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Smoke and Mirrors

November 29, 2016/in Flash Prose, Flash Prose, Winter-Spring 2017 / by Brent Fisk

(flash creative nonfiction)

I found a fledgling in the yews in the side yard when I was eight or nine. He was covered in bird lice, and shit down my arm as I washed him clean with the hose. I still remember the heat of it. His big, dumb eyes blinking in the light. He didn’t seem to know he was pitiful, and that itself was a kind of magic. My mother made me put him in the tall grass beyond the swing set. She made up stories about his wonderful adventures.

My brother got pooped on by a white dove at a magic show. He was small enough still to sit on our father’s lap in a gymnasium full of metal folding chairs. The magician popped a big red balloon with a straight pin and the bird it contained startled, arced out over the audience and let fly a great white splash of poop before settling in the rafters. The entire audience followed the dropping with their eyes and I remember them gasping in disgust as it hit my brother’s leg. The magician doffed his top hat and insisted it would bring my brother luck.

But a magician’s gift is misdirection. My brother has never known what hit him. Then and now and all his life. Smoke and mirrors, the bared arm and the nothing up the sleeve, rabbits kicking against the air, and doves that disappear against the sky with a flap of desperate wings.

There are those days lost to memories. They pour out endlessly like silk kerchiefs from the head: The bright bouquet of his fortieth birthday, harsh and plastic. The candles winking out. There is the collapsible top hat of his never marrying, the dangling legs of the pretty girl cut in two. The risk of lives not being put back together. There is the sword that pierces the heart like loneliness. There is the flourish of the black cape and the tap of the wand. There are the false bottoms, the trap doors, the hidden compartments. There is the way he laughs at you using nothing but his eyes. There is his smile twitching midair. There are the hours with their circular flight. There is a brother you can’t quite believe in. There is a brother who disappears before your eyes.

Brent FiskBrent Fisk is a writer from Bowling Green, Kentucky. His work has appeared in Rattle, Fugue, Folio, Cincinnati Review, and Prairie Schooner, among other places. He is taking time off from his day job to finish several book-length projects and perfect his mid-range jump shot.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Shaneka Cook https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Shaneka Cook2016-11-29 15:02:262017-12-07 08:43:53Smoke and Mirrors

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Genre Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
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Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

March 17, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Jemma Leigh Roe
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The Russian Train

February 24, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cammy Thomas
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Still Life

October 31, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Daniel J. Rortvedt
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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