking the First and the Last of all things. Wodin and Donar became Wednesday and Thursday, not the beginnings or ends of even a week.

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I’m reading Mailer’s “The Castle In The Forest” right now, but this was written following today’s prompt at 100 word stories, which made me think of Thor and Boniface immediately.  See also “The Dream of the Rood” and The Heliand.

I think there has to be a better generic name for the 100 word story than drabble. It sounds so unimportant. I’m taking suggestions. Benjamins. Franklins. C-Notes. Something.

In praxis, I’m often baffled by the choices people make with only 100 words to work with. With only 100 words, phrases you can read a million other places should be the first things to go when you edit. The writerisms. The throwaways. The borrowed, retread images that don’t mean anything. Get rid of them.

New one up at 100 Word Stories. Read and vote here.