Digital Dark Age

Perhaps the angel of history has his face turned toward the past. He would like to stay there long enough to preserve each artifact, but a new storm blowing in gets caught in his wings with such intensity that he can no longer close them.

Maybe this storm propels him into a future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. Knowing that the once-living wood is what allows the leaves and roots of the tree to reach so high and draw so deep, like Scheherazade, he must adopt a creative strategy for saving the kingdom. 

Evolution (with Tania P)

Perhaps the bicycle, perched in evolution between horse and car, allows a girl the modest means to ride just far enough away from home to leave home, to revel in the panicked flit of geckos into underbrush and the daisies expiring in patterned versions of their former selves, petals curling groundward on the very stalks that pushed them sunwards.

Maybe the bicycle wheels, larger than dinnerplates, spin off wordlessly into the air as they continue to evolve, growing in diameter the further from earth they fly, ultimately encircling distant planets with delicate, orbiting rings – just as we are encircled without beginning or end, without sides or corners, with all points equidistant from the center, by that which grows old gracefully – a bouquet of fiery petals risen from the mud which once sheltered striped lizards peering out from a crack in the wall, right angles framing the curve of their tails.

The Unasked Question, a reading