Two Stories

Abstract

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2012 53 photo : thomas langdon Q&A with Alex Epstein Q: Is there a quote you like or think is particularly fitting or relevant to very short fiction, whether by a fiction writer or by someone in a field other than literature, be it the arts, sciences , philosophy, religion, or other area? A: The very short prayer by D. W. Winnicott: “Oh God, may I be alive when I die.” Q: Do you have a favorite flash story or writer, or favorite book of very short fictions? A: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. Q: What are you reading now? A: The Butterfly Crosses the Road, a collection of poems by Eeva Kilpi, a wonderful Finnish poet. Q: What does flash fiction offer readers that slow fiction doesn’t? A: Longing. Q: Did any of your longer work begin as a short-short story, or vice versa? A: When I start to write a very short story, I always imagine it as a novel. In some parallel universe, there must be a crazy writer who is actually writing those novels. Alex Epstein moved from Leningrad to Israel when he was eight years old, almost a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has since published three novels and four collections of short stories. His collections of short-short fiction, Blue Has No South and Lunar Savings Time, are available in English. He teaches creative writing in Tel Aviv. Becka Mara McKay is Assistant Professor of translation and creative writing at Florida Atlantic University. Her first book of poems, A Meteorologist in the Promised Land, was published in 2010. She has published three translations of fiction from the Hebrew, including Epstein's Blue Has No South and Lunar Savings Time. In 2006 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Two Stories Alex Epstein You Need to Take These Shoes Home “You need to take these shoes home,” said the old woman. “But your home is here,” said the unshaven man quietly. She turned to him in wonder. “Who decided that?” “You and Mother. Don’t you remember?” She hesitated a moment. She pointed toward the window, at a landscape of hills and a plowed field. “I think it’s over there,” she said. “Put the shoes in a bag and take them home.” More True Superheroes T.tried to commit suicide after every disappointing love affair, but once she managed to stop a taxi in the rain using only the power of thought. She never left home without a copy of Anna Karenina. R. was an old sailor who knew how to draw a perfect circle in the sand of the shore of the Black Sea. He said that during his world travels he arrived in Dar-es-Salaam, where he learned to play chess on a board that was half the size of a regular board, with no more than ten pieces on each side. He further claimed that he remembered every word his wife had ever spoken. U. worked as a museum guard for so many years (he never drank on the job) that in the end he had the power to turn every flower in a vase into an artificial flower. He missed the land where he was born. Translations from the Hebrew By Becka Mara McKay ...