When it is Father’s Day Noah looks up to the sky, to the clouds. He sees
clouds. Noah sees clouds. His ark is one-third built. The mast is a tree
that he found in a forest and the branches had been scattered from it
already, these sons. So the mast went up in the middle of the deck and
Noah started sewing sails. The sails are bed-sheets and towels and
pillowcases. The sails are to catch wind. When Noah looks up to the clouds in the sky away from what he is as a son here in the rain and towards where should be a father, he hears thunder and thinks bowling, he sees lightning and clenches his fists. These sails will catch wind. Now they grasp at falling rain.
J. A. Tyler is the author of eight novel(la)s including the recently
released Inconceivable Wilson (Scrambler Books, 2009) and the forthcoming A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed (Fugue State Press, 2011). He is also founding editor of Mud Luscious Press. For more, visit: www.mudlusciouspress.com