Spent
Randall Brown
Randall Brown teaches at and directs Rosemont College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live(now available as a reprinted deluxe edition from PS Books), his essay appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field, and he appears in the Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction. He has been published widely, both online and in print, and blogs regularly at FlashFiction.Net. He is also the founder and managing editor of Matter Press and its Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
He told of a mountain of wastrel bricks and splintered bats, its origins a ballpark blown to shreds, never rebuilt. In the pile’s midst, moths the size of hawks nested, their pupae like white pine cones. A terrible future awaited anyone who squashed them, either moth or pupae. On the television, a fast food chain advertised a new sandwich: cheese, beef, sour cream, and crushed Doritos. Whoever eats that, I said, must’ve disturbed the moths. He said my generation lacked attention. I asked him if he meant imagination. I told him to continue, but he’d fallen asleep. For me, the wasted world lay not behind but ahead: cannibals, viruses, melted ice, the walking.
© Randall Brown
