Carol Deminski | Word Riot

For Art’s Sake by Carol Deminski

1. The Work

She asks what he’s working on. He tells her it’s about the surface: a treatment of paint, photography, and more paint—but, really, it’s about the conceptual premise, he says. Still, it’s got a bunch of naked women. He has no time to talk, says he has to get back to work.

She calls the next day—Jersey City to Berlin—and asks if he’s made progress. No, it depresses me, he says. There’s no light here; it’s grey and raining; my apartment is too small. He rushes her off the phone.

2. Duchamp

The fountain was never installed

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Flash Fiction

Cloud Girl by Carol Deminski

She squeezed through the bathroom window, squirming, undulating to get outside. She wanted to smell the trees, and beer, and a boy. She inhaled the night, saw his car.

An old woman; air strapped to her nose. Beeping machines. Miles of blue veins and needles. The nurse-nuns of The Cathedral of Illness. Hushed hallways bathed in fluorescence. The murmured prayers and incantations.

When the boy put his fingers inside her, she gasped. She let the movement take her from the backseat to the oak trees and then up, up, up. She was a cloud girl, inhaling

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Flash Fiction

Flame by Carol Deminski

Listen to a reading of “Flame” by Carol Deminski.

It was September and the garage was on fire. Two trucks of firemen spilled onto Celia’s lawn. They trampled her marigolds, and smashed windows with dull axes. The flames spread across the roof of the garage. The firemen aimed a steady stream of water.

The sound of the water brought back a memory, laundry day—the one-inch burn hole in the chest of Terry’s uniform. She put her pinky through where the khaki was singed, asked him how he got it. He didn’t remember, he said. His way of not

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For Art’s Sake by Carol Deminski

Cloud Girl by Carol Deminski

Flame by Carol Deminski