Sweet William is also a flower, and Bottom awoke with the head of an ass. A small slip, and wish becomes fish. Some slight assonance in the tongue’s touch upon a word, or the tip of a cat’s whisker too much in the mixing. And then a demiurge brings a giant’s face to demitasse. What powers lie behind irony, that so confound ambitions to command, leaving all such dreams to founder in detail? Plenty of time now to ponder what went wrong, while waiting for mishap’s fade. So it has been since ancient times. Thales finding water at the heart of all; Heraclitus countering with fire. All forms fomenting, as poets parse in words all that fingers fail to catch. And so, in Plato’s realm of ideal forms, how might the perfect riddle appear: with or without its answer? And what to make of homonyms? I must muse on this for a spell.

—One of three Finalists in MacQ’s Magician Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

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

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Daryl Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, micro-fiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: Almost Baptized, and Against the Current in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)