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| Issue 25: | 22 Sept. 2024 |
| Cheribun: | 113 words |
By Daryl Scroggins
Arming Obedience
One side of tradition eats difference. “That’s the way we always did it” becomes “That’s the way it should be done.” A deep search for a better way becomes “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.” The status quo hardened; roles solidified. All known gods brought in to vouch for timely motives. Aims reified, as in finding one’s own footprints foreign, in atoll sand. This, the origin of fearing strangers. Origin of “Wall it off to protect the cattle.” And so predators make the case that teaching will not take without punishment.
punching dough down to recover its shape she hears past sounds of flesh on flesh the second rising questioned
—From the author’s collection of flash literature, The Light I Want to Keep, forthcoming from MacQ
Daryl Scroggins
has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.
More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond
⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)
⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge
⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)
⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021
⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)
⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)
⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)
⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol
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