The Incredible Shrinking Story: An Anthology

(Fast Forward Press, 2011)

This anthology of short shorts is going fast forward, jerking, ping pong shots, tongue-in-cheek, muffled, theoretical, and dreamy. Under the Big Top title page, episodic anger, murder, love, pregnancy, a naked grandmother looking for a train station and a young man getting high with Santa. With a lot of things to say, but only a little space, money tight, but so damn nice, a dozen beautiful roses, thin or fat, lonely or ecstatic, small stories rise up in a hot air balloon. It’s the style of the day, squeeze it and marvel at the random shapes, the scent of pine needles, centipedes, beetles, and slugs, a line of little pigs, a pair of deuces, and a perfectly spheroid woman. Clowns, cheeseburgers, and silvery strangers. Picasso, Einstein, and Muhammad Ali. Cry or roll with laughter, a page turner, with a lot of looking out the window in between. I don’t smoke. She kissed me. He will use a sock instead. This is an incredible shrinking collection of everything everywhere.