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Tuesday, May 30, 2023
[New post] Flash Fiction for Side A: “Anglers” by Dan Shields
Heavy Feather posted: " https://youtu.be/BZ8nguYBgW4 Anglers We watch their suns drift like pulp to the bottom of the glass, these days between sleep and the gasp. We skim them like stones on a creek. These days we squat and moan—old tequila worms squirming in the b" Heavy Feather Review
We watch their suns drift like pulp to the bottom of the glass, these days between sleep and the gasp. We skim them like stones on a creek. These days we squat and moan—old tequila worms squirming in the bottle. A big yellow bus scrambles past the bones of a stop. Our stop. The stop that stopped being a stop, on a honey-colored day, in a gold-rimmed year, where freedom cleaved to our lips like sugar. We watch the bus's backside labor up the neighborhood strip, scattered sets of heads bouncing like fish bobbers on a raw vinyl lake. Shouting, twisting, bumping, boasting. These days we boast too. About the same tide in a different time. We hack up laughter and point our crooked fingers. Insist our heads were countless inside. These days we claim our heads bounced a little higher than theirs. Our eyes peeled wider with hunger. We all know what these hooks catch. We're the ones who set them. Baited back in those other days, the endless ones, and cast wildly into the future. Our lives on a line, swimming in the sweetness. The days that bus went faster, way faster, and we swore we'd never bite.
Mini-interview with Dan Shields
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
DS: I think like most people there are too many to name, but a pretty lucid one that keeps returning to me is this: I was on vacation with my family at the beach one summer, I think a rising freshman coming into high school. I was at that age where everything you know is frustrating and embarrassing and you can't really say why. Like the world is a membrane that's always right in front of you, and you know that if you could just punch through it, there's another world on the other side that makes sense and wants you there. Obviously that doesn't happen, but I distinctly remember being at the beach with my family this one summer and reading this book called "The Sword of Hannibal" by Terry McCarthy. I don't know Terry McCarthy, but I think he would probably agree when I say that the book isn't exactly a towering classic of historical fiction. But I adore that book (look it up on Goodreads or something, it's got an amazing cover). For a few hours each day I didn't have to interrogate myself about why I was feeling angry or lonely or helpless, and unable to express what any of those feelings meant. I didn't have to think about the membrane. I could just take the weight off and be up there in the Alps with Hannibal and his elephants. Then of course what followed is the writer's response: If this book could do this for me, maybe I could try to do this for myself.
HFR: What are you reading?
DS: Right now I'm reading Goon Dog by Jon Berger and it is delightfully strange. To me it's like the book equivalent of those mysterious energy pills you can buy at the gas station for like $5. I love stories that remind me of the people I grew up around and this is full of those. Before that I read Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty. That book was like walking around in a frozen pair of boots filled with glass but somehow you don't want to take them off.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted "Anglers"?
DS: I live in DC now, but every two months or so I go back to my hometown in Pennsylvania to get these blood infusions. When I do I stay with my parents, and from my old room I can often see the school bus that I used to take home every day, stopping at the corner and dropping kids off. I got to thinking about how that bus route is trapped in amber, and how growing up you think everything else will be too.
HFR: What's next? What are you working on?
DS: I'm always in the lab cooking up something. Balancing a few interconnected short stories at the moment and seeing where they go. Sitting on a novel manuscript about two young people who fall asleep on the same coastal seawall on two different days off the week, but I think I need more time away from that before I revisit it. That's another thing I'm really trying to work on- meaningful revision. For an answer that's not writing-related- I'm trying to get back into skateboarding after decades away. So I'm also working on my ollies.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
DS: Gosh this feels like a dog who caught the car type moment. Well I've been thinking a lot about sincerity lately. Mostly in terms of how growing up there was this general, unspoken feeling that it was "uncool" or an act of desperation to be sincere. Like by being honest and making a genuine effort you were showing your hand at the poker table or something. With the advent of social media I feel like this atmosphere has only gotten more pressurized, because any act of honesty or authenticity will immediately be met in the field by the collective id that has grown out of people being online. and you just don't know if it will have anything nice to say. I've been thinking about this a lot and what I want to say here in response is "who cares". Run back to sincerity. Run back to community. I think we'll all be better for it and to be honest, I think that's probably one thing the chatbots programmed to write books won't be able to emulate.
And, you know. Free healthcare, more unions, etc. etc.
Dan Shields is from Middletown, Pennsylvania, home of the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of 1979. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ANMLY, Cleaver, Sky Island, and others. Find him on Twitter @DanDotShields.
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