Jeff Friedman

Spring in the Air
 
In checkout lane three at the grocery, I feel my nose twitch inside my mask. The two carts closest to the cashier are six-feet apart, but the rest of us are much closer together. While some shoppers chat briefly, laughing at jokes, while some lean over their carts for support, and some pull out hand sanitizer, rubbing their hands briskly, I scrunch my face to hold back a sneeze. When the guy in the next lane asks me a question, I begin to answer and without warning, the sneeze escapes. I’m shaken, but quickly hold up my hands and shout into my mask, “Allergies—I’m not sick,” but the other shoppers look at me as if I’m dangerous. Before I can do anything about it, I sneeze again, and my mask sails off like a large butterfly, floating over heads until it lands on a grocery conveyor belt two lanes away, touching an avocado. The cashier removes the mask with her gloved hand…The shopper says “no” to the avocado, which the cashier places near her register. The other shoppers move as far away from me as they can.  I try to reassure them, but a third even more powerful sneeze explodes from my mouth and nose. The automatic doors open. The plexiglass windows shake. The shoppers hit the floor, holding their breath, their heads buried in their hands. A sea of droplets and aerosols hangs over them. There’s no way for me to clear the air now. For a long moment the store is silent. The only other person standing is the cashier in lane five. She smiles and signals me to come ahead. “But I’m not next in line,” I say. “You go!” the other shoppers shout from the floor, so I wheel around them, pay for my groceries quickly, and leave the store without another sneeze.

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This first appeared in the anthology Alcatraz, edited by Cassandra Atherton, Paul Hetherington, and Phil Day, and then in Ashes in Paradise by Jeff Friedman (Madhat Press, 2023)

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Horse
 
Give me a horse, he said, so we gave him a horse; only now he needed a paddock so he could parade the horse, so we gave him a paddock; only now he needed a saddle, so we gave him a saddle; only now he needed a leg up, so we lifted him by his boot; only now he needed a racetrack, competition—other jockeys and horses— and a crowd, so we gave him all of it, and he took off flying around the track at a record pace; only now he needed a finish line and cameras flashing, so we gave him a finish line and the cameras aimed in his eyes; only now he needed a trophy to lift over his head and a big pay off, so we gave him the trophy and a big pay off to boot; when he turned around, the money was gone. He pawned the trophy for pennies. When he returned to the track, it wasn’t there. Give me a horse, he said; so we stuffed a bit in his mouth and spurred his sides until he took off in a mad gallop; now he didn’t even need us. 

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This was first published in Floating Tales, by Jeff Friedman (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017).

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Dusk
 
When her hair thinned, when her skin grew paler, I brought her medicine and hot vegetable soup. She wrapped herself in an afghan because she couldn’t shake the chill from her body. I sat down next to her and picked up the soup bowl to feed her the rest of the soup, but she was no longer hungry. The sun streaked the violet sky a burning pink. The light blazed in her cheek for a moment and then faded. I rubbed her feet and hands to restore their heat; still she shivered. The room darkened. Though I sat next to her, she seemed further and further away, as if islands had drifted between us. She was disappearing, a memory blinking out in the mind. I closed my eyes and imagined her voice, warm as cinnamon at dusk. “I’m here,” she said, “here, here, here…” and now there were lights coming on in windows and houses, spangles glittering in the filaments of her hair. 
 
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This was first published in Floating Tales, by Jeff Friedman (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017).

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White Feather
 
After Alexsandra kissed me, a white feather flew out of my mouth. I pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, though the feather floated between us for a long while before it fell on the carpet. The feather was long and bowed with soft fringe. I wanted to pick it up and twirl it, but Alexsandra seemed concerned. “Did you eat a white bird?” she asked. I shook my head. “It’s only one feather,” I answered. She eyed me suspiciously, though a moment before she had seemed perfectly happy to be kissing me. To prove that there was no problem, I kissed her, and everything was fine. Our lips met, our tongues touched and tangled as they had a thousand times before. Then another feather floated from my mouth and stuck in her thick black hair. She pulled it out and scrutinized the feather for a long time. “There’s something inside you trying to get out,” she said. “You have to do something about it.” “What can I do?” I said. “It’s only two feathers.” She picked up her journal and began writing. Now I was alarmed. Had I done something to deserve this? Had a bird flown into my mouth in a dream? I thought about my dreams, but couldn’t remember anything particular. “Let’s try one more kiss,” I said, but this time, a white dove flung itself from my mouth, flying wildly around the room until it hit the window and fell on the floor. “Is it dead?” I asked. She kneeled and cradled the dove in her arms. Then she carried it outside—I thought to bury it, but instead she threw it in air. The dove caught itself before plummeting into the pavement and landed on a branch above us.  “We’ll figure this out,” she said, squeezing my hand, but I could already feel a tickling in my throat as the dove began singing.  

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This was first published in Floating Tales, by Jeff Friedman (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017).

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Old Men
 
In the middle of the afternoon, old men lose their gravity, floating off the sidewalks. Some bump their heads against tree trunks. Some collide with birds, who resent the intruders in their air space. Some old men get their filaments of hair tangled in branches while others wisely latch onto clouds and kick their way through the sky. Some old men turn over and over in space, their wallets and keys dropping from their pockets. And others shoot up like hot air balloons.  But on the ground, two old men clutch fire hydrants as if they were lovers and won’t let go.

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This was first published in 100-Word Story and then in in Floating Tales, by Jeff Friedman (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017).

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Parrot
 
“Nothing to it,” I said. “Just lift your wings and let go,” but the parrot refused to budge from the floor. “If it’s so easy why don’t you do it?” he asked. I lunged at the parrot with my hand cupped, thinking I would toss him in the air, but he was too quick, hopping ahead of me. Then my wife stepped in, pushing her palm in front of my face to stop me. “We learn by imitation,” she said. “Imitation, limitation…” the parrot mocked.  I lunged again, but he evaded me, finding a safe place under the couch.  “Watch and learn,” my wife interrupted, apparently talking to both of us.  She began running through the room flapping her arms quickly to show the parrot what to do. “Gringa es loca,” the parrot said. “Pay attention, and you might learn what it takes to be a bird,” I replied, wondering when our parrot had become bilingual. “Be a bird, be-a-bird, be-a-bird,” he sang.  My wife beat her wings faster and faster and suddenly she rose off the ground floating up to the light fixtures. “Damn,” I said. “Damn, the parrot repeated, waddling out of its shelter, holding up a wing in admiration. 

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This was first published in The Red Wheelbarrow, and then in Floating Tales, by Jeff Friedman (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017).

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Jeff Friedman's eleventh book, Broken Signals was published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024. Friedman’s poems and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Anthology, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, Best Microfiction 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire Arts Council, and numerous other awards.