6 Holy Men on a Big Rock
The most important part is it’s all real.
We filmed for days, perched
and waiting for things to start happening.
We put cameras in the concession stands
and in shirt buttons and in a hydrangea
in the lead actress’ hat.
We went the extra mile
to get “the good stuff”.
400 audience members responded
to an ambiguous Come see! on Craigslist.
We conducted an audience-actor
movement class
during which the lead actor
had a real breakthrough,
rolling across the shore
in the back end of a horse
we borrowed from the
odds ’n’ ends bin.
We spent hours in the trailers
with the nervous few
saying, You’re good, You’re so good.
We strung up old bones and shook ‘em.
Shakespeare! Or
at least a man with a similar
cranial structure
For a scene in an old abandoned
lighthouse.
We put 6 Holy Men on a big rock.
The buffs came out in droves.
The women came out in droves.
And when the drinks came
they threw their hats and said
Triumph!
We handed out roles like they were free.
And on the subject of freedom
we rid ourselves of our budget
partway through week 1.
The script was 700 pages plus footnotes
with plenty of room for
ad-libbing.
The women were big-breasted
and the animals were untrained.
Four stunt doubles got into
tragic predicaments
and died, one death
resulting from an untrained
animal and a pair of
big breasts.
We wrapped up and
sent the footage to our
editors in gold foil
and they paired it down to
twelve seconds of
someone’s mother’s burnt shoulder
against the backdrop of
a boom mic
big breasts
and some
Pacific waves.
In Which A Small Item is Found
I was on a strip of beach outside the city with my friend Rose
when I found a small item that looked a lot like you.
"What the heck is that?" Rose said.
"It looks like my yoga teacher."
She had it all wrong.
She must never have seen her yoga teacher in her life.
The contouring and the depth of that ridge with all the dirt and wet sand in it!
It looked exactly like you!
I put you in the front pocket of my purse.
Fawn Parker is a writer from Toronto. She lives in Montreal where she studies creative writing at Concordia University. Her work has been published in Hobart, Headlight Anthology, The Void, and is forthcoming in Joyland. She edits fiction for Soliloquies Anthology.
