Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including: Monkeybicycle, Tattoo Highway, Triggerfish Critical Review, Word Riot, and Blue Print Review, among others. He and his wife live on a small organic farm in Yamhill, OR where they raise a menagerie of animals. Ed teachs writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland, OR. and is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction, an Irish-based online journal.
Hardaway’s always a good read. His recent posting of “A Quantum of Disappointment” is an amusing, wit-drenched philosophical poem–and in only seven lines. A quantum piece of reflective poetic appointment. You walk away from the piece with a smile at how “Reality winks at us then scampers off.”
This story plays itself out with a wry poking fun at a bubbling do-gooder CEO character who founds a recycling company for making “high fashion and found objects into exquisite jewelry.” The CEO do-gooder sets up an India factory of sunnily-rescued street kids to manufacture the celeb-bought garments and jewelry: “Kate Hudson had worn one of her skirts, which had a fringe made of recycled cheerleader pompoms.” The CEO sends a thank-you gift to the story’s skeptical narrator who is working on an ad/pr campaign for the start-up’s “compassion for others and concern for the environment.” She’s sent “a dazzling four-stand necklace made of recycled, sanded-down pieces of windshield.” All too funny. The satire’s light-edged but very effective in its send-up of goofily misdirected do-gooderism.
A very fine prose poem/flash piece. The skillfully stacked up catalogue of images is engagingly apt, fresh-to-familiar, and pleasingly full of her “low hum” of Oct. A paean to the shifting season’s Oct. as fulcrum point, indeed. As a poet myself I had to admire Blakey’s honed craftsmanship in pulling this off without a slip into something cliched or saccharine.
“Kismet” is a crack-up clever piece on Pop Art faux-history-bio. A tight little flash story with guffaw humor and wit alongside: hey, maybe Menendez’s art history romp really did happen!
A moving, sad piece. The compressed narrative, images/metaphors all are skillfully evocative. Not a line in this short, tight poem that doesn’t tug at our compassion for the exploited sex-worker’s tangled and dire “line of fate.”
Mar 2nd, 2016 at 9:47 pm
Thanks for the kind response to “A Quantum Disappointment”, Ed. Enjoyed the other selections.
Mar 8th, 2016 at 11:19 am
Excellent choices, Ed. Insightful and enlightening descriptions. Makes me want to read them again.