Language!
“The symphony in the pit consists of rhythmic minimalists.”
“Lips like witch”
“The sky is a sweltering velvet, held together by loose nails.”
“Low. But also loud. Like a herd of cattle. Like dark, dark dust. Dense. Shut up.”
“She sews a wisdom tooth into her left knee.”
“Imagine an emptiness…an endlessness. A window to the moon.”
Incidentals!
“Silent babies.”
“The pillows are plentiful”
“A stereotypical stethoscope”
“Grandfather’s Highway Hair”
“Twine and cloth and applesauce and silly string and dirt.”
“Flimsy saws.”
“100 stomachs.”
“A birthday hearse?”
Character/ Action!
“When the villain’s prison sentence ends, he sprints to the nearest theater.”
“They laugh and smile for quite some time and sitcom kiss periodically as if by timer.”
“Death appears bruised and battered but the audience does not know from what. ‘From life,’ she reminds the audience.”
“‘My father always told me,’ he says, ‘that I’d become a knuckle.’”
“The audience is encouraged to slowly leave.”
For more information on the book: https://xraylitmag.com/shop/cardboard-clouds/
Jonathan Cardew hails from the UK but calls Wisconsin his home. An award-winning micro fiction writer, his stories can be found in numerous journals, including Cincinnati Review, No Contact Magazine, wigleaf, and cream city review, among others. His short-short stories have been honored in various prizes and anthologies, including the Fractured Literary Vol I Prize (winner), Best Microfiction 2021 (winner), the SmokeLong Prize for Flash Fiction (finalist), and the Passages North Neutrino Prize (finalist). Find him on Twitter @cardewjcardew. Jonathan Cardew hails from the UK but calls Wisconsin his home. An award-winning micro fiction writer, his stories can be found in numerous journals, including Cincinnati Review, No Contact Magazine, wigleaf, and cream city review, among others. His short-short stories have been honored in various prizes and anthologies, including the Fractured Literary Vol I Prize (winner), Best Microfiction 2021 (winner), the SmokeLong Prize for Flash Fiction (finalist), and the Passages North Neutrino Prize (finalist). Find him on Twitter @cardewjcardew.