In the Ring
I was boxing Joyce Carol Oates for the featherweight championship of the world…the ring was set up in the middle of an abandoned library…I felt cocky, but when Oates took off her robe I saw she had the body of Floyd Mayweather, Jr.…before I knew it she had me pinned on the ropes, punching hard…the world was spinning around, I was about to go down, and then I remembered her weakness…“Stream of consciousness!” I cried out...Oates paused momentarily and shot me a strange look…“Word salad!”…Oates backed up a step…“Verbal diarrhea!”…Oates appeared confused, her eyes glazed over, she looked off into nowhere and, opening her mouth, a bubble formed between her lips and, protruding from her mouth, began to grow…the bubble looked like a giant cartoon word balloon…it was filled with words, just like in a comic book…the bubble rapidly expanded…more and more words filled the huge balloon…Oates stumbled back and placed her gloved hands on each side of the bubble, attempting to pop it…I breathed deeply and shook the cobwebs out of my head and prepared to raise my heavy hands to continue the battle…but it was not necessary…Oates, unable to burst her bubble, was jerked by her still-expanding word dirigible to the far side of the ring and through the ropes and down off the apron and into the stacks of the abandoned library, where mildewed books flew off the rotting shelves as she vainly attempted to punch herself free of her burden…later I heard that some wise guy put a match to Joyce Carol’s own private Hindenburg while she struggled among the gothic romances and the whole damned library went up in flames, but I doubt if that actually happened…
Bio: Steven Gulvezan is a disciple, in words, of the great sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. At their best he hopes that his stories and poems are able to cut close enough to the bone of truth to make them worthwhile to read. He’s recently been published in Underground Voices, Gutter Eloquence, and The Battered Suitcase. Links to some of his writings may be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/user/607
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