Ethel

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Ethel

Ethel

tiny creatures

by
Eliezra Schaffzin with drawings and cover art/design by Stephen Schaffzin
Eliezra Schaffzin is Stephen Schaffzin's daughter and the recipient of the Calvino Prize for fabulist, experimental fiction. She recently completed work on a not-so-tiny novel. Her website is eliezraschaffzin.com.

Stephen Schaffzin is Eliezra Schaffzin's father and the recipient of a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) wherein he found his muse (yet married his high school sweetheart). He recently completed work on a picture book entitled "A Cownting Book: from Won to Tin.” His website is schaffzin.com.

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from tiny creatures
Excerpt from Triptych: Little Deities

1. EL-BO

The morning after she said no to the woman she might have loved, she was accosted by her left elbow.

EL-BO, it rumbled, a sustained funny bone feeling, her entire body an eardrum. Lips-teeth-tongue, her mouth replied, feeling cheeky.
EL-BO, the elbow persisted.
All right, she said.

She adjusted the blankets, preparing to sleep in. The elbow popped nitrogen bubbles, a pointed protest of synovial snapping.

All right, she said, getting up. At the bathroom mirror, toothpaste foaming, she realized the thing’s significance. She was, after all, a leading authority in Northwest Semitic languages. She knew the words: EL-BO. “God in it.” Why not? That’s where a god should be, in the interstice.

EL-BO, the god said, declaring itself. I will speak. Okay, she said. Listening.