[RealPoetik] Feliz Lucia Molina and Ben Segal

RealPoetik Magazine realpoetik at scn9.scn.org
Sat Sep 14 08:08:49 PDT 2013


          *from* THE MIDDLE



Like any beginning, maybe there should be a man or boy or man-boy. Let this
figure remain inconstant, a crux to argue about fiction, a place to set the
scene. Imagine there are unnamable trees, a river too difficult to
pronounce, mosquitoes of an alien class. Imagine everyone is extremely
polite. To sense the opposite is to immediately feel betrayed. As the soft
and blurry figure draws close, you realize it could hurt.











A boy approached covered in saws. He had arms like anyone else and I was
not afraid to shake his hand. His saws were sharp but never meant for us.
Everyone was kind in spite of the heat that pressed against our heads. The
boy was a man really, but youthful. He smiled. He showed us his work.**

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

His sculptures were long wooden echoes of himself. When asking what the
figures meant, he spread apart his arms and strained to explain the
Japanese schooling system, something about balance, a frozen figure locked
on a long beam. I refrained from asking what two things he was balancing
between or if it was a multitude of things that made his limbs grow, a dark
forest garnering paranoia.











In a remote Philippine village, an elder keeps the key to the karaoke
machine. The elders don’t mess around. If there’s one thing to keep safe
and chaste, it’s the machine and collection of sing-a-long tapes. There is
what is known as the “karaoke killings phenomenon.” Some lost lives singing
“My Way” off key. Many were conceived or born while karaoke-ing.











On that night the bird and boy were practically brothers. They sat still in
the same folded posture, darted their necks to pierce the dark. The bird
was heavy like the seawall, the boy like the jetty. The boy was sadder, but
the bird was more profound. I was like the shorter version of the bargeman
who watched them from out past the waves. He was like his own father, but
sweeter and a better singer. I sang equally well, as did the boy and the
bird, though not that night. Then they were both more quiet than the sand.





Feliz Lucia Molina is the author of *Undercastle* forthcoming from Magic
Helicopter Press in 2013. Other things include *Hair Hearts Flip *and *Kim
Jong-Il Looking At Things* (Gauss PDF), and more things forthcoming in *The
Volta, So & So, Bomb*, and elsewhere. This past summer she was in residence
at Haisyakkei in Japan where she collaborated with Ben Segal on *The Middle*.
She is a contributing editor at
*continent<http://continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/index>
*. and lives in Los Angeles.

Ben Segal is the author of *78 Stories* (No Record Press) and co-editor of
the anthology *The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential
Literature* (Lit
Pub Books). His chapbooks *Science Fiction Pornography* and *Weather Days *were
published by Publishing Genius and Mud Luscious Press, respectively, and
his short fiction has been published by or is forthcoming from *Tin House,
Tarpaulin Sky, Gigantic, *and* **Puerto del Sol, *among others.
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