“Vista Overlooking a Dying Childhood” by Emily Hoover is a one-hundred-word microfiction that springboards from a song and lands upon a jukebox, a marvel of ekphrastic momentum. Note the stark sentence fragmentation, which expresses the final breakdown of the family unit. From dawn to dusk, passed from father to mother, the children wait, and suffer. —Court Harler
“Livingston Saturday Night.” Instead, early dawn in Tulsa, OK. Peering over a cliff face. But the cliff? The tavern parking lot. The face? Our father’s. Eyes glistening. Polished stones in the rearview.
Our mother multiplies shift drinks. Monsoon clouds. The jerking emergency break. Then, our disappearing father. A dry riverbed. Our feet drag across asphalt. Captives.
Caught in the swinging door’s breeze. Stinging cigarette smoke. Scramble. Barstools not monkey bars. Knees raw from praying. Purpled men pay her to pour. Our hands. A gowpen of jukebox coins. Peer over the bar-top toward our mother horizon. No, Mother, the slinking sun.
EMILY HOOVER is the author of the poetry chapbook My Mother as a Serrano Pepper (Zeitgeist Press) and the flash fiction micro-chapbook Sinners to the Back of the House (Bull City Press). Her creative works have been nominated for the Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction anthologies.
Featured image by Patrick Fore, courtesy of Unsplash.
Flash the Court 