Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Britney, Party Girls, and the Fight for Narrative Control

      March 2, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Our Side Of The Clouds

      February 26, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Side Effects May Include Monstrosity

      February 25, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Radio Days

      February 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Daddy Rocked the Baby, Mother Said Amen

      February 20, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: The End of the World

      February 9, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Canada Geese

      March 1, 2021

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Cain, Knocking

      February 24, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Bird Heart for Forgiveness

      February 19, 2021

      Fiction

      New Skin

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Skittering

      February 17, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Weirder Sadness, Reverberating Empathy, Invisible Revolution — Joanna Fuhrman’s To a New Era

      March 1, 2021

      Review

      Review: To Limn / Lying In by J’Lyn Chapman

      February 25, 2021

      Review

      Review: Nudes by Elle Nash

      February 22, 2021

      Review

      Burials Free of Sharks: Review of Xandria Phillips’ Hull

      February 18, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

      Small Press

      Abalone Mountain Press

      February 3, 2021

      Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Britney, Party Girls, and the Fight for Narrative Control

      March 2, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Our Side Of The Clouds

      February 26, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Side Effects May Include Monstrosity

      February 25, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Individuation

      February 27, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Radio Days

      February 23, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Daddy Rocked the Baby, Mother Said Amen

      February 20, 2021

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: The End of the World

      February 9, 2021

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Canada Geese

      March 1, 2021

      Fiction

      BLACKCACKLE: Cain, Knocking

      February 24, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Bird Heart for Forgiveness

      February 19, 2021

      Fiction

      New Skin

      February 17, 2021

      Fiction

      The Birds: Skittering

      February 17, 2021

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Weirder Sadness, Reverberating Empathy, Invisible Revolution — Joanna Fuhrman’s To a New Era

      March 1, 2021

      Review

      Review: To Limn / Lying In by J’Lyn Chapman

      February 25, 2021

      Review

      Review: Nudes by Elle Nash

      February 22, 2021

      Review

      Burials Free of Sharks: Review of Xandria Phillips’ Hull

      February 18, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      OOMPH! Press

      February 24, 2021

      Small Press

      Dynamo Verlag

      February 17, 2021

      Small Press

      Abalone Mountain Press

      February 3, 2021

      Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC

        February 12, 2021

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
Fiction

BLACKCACKLE: Four of Everything

written by Guest Contributor December 20, 2017

 

Except THERE ARE

NO COINCIDENCES. The other day I’m walking down 18th Street in San Francisco and my eyes slide across one of those telephone poles that are always tattered with paper signs like LOST DOG. (You know the ones I’m talking about). Except instead of LOST DOG, this telephone pole has a paper 8 ½ x 11 sign that says: THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES. Beneath the sign sits a deflated kiddie pool the color of cantaloupe. I stop to read the sign twice. Then I look down at the kiddie pool. The telephone pole, the sign and the deflated kiddie pool appear locked in one of those arguments that can outlive eternity. (You know the kind I’m talking about). THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES.

Can you hear

me? Hey! Three passersby toss me a tight-lipped glower.

Hey!

But I still want to know. The man I’m yelling at is short and stocky, wearing tan shirt and trim, burgundy suspenders. The man is carrying a large, foamcore ear hoisted up over his shoulder. The ear is pale and varnished to a sparkle.

Hey. I yell to the man, as he moseys on down the block.

Hey! The man doesn’t break his stride. I yell again.

Hey! Sir! Guy with the big ear! Hey!

Hm. Oh well. I shrug, giving up.

I guess he just didn’t hear me.

There, you can almost

smell it, a forbidding odor of reacted polyvinyl chloride overlaying the typical San Francisco mélange of piss, marijuana & bacon-wrapped fog. Across the Bay in Napa and Sonoma a legion of firefighters have sprayed recordbreaking tons of flame retardants and still have yet to halt the 21 wildfires.

It was 22 fires, Lisa says, but then two of the fires merged. 21. So at least that’s something, right?

It’s all because of those Diablo winds, Lisa tells me, winds strong enough to push down a power line, tease out a spark, spread it over acres of dry grass. Boom. The brush starts burning, the hills start burning. I think of Joan Didion’s essay on the maleficence of the Santa Ana winds. Didion: “To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.”

Walking next to me are two gray-haired male smokers, sucking on their filters with pucky lips & evident delight. She told me, she says: I keep having these bad relationships, why is that, and I tell her, I say: April, don’t you think there might be a bit of a pattern here? I mean for Chrissakes, you only ever date drug-addicted sculptors! Do you ever wonder about that? And you know what April says? She goes: Nuh-unh! That’s not true! I mean, the last guy was an alcoholic metalworker! The two smokers start cackling, hacking, cackling. They don’t seem to mind the burnt chemmy smell.

Across the street, a row of plastic skeletons hang in the window of a crêperie, anticipating Halloween. No one in San Francisco is going to tell a crêperie to take down its Halloween skeletons, just because of 21 wildfires killing dozens of people across the Bay. But today the skeletons in the window seem quite the Poeish macguffin, a macabre image destined to dangle for years from the closet ceilings of my memory.

make me one with everything

is the punchline to a joke in which the buddha orders a hot dog.

remembering the buddha’s smug grin in my imaginary picture of this punchline makes me recall that since becoming a noneater of meat products there is only one time i have felt tempted by a hotdog:

detroit, 2014: summer, i am visiting dylan from iowa and sitting at cafe d’mongos. because it’s friday at d’mongo’s, the the only thing on the menu is brazilian hotdogs.

not only am i hungry but i have been drinking brown liquor with dylan and so am extra extra hungry. finally i break down and order two buns with condiments: thousand island dressing and banana peppers and chunks of whatever relish cafe d’mongo’s has decided is brazilian.

eating two buns plus condiments will make you want a hotdog in a very non-zen style of wanting. it will make you want a hotdog more than you ever thought a hotdog was wantable.

the only reason he’s smiling, i think, bitterly about the buddha, the only reason he’s smiling in my imaginary picture of this joke’s punchline, is because he got a fucking hotdog.

he got the one. all i got was the everything.


11865294_10103379847440648_8236782134360162392_oElizeya Quate is a loosely self-affiliated schema of nouns written in the Bay Area. Raised in Tenleytown DC, Quate’s first book The Face of Our Town (KERNPUNKT Press, 2016) is a fun series of interconnected stories about the serious fun of interconnectedness. @elizeyaquate

BLACKCACKLE: Four of Everything was last modified: March 31st, 2020 by Guest Contributor
BLACKCACKLEfictionhumor
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Guest Contributor

Entropy posts are often submitted to us by our fantastic readers & guest contributors. We'd love to receive a contribution from you too. Submission Guidelines.

previous post
WOVEN: Soft Parts
next post
New Fiction By Preston Folsom: “Tow Truck”

You may also like

New Fiction / Featured Young Writer : “Here Is A Boy Who Doesn’t Know” by Ethan Woo

April 26, 2015

The Birds: Raptors

May 8, 2020

“Life is cruel just where art is at its kindest”: A Conversation With Gabriel Blackwell

August 10, 2016

New Fiction by Nick Black: “A Trajectory of Lovers”

February 21, 2018
Facebook Twitter Instagram
"target="_blank"

Recent Comments

  • furiousvexation Loved this. Killer first line and such a painted picture. Bravo!

    The Birds: a poem ·  February 17, 2021

  • Deidra Brown Wonderful, moving work!

    The Birds: a poem ·  February 15, 2021

  • Ceres Growing up in a rural area, I've observed first-hand the disparate outlooks between urban children with environmentalist parents and children raised in the country. Modern agricultural practices...

    HOW VIDEO GAMES MADE ME BIOPHILIC ·  February 13, 2021

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • Food and Covid-19
  • The Talking Cure
  • Stars to Stories
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2021 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top