The O:JA&L Masters Series
FLASH FICTION: A Writer’s Portfolio
Featured Writer: Pedro Ponce
ORIGIN STORY
To explore or download selected offerings from Pedro Ponce,
click on the title A Map of the Underground
to access the latest chapbook in the O:JA&L Masters Series.
For the sake of the children, the parents fought underground. Beneath the dishwasher’s hum, the combatants regarded each other from deepening trenches in the basement’s earthen floor. The insulation muffled the cadence of gunfire and explosives. The movement of troops filtered through hardwood floors as the click of marbles or the crackle of Christmas tinsel. The field of battle was spacious enough to accommodate surprise attacks but sufficiently compact for regular reconnaissance. The children noticed nothing through détente and escalation, avoiding the stiff patches of carpet under their feet, the astringent smell of freshly cleaned surfaces. They played well together and apart, watching for shapes to emerge from the backlit curtains overhead.
About the writer:
PEDRO PONCE is the author of The Devil and The Dairy Princess (Indiana University Press, 2021) winner of the Don Belton Fiction Prize and a finalist for the 2021 Big Other Book Award for Fiction. Ponce is also the author of Stories After Goya, Alien Autopsy, and Superstitions of Apartment Life. His short stories and flash fiction have appeared in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Witness, and other journals. His work has been recognized with a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with residencies at Ragdale, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He teaches writing and literary studies at St. Lawrence University, where he was recently appointed to The William L. Fox Professorship in Public Health.
Image: A Tilbury Shelter Scene 1941 Henry Moore OM, CH (1898-1986).
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