Flash the Court

Tag: Epistolary Style

  • “Laid Off from My Own Spin-Off” by Christopher M. Grady

    “Laid Off from My Own Spin-Off” by Christopher M. Grady

    “Laid Off from My Own Spin-Off” by Christopher M. Grady is a multifaceted prose poem. Grady synthesizes three distinct craft elements into an intriguing, innovative hybrid work: first, the sustained metaphor of the television show; second, the list format of the primary actors; and third, the epistolary tone that allows for the power of direct address. Ultimately, to the reader’s delight, the speaker of the poem triumphantly refuses “the end” of the show.  —Court Harler

    We could’ve had a different story than a gay kid struggling for success. To the producers above, to the algorithm, to the audiences who only want us to be tragic.

    Not everyone deserves screen time in my episodes. Yet here I am, glitching to write my last words, a finale before they’re laid off from my own spin-off.

    1. To my father, whose legacy somehow made the budget. Fishing was never my pastime, touchdowns never highly rated. At least your baldness was a recurring gag for a cheap laugh.
    2. To Nathan’s copies, each the same actor. Nothing extraordinary in camouflage, nothing unparalleled in reused voice lines. Everything mirrored through CGI.
    3. To the girl who was a one-trick pony, clutching my shirt from the background, outing me like a desperate attempt for a ratings boost, though we all forgot your name.
    4. To DJ, who has overstayed as the first attraction. Nights climbing through my open window, shame hiding in boring closet monologues. Mornings rushing plotlines like a canceled show.
    5. To myself, whose image was branded in tears. You decide who speaks louder, who walks on screen bolder. Remember, you hold the spotlight like immunity.

    You think this is the end? It’s just a small commercial break. Stay tuned for the inevitable reboot. More gay. Less tragic. Same algorithm.

    CHRISTOPHER M. GRADY is an LGBT Black teenager from the United States, residing in Virginia. He is an emerging writer experimenting with varied ways of writing stories for the purpose of entertaining readers and growing in his craft. Some of his publications appear in The Disappointed Housewife, Bending Genres, and Young Voices of RVA.

    Featured image by Diego González, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Family Medical History” by Maggie Russell

    “Family Medical History” by Maggie Russell

    Health is a heritage we are bequeathed without our consent. Call it DNA, or call it destiny—we are more like our parents than we may care to admit. But “care” is the key term here: how we care for ourselves, how we care for one another. In her flash creative nonfiction essay simply entitled “Family Medical History,” Maggie Russell explores the confounding complexity of the bodies we are given.  —Court Harler

    You never told us the proper names for your diseases. Never called your arthritis by its full name, ankylosing spondylitis. You never used your full name either, the J stood alone in J. Robert.

    My stomach issue was introduced at seventeen. Too young for an ulcer, you told me hopefully, only to be crushed at the diagnosis. With my prescription in hand a litany of worry crossed your face. Your tone was no different from how you spoke of your unliked uncle, the one who drove Grandma to our house for Easter. His visit cut short whenever he mentioned the guys he knew, who fixed problems.

    You hoped for the same: my ulcer and your ulcerative colitis to stay distantly related.

    As to all things undigestible, there was no debate my genes were yours. All your other kids had tough marble façades that reflected yours. Yet they could drink a bucket of queso, but not us. We can’t trifle with lactose, you said, when I called you about my self-inflicted wound rendered from cheesy alfredo. It was the result of suddenly stopping veganism at a Macaroni Grill dinner, with the boyfriend you were never sure about.

    We were made of squishier stuff than the others. We, the wholehearted ones, saw kin in everything. You, wet-eyed at the kids washing windshields while we were stuck in Bronx traffic. Me, pleading to save the small creature on the side of the road, my teary face smearing the inside of the window. Again.

    I can’t remember when the back pain began, an uprising of aching bones. Mine was at twenty-four. Would you have known it would turn, as yours did? You could smell trouble, truffle-sniff it in the air. In Rome once, I remember you shushed us past the fountain, quickly away from a growing crowd. We cobblestumbled from the cathedral up to an arched bridge. You’d heard the words of rapidly rowdier protesters and caught in the crowd’s grumbling what we couldn’t comprehend: a full-body riot.

    We heard nothing of your diagnoses, only the unreadable groans. Only pills rattling in bottles like shoes on ancient streets.

    I need those names now, Poppa, to answer this rheumatological rampage. I need to fill in these blanks on family diseases.

    MAGGIE RUSSELL is an essayist and poet who writes professionally about law. Raised by the woods in Connecticut, she now lives in Nashville where she volunteers with prison poetry projects. Maggie’s work has appeared in January House, Last Leaves, and the anthology If You Ever.

    Featured image by Jose Arias, courtesy of Unsplash.