Matthew Guenette: THREE FLASH PIECES • Cleaver Magazine

Matthew Guenette
THREE FLASH PIECES

Pet Peeve

A jackhammer hammers somewhere in the school and your armpits sweat through your shirt.

You don’t know what you’re doing, and the class knows that you know they know, but you can’t tell what any of them are wearing, you have no idea what’s going on with their hair.

A student points at an outlet. Sparks, she says. Another notices a leak, and look, there it is, something coffee-colored pooling in a corner.

A ceiling panel falls, snaps to pieces at your feet.

Your laugh-it-off sounds desperate.

More falling panels expose bundled wires, coiled cables, electric vines.

A row of fluorescent lights comes loudly unhatched.

An expensive projector smashes to the floor.

A smoldering beam crushes your desk.

The jackhammering nears. Pigeons fly through the ceiling, and one lands on your shoulder. You love this pigeon, its little, red, wide-eyed view is your world, but the students look so bored, and though you’re not done yet, though there’s still a few minutes left in class, they start to pack their things.

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Horseshoe Pond

I try not to stare as she paddles us to the island in a canoe that she’s “borrowed.” She’s tattooed a “7” on each wrist. God told me to, she says, then she laughs at me for believing her.

Blonde lightnings through her dyed hair. She smells like cake. She knows rumors, who’s done what in parked cars, what sketchy things adults are up to in our town’s lone motel.

I have the matches. We make a fire in the pine stand, spread our jackets out, do what teenagers do when they’re alone in the night.

We’re saving each other, she says after.

Paddling back in a moonless dark. We stash the canoe in the cattail not knowing sparks have fired up on the island.

Soon the whole town comes down to watch it burn like it’s a TV show. From across the water comes the snap, pop, and crack of falling limbs. A many-tongued mouth of flames doubled in the pond’s surface.

We slip in with the crowd. Someone even orders pizza. I’m sure my life is over, or at least some part of it.

Thirty years from now, when someone finds her in her own kitchen with the needle still in her arm, this is what I’ll remember—the two of us at the pond’s edge. She takes my hand in hers and swears that nobody will find out. The island will still be there in the morning, she says. And everything will grow back.

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Wanted

If you can play through horrible stenches and unsanitary conditions (think Shits Creek meets The Ass Cracks); if you can serve occasionally as a human shield; if you can maneuver a van swiftly through traffic and duck evil goons while performing CPR; if you’re cool with dangerous toxins and cosmic radiation; if you can gladiate in intense heat, harsh winds, subzero temperatures and rain; if you don’t mind the occasional crushed hand or digging trenches or horse falls or jumping off buildings; if you know which wire to snip, the red or blue, then you’re the drummer we’re looking for.

Matthew Guenette is the author of four poetry collections: Doom Scroll (2023), Vasectomania (2017), American Busboy (2011) and Sudden Anthem (2008). He’s married to one of the world’s greatest linguistics teachers and is father to two brooding teenagers. He’s been a busboy, short-order cook, secretary, and currently teaches writing at Madison College in Madison, WI. Want a book? Reach out to Matthew Guenette here.