Closed

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION: COME BACK TOMORROW - Tania Hershman

A Wigleaf Top 50 Selection

This is a good read. I like how Tania Hershman uses the convention of store hours to illustrate emotional (un)availability. At times I was wondering if she was trying to personify a store or other business.

Here, Hershman has picked her images and her conflict. Nothing else. She hammers these home and from that focus, the flash becomes more truthful and hopefully universal. I certainly related both to the narrator and to the person to whom the flash is aimed.

Now, why isn't this a prose poem? There's no narrative, there are no scenes and scant characters. Perhaps it's the narrator and the complexity of emotion she emits. There is a progression emotionally as well. We move from a limited openness to really no openness and a feeling of being trapped. Yet the narrator is still hopeful, or at least wishes to keep the imagined lover as an emotional hostage, ever longing and ever rebuffed.

So, please do check this one out. I give it 4.5 out of 5 Mt. Hood Strawberries.