38 Posts Tagged "storytelling"

Kean University 2017, The Network

Living Dead Girl III

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Part I, Part II Deadwood’s sole flower shoppe used to be Moses’ Roses–the liveliest place in town. Then, Moses Redding passed away. Peacefully in the night. I know because he came to our window, hollow-eyed and with a red, red bloom in hand. Nana put it in a vase on her nightstand, beside her citronella candle. It wilted by morning. Cerese Redding, Moses’ wife…widow, came around next, a similar bloom–only slightly wilting–woven into her graying hair. She approached Nana and me in the grocery store, […]

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The Network

Bone Girl .V

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Flesh dreamed monstrous beasts. Dreamed somber, faceless vultures, abandoned skeletons, splendid demons of yesteryear, patient  gargoyles. Incredible beasts still call, in the morning. But only briefly, abandoning scandalous actuality. Tweet, tweet…. Ba-dump. Mama bird was first a baby bird herself. A fledgling, picking at bones brought to the nest. Mama’s Mama bird was an excellent hunter. Proficient collector of Nature’s provisions. And, not a scrap ever went to waste. Want not, baby bird. Mama’s Mama bird was ever-squawking. Nature always provides. Mama’s Mama bird […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Cowbirding to the End

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A tweet of ends #digitalstorytelling gem @cowbird to shut down: https://t.co/IRIyymTJcYThis makes me so sad. — Bryan Alexander (@BryanAlexander) February 8, 2017 The standard opening lines here would be my woeful admission of how little I had written in that special storytelling space. It would be wafted with moth-ball scented excuses. You can more or less see the words without me writing them. Even before a click the “next” button to read the eulogy by it’s first sprouter Jonathan Harris, […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Wasteland Girl

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Fog thick like honey but not half-so-sweet clogs the air. Is the air. Without a respirator, it would coat my throat, crawl down the black hole between my bony clavicles to cloy in my lungs. Convince me to claw at my chest till the pressure had an escape route. Ten routes to be exact. Our atmosphere was the first to go. Corroded by uncensored contaminants. Ignited by the bombs. I fell asleep beneath a burning sky, lulled by Mother’s staggered breaths. […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Shadow Girl Reflects II: Stories as Constellations

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I think one of the most exciting–but terrifying–aspects of networked narratives is the inability to “pin them down.” They are constantly shifting creatures unto themselves. Stars in the night sky, telling a different tale with every step taken. From one view, this idea twinkles. But, from another, it doesn’t even register. The scope is ambiguous, subjective. Perhaps unreal. We try to make charts and maps but new information is always coming in. Things that once shined, dim. And, things that didn’t exist, […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Bone Girl

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When my blood was younger, I imagined I could soar. Like the condors that circled overhead. Sights set high, I’d roam through the marketplace. Fly barefoot down the city’s skeletal paths, unburdened and unbound, wind tangling knots in my hair–knots Mama would carefully unwind once night nosedived. Then, re-wind in the leather thong she kept wrapped ’round one bony wrist. Only, double. Twice the blessings, baby bird. She explained when I squawked confusion. Nature never weaves mistakes. In hair or flesh. […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Make-Believe

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Lucid Dreaming Fragmentary. I exist in bits and pieces stitched together–that I stitched together. In glimpses here and flashes there, your peripheral is my home. I’m more comfortable when you can’t see me. When I am a phantom, shadow-person you convince yourself insomnia summoned. A nightmare. I’d rather be an apparition, figment of your frontal lobe. (Figment of my own.) Make-believe people don’t need to be. Flesh. Bone. Whole. They can be porcelain and plastic wrap. Fragile. Easily torn. Tossed. Replaced. Made-up people […]

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