A Quick Heart With Music and Dancing: Recent Episodes

Jane Vassar

I didn’t know where else to put these stories. I was going to sell them for a dollar apiece at the flea market, but it rained that day so we went and got donuts instead. So here they are.

Adventures on the high seas

For my best friend Sid, who died too young at 89.

Some birds sing right up to the end

The neighbor who never said hi pours out her heart to me.

The sirens never stopped screaming & every doorway smelled of piss.

This is when I stay up too late

Oh, the humanity!

There’s something about Mary

Failure bouncing around like puke on a carnival ride

What does Woodstock and the Iranian revolution have in common? I almost went to both.

Romantic fantasies are picked off one by one, and crushed out like a Camel cigarette under a penny loafer.

My psychic struggle to understand God ends with an epic wrestling match with a pesky fortune teller.

Holding up a mirror to someone with a sorta sketchy grip on reality

And then, we heard it. A sound, like crying. First faintly, like seagulls in the distance. Then, stronger. Like Carmen the meter maid, screaming for help.

I have an epiphany at the ice cream truck. I also have an ice cream.

Trying to go fast without falling, careful and careless jumbling together. Only to find myself in Purgatory, which evidently is a shopping cart stuck in the mud. Oh, and there’s a ghost, too.

The fish and I are both struggling with anxiety. Thank god there are angels. No, not angel fish. A fish angel.