War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044)
Read War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044) Online
Authors: Nath Jones
Tags: #short story, #flash fiction, #deconstruction, #language choice, #diplomacy, #postmodern fiction, #war and peace, #inflammatory language
THE WAR IS LANGUAGE: 101
SHORT WORKS
~
NATH JONES
Copyright © 2012 by Nath Jones. All
Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-937316-04-4
Cover Design by Ryan W. Bradley:
www.aestheticallydeclined.net
The
Wichita Vortex Sutra
epigraph is used
with expressed permission from HarperCollins and the Allen Ginsberg
Project.
SmashWords Edition, License
Notes
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http://nathjones.com/
Chicago, IL, USA
PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
The war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet.
—
Allen Ginsberg
From “Wichita Vortex Sutra”
For Melody Layne
TABLE OF CONTENTS
89 — Dead Reckoning
with Azimuth
85 — Content with the
Status Quo
5 —
Imported Silk Wedding Veil in the Kitchen
Trash
14 — Blue
Butterfly Falling-Out Barrette
31 — Diary with
Burning Ellipsis
27 — Ladies
who Lunch on Disposable Plates
36 — Get Rich &
Save the U.S. Economy in the Process!
17 —
Carefully-placed Patterned Pavers
15 — The Dumbass
Solidarity Project: A Facebook Forum
75 —
Embarrassing Evidence of Societal Entropy
37 — Celebrating a
25th Anniversary
83 — Poor Benighted
Self-Centered Bitter Soul of Vengeance
84 —
Familial Run-in with Religious Hypocrisy
86 — Should Have
Gotten Knocked-Up at Fourteen
About the On
Impulse eBook Series
INTRODUCTION
While I was working on this book a friend
said
Quit it.
I
said
No.
89 — Dead Reckoning with
Azimuth
I don’t suppose
you would ever believe that this entire book happens in just two
minutes, with a clenching chest, sweats, and hives. But it does. It
happens right there. Where? Right there in the two minutes that you
absolutely must sit down in the shaded sands of North Avenue beach
in Chicago. Don’t collapse. That’s ridiculous. And. No. Don’t go
over on the bench. Definitely not that bench. Why do you think no
one’s on it? There’s something sticky there. Stop! What are you
thinking? Where are you going? No. My God. Not by the water. That’s
almost fifty yards from here. It’s much too far to cross the beach
when this disoriented. Just sit down. Yes, yes, yes. Come on. At
least try to be aware of where you are physically. And. So. Fine.
There you go. South of Fullerton. North of the quaint brick
bathrooms. You know. Quit worrying. And. I already said this whole
thing happens in just two minutes. So. For a book that short, what
more do you need for a setting? Time and place. That’s it. That’s
the requirement. You’re golden. You know. That’s what you want.
That’s what you need. To know. Right? So. Good. You know. You’re
not on the pavement of the lakeshore path. You’re not down by the
water or in anybody’s way. You’re not on the bench with that
two-day-old sticky Popsicle residue. It’s not summer but it’s an
abnormally hot day in spring or fall. Maybe even one of those
completely freakish December days when it hits eighty degrees in
the Midwest. There’s a bit of shade, perhaps an opportunity to
collect yourself, maybe a friend to call, maybe a few breaths to
take, maybe something pleasant to look at: if it’s not December
then a volleyball game, a lifeguard walking back and forth with one
of those rocket-shaped flotation devices with the harpoon cording,
or, you know, whatever: the sky, the gulls preening on the
breakwater, the pebbles in the sand, the bikers on the bike path,
the joggers, the Mexican families grilling on the lawn, the black
guy people-watching from the bench further down, the white guy
trudging along getting back in shape after a second heart attack,
the Asian woman training for another triathlon, and the parents
with strollers. It’s all there. Whatever you want to look at to
help just calm the fuck down and stop your mind from
racing.
1 — Fragmentation
Grenade
It makes no sense.
Nothing’s to be done. How can anyone expect a contract to become a
riotous nation, or, my God, a happy family?
It’s absurd.
In our marriage there was no way to
love anyone. We’d point at each other, or the mirror, or the floor,
and, oh yes, we’d make our demands. It is no one’s fault. Our
me-materials could not possibly shelter anyone. Who can live
huddled together under un-dovetailed illusion and unarticulated
expectation? So. Fuck it. I sold the gold for scrap and decided to
reassemble an M67 fragmentation grenade.
It will be an elaborate puzzle. I’ll
find all the pieces, unbend the mangled distortions, and put
disruption back into that handheld metal orb.
Who knows how far the pieces will have
gone? The M67 fragmentation grenade has a five-meter kill
zone—mainly for people but animals, too—a fifteen-meter casualty
radius, and a forty-five-meter blast perimeter. Pieces can be
propelled up to 250 meters. But that’s not the only distance those
small round-torn-twist pieces can travel. I bet I’ll have to go
collecting all over the world. After explosions, after wars, men go
home, you know. The pieces move away from detonation in pockets, in
caskets, in flesh.
I suppose I could go right to
war—where most fragmentation grenades explode. Or maybe the war
will come to me. That’d probably be easiest. Either way, I’ll
definitely need to be there. Time is always a factor of accuracy.
Think about paleontology. It’s a miracle when they can assemble an
entire skeleton because so much time has gone by, so many things
could have happened to make assembly impossible. So. No. I don’t
want any geologic eras passing. Definitely not. I want to be there
when it happens so I can just catch all the pieces of a particular
fragmentation grenade.
Time is one thing, but distance is
quite another problem. War draws men from the farthest reaches of
the globe. It never matters how far they have to go. If there is a
war, they will be there. They will make a plane, make a boat, take
a tank, and go. So to reassemble this particular grenade, if I
don’t catch every single piece right away, if other people end up
with some—like what happens with candy at a parade, disseminated,
you know—then I might have to go really far, understand the motion
of front lines, and maybe learn some languages. Or
something.
