Potatoes of Promise
by Marcus Silcock
Tatra trots down the lane with the moo coos. They’re robot cows. They don’t even moo. Tatra is an original animal. He walks his original walk to Motel 6. Outside door number 6, someone wailing with someone. But not really wailing. Pretend wailing. Some forgotten ritual.
He taps his antlers on the door of the lodge. In his room, the walls are waving. Whales in the wall. Sonorous rumblings. He slips into his fossil watch. It ticks and ticks. The whale time. It is the best time.
Tatra walks the forest. The trees bending and stretching into bony fingers. Someone creaks open the wooden bible. Swine inhabited by spirits swan dive into the sea. The farmers lean on their hoes. Potatoes of promise mature in dark wombs.
Marcus Silcock teaches high school in Barcelona and co-edits the surreal-absurd literary magazine Mercurius. His recent stories and prose poems appear, or are forthcoming, in Maudlin House, Broken Antler, Fictive Dream, Rawhead, Elsewhere Magazine, Bending Genres, and Your Impossible Voice. His collection of microfictions and prose poems, Dream Dust, is available from Broken Sleep Books. Find out more: www.nevermindthebeasts.com.