Saturday Pomes & Words, 17/08/2024

It's not microfiction, it's fragments!

Click here for the previous Pomes & Words, ‘How to Feel Better’ (that’s the highly amusing Kafka one).

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I’m sure I’ve said before that I don’t like this term ‘flash fiction’. I prefer the terms ‘sketch’ and ‘vignette’. I can’t remember exactly what numbers I used but I think it was probably something like up to 500-1000 words is a sketch and up to 2000 is a vignette, beyond which you have a short story.

Except now I hear there is another term which is ‘microfiction’. So I have decided, in my bloody mindedness, to dislike this term too and instead call such things ‘fragments’. Apparently, microfiction is up to around 500 words, although some people seem to say up to 300. Well, I don’t know. Personally, I would say that anything up to 150 to possibly 200 is a ‘fragment’, then 200-1000 is your sketch and then there’s your vignettes.

People can be totally free to disagree, of course. But this is what I am going to stick with. Because I’m old-fashioned that way and we didn’t have flash fiction and microfiction back in the day. The music was better too.

As I have also mentioned before I spent, or misspent, perhaps, depending on how you feel about such things, much of my time at university somewhat famous for my penchant for wandering around in an amphetamine-fuelled youth haze with a notebook and pen in my little bag writing juvenilia sketches and, well, fragments. I guess this was me teaching myself how to write (and perhaps a coping strategy for my serious mental health issues). Of course I wouldn’t advocate doing this at home, kids – go and study philosophy at university and do it there instead. They give you inspiration for free!

Anyway, for this edition of Pomes & Words I have once again delved into my juvenilia and extracted three little fragments for you. Then there’s a funny little ditty from Alison at the end. So that’s kind of words then a pome.

I’ve also decided that from now on whenever I do this random Pomes & Words thing, it will be on a Saturday. Not every Saturday, of course, but only Saturdays. Likewise the fairytales will always be on Sundays.

For fragment info purposes, the first one is 106 words, the second one is 34, and the third one is 103. The ditty is 18 syllables so it’s not a haiku.

Oh – and this is the last time I apologise for these lower case eyes. I did say I was bloody minded, didn’t i?

I hope you enjoy these little fragments – because it’s really important for our mental health to just be silly sometimes. I know this well from my youth. And if you do enjoy, please consider a like and a share!

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A Sugar Dragon

i sat down and set my mouth on fire. i’d found an anonymous packet on the table. i opened it and poured out the white granules – i wanted to see what it was. i dipped my finger in and tasted. It tasted sweet. Like sugar. Indeed, it was sugar! i thought it might have been sugar because it didn’t affect me the way they did sometimes.

i paused to catch my drift. And stared. At the sugar. It stared back up at me from the table like a volcano. Then Whoosh! It was gone! My mouth really was on fire, the dragon in the smoking room.

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A Dragment

i dragged on my cigarette like a dragon puff puff like a magic show.

‘i feel weird,’ she said. The purple girl in the corner. i felt crowded out and smothered. So i left.

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Terminal

I was on a train. It wasn’t moving. But perhaps the reason for its intransient state was that in my compartment the curtains were drawn together. Yes, it wasn’t moving. It was upset, for it lurched, as trains do, violently from side to side at times. Yes, it was upset. Moving, no; upset, yes. And so, happy with that, I decided to go and have a cup of coffee. I stood up and opened the door. And then I plunged two hundred feet to my death in the sharp rocky canyon below, for we were just passing over a bridge at the time.

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And finally, here is one of Alison’s silly and funny little ditties. It may be three lines but it’s not one of those 5-7-5 haiku things. She didn’t give it a title so I have.

Relief Blowing

I lifted up the lid of the loo

and liberated

an imprisoned fart

See you another Saturday!

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