[12] Edible Grace
How do we know a fact is not also a fiction, a poem not also a prayer? I’m pushing a cart down the And/Or aisle of Stoner’s Mind Department Store and discover just what I need—miscellaneous warnings and advice in bulk. I scoop them into a brown paper bag. Instantly they became a Quandary. My twin, who has come along, questions this, which is her right and which she always does, so we proceed to the front which could also be the back and ask the Fact Checker, who moonlights at Salvador Dali’s Deli—famous for the world’s tiniest sandwich so small it could fit in a matchbox, but so dense no one can lift it. So this leaves us with our Quandary, a collective noun undefined. An octopus, by the way, has three hearts and eight tentacles with minds of their own. Imagine the poetry an octopus could write, multiplied by eight. Imagine the pencils alone, ha! Our Fact Checker rings us up and asks if we want a receipt. We assure them we’ve had nothing to drink and we’re pretty sure it’s a fact. At the Care Facility, I visit a diminishing friend, and am mistaken for a patient. In a heartbeat, I sign out at the front desk and go for a bike ride in the breezy afternoon under a sky so blue just to prove I’m not. The jury’s still out. So I write this poem and pray. My twin fits her shadow exactly into mine and for a moment we are one—with eight tentacles but only two hearts—and the need to dissect fact from fiction, poem from prayer means less than a tiny sandwich we can’t eat. When in doubt we make cookie dough and lick the beaters. Is any art more beautiful than chocolate chip cookies baking in an oven, any truth greater than that sweet aroma filling the house? Edible grace, our ticket to the sun.
teaches “low fat fiction” and is the author of three collections of short prose: Soundings and Fathoms: Stories (Finishing Line Press, 2018), House Samurai (Iota Press, 2006), and Parts & Labor (Thumbprint Press, 1992). His stories have appeared in dozens of venues including Carve, daCunha, Flashback Fiction, KYSO Flash, Sea Letter, Third Wednesday, and Exposition Review, where he was twice a Flash 405 winner. In 2018, his flash was nominated for the Best of the Net anthology.
Born in the Chihuahua desert near the Mexican border, Guy grew up on a stingray in Ventura, learned to write in the Peace Corps during a civil war in Guatemala, honed his craft pulling weeds and planting flowers as a gardener in San Francisco, and later received his M.A. from San Francisco State, where his teaching career began. He’s been a creative-writing instructor since 1991, and he’s also worked as a bookstore clerk, gardener, ad sales rep, sports writer, and publisher. For 12 years he published the literary magazine Bust Out Stories and a handful of books by bay area writers.
Guy hosts The Floating Word on Radio Sausalito, lives on a houseboat with his wife and two salty cats, and walks the planks daily.
For other details and links to his writing, visit his page at daCunha:
https://dacunha.global/author-guy-biederman/
See also his blog, This Day Afloat: Reflections of Life on the Water:
http://www.thisdayafloat.com/
