Month: May 2012

It was my friend Usha who introduced me to the new arrival in our locality. The astrologer was old, looked wise and he wore a saffron robe. He sat on a charpoy under a banyan tree, sheaves of paper stacked under his folded legs. A well fed green parrot cackled inside a rusted cage. Women of different shapes and sizes, huddled together close to him on a coir mat battling the summer heat.

My father, Oliver, is busy unloading all our belongings from our myriad luggage. He?s as robotic as the Automatons he crafted to help us with the move. At least they make beeping noises when they need re-charging. Then again, he had always been a silent man. But you?d think him a zombie since the passing of his wife, my mother Eleanor

At the end of the shift, he pushed a crumpled nondescript envelope containing three twenty dollar bills into my palm, but I left feeling empty-handed; he told me I didn?t get the job.

I pause on the fifth step, pursued by no one. And nothing to see, except a painting on the wall of a man wearing my floral nightgown, Colt 45 in hand, a glossy finish. A lousy painting, nothing but an exact reproduction of the last photograph I took of him. Is there nothing left for the imagination anymore? You project a photo slide onto a canvas, then you just fill it in with paint. But it?s so lifelike I have an instant?s reflex to whisk myself out of harm?s way, my head down low, to duck the bullets. But no bullets come, they?ve disappeared, chronologically speaking.

Off The Page ?by Ren?e Hankins ?We haven?t been in one novel in the last five months. Not one.? Binky, the dapper protagonist, is a wanna be stat man. He?s a walking rememberer of current trends. ?How many drafts are you makin? through? I?ve been makin? it to two,? I testify. ?I?ve made three works…