Six Press Gallery - Experimental Fiction - Daniel Borzutsky "War"

Daniel Borzutzky is 28 years old and lives in Chicago. He has just completed his first book. His work has been published in The Cimarron Review, COLUMBIA, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, LVNG, The Minus Times, The New Orleans Review, Snow Monkey and Third Bed. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. You can find him in Volume 7 of Who's Who Among America's Teachers.

from "War"

1. Tradition states that in times of non-war, war, in the form of a yearly ceremony on April 22nd, the day of our liberation, must always be enacted. Each year, the fisherman who catches the most scallops in the two months prior to the war has the privilege of being the organizer. The organizer must decide who is the enemy. Since he might feel uncomfortable making this decision on his own, the elders arrange it for him to be advised. The evening prior to the declaration of war, he stands by the well and meets with the 4 snake charmers, each of whom offers their own strategy. The snake charmers are not snake charmers, as our village does not have snakes. The snakes were killed 22 years ago, in the Summer of the Endless Fire. The Endless Fire was not endless. It lasted 4 days, and was responsible for eliminating our tropical vipers, who lived under the watch of the snake charmers in the fenced-in Fields of Lavender. The vipers were not native to our lands. They were brought to our village by nomads from California, who, in '32, arranged a deal with the elders to trade the vipers for the chromosome extractors that the village geniuses had recently invented, which, among other things, could cure the then raging epidemic of amnesia plaguing the entire western coast. As no cause could be found for the fire, it was attributed to witches. As no witches have ever been seen in our village, it is believed that the witches took the form of butterflies, who torched the Fields of Lavenders. The witches had disguised themselves as butterflies to pull pranks like this before. They stole our famous cheeses in '58; they filled the heads of our children with lice in '64; and the elders will never let us forget how in '22 the entire village almost died of thirst when they blocked the passage to the pump well by filling the fields with spiny tropical trees. The snake charmers are the sons and grandsons of snake charmers. As it is not in their history to have other responsibilities, the elders granted them new ones. Unlike the architects and caterers, they are not skilled planners. They have only been involved in the act of planning war for twenty-two years. Needless to say, when it comes to plotting strategies, they are far from being masters.