Sledgehammer Writing Contest

What better way to spend a fall evening than sipping wine and writing?

Thanks to everyone who came out for this month’s Mini Sledgehammer, and congratulations to Joshua Force for taking home the prizes!

Prompts:
Character: A candidate
Action: To legalize
Setting: An empty office
Phrase: After the war

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Untitled

By Joshua Force

after the warning shot got pushed past us in the form of a opinion poll we probably should have thought twice about renting the extra office space. even 16 feet square is too much when your budget shrivels up on lack of fund raising and funds on lack of faith as the the general public prematurely picks their pony and that other pony gets stronger. that can feel about it – watching as your chances are lapped. lapped out as if a giant tongue absorbed a long line of sugar cubes and the sweetness that could have been yours. was the polling firm reputable I wondered staring at a wall of pre-paid posters quilting over the wall in perfect repetition and image – broken only in their haphazard overlapping as though the enormous long wall they blanketed had shrunk them piling as tiles onto one another. “Yes on 7” “es on 7” “Yes on “ “s on 7” and occasionally an upside down one too. somehow so garishly fitting or is it unfitting that our amateur public image mimicked an ugly wall that needed care and received rushed neglect. gah! is there a way out of this useless box? trapped in the mirrored failure of assailed idea, riding the grumpy gallop towards a finish line you’d rather avoid completely if front of a crowd that hates you or at best is disengaged from the possibility of you. you an idea. you an intangible candidate. the potential of a sparkling fix. the dwindling futures of our indigenous proposal a pre-lost race. out come the opinion polls and you’re lapped up like a pool of water. you’re lapped up until the trough is dry withering dry. and there I was in the middle of the fight and yet entirely after the war. all the thrashing and kicking and pushing would have to be ceremonial now. I’d need more runs around my precincts with a volunteering flyers and flyer-ers still clutching the paper like the hope could still win with the barest chance the power of the ghostly candidate was hidden beneath even our own ability to see. sweeping away the other debris from the porch stairs and the door handles and perches created around mailboxes in a vaporous wave of portended defeat as even the lapping occurred still trapped in useless motions of fumbling in the worst pantomime looking in the mouths of the grandstand voters in their glowing homesteads and revival farmhouses with saccharine pleading to be the crop. to spur on the candidate. the animal the One chance this generation to make legal the question of 7. it is after all legal elsewhere with winning results for not only those who bet on it but also and actually everyone. we can all win legalize horse racing in Clindale county! a yes vote send revenue to the schools! the failing schools!!! it’s an exhaustion now because the polls came out and the polls are too far ahead and now there is no way we can catch up to the polls. our candidate is a fading apparition a non-animal who will be blown away like acrid smoke.

© 2014 Joshua Force

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine, Joshua Force, legalization, short story, Sledgehammer, writing contest |