Mel Bosworth reads an excerpt from Sasha Fletcher’s forthcoming novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS & WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS.

An excerpt from WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS & WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS
By Sasha Fletcher

In my bedroom is a door and that door goes straight to the ground and in
that ground there is a hole and in that hole there are birds flying
perfectly still in a sky that never moves, because it is underground. Out
my window is another window. It is part of someone’s house. Out their
window is an alleyway, where a man is performing magic tricks.

I saw him pull a ghost out of his hat. It looked just like his assistant.
His hat turned into his assistant and his assistant crumpled up. They took
a nap. She said I imagine being a magician’s assistant is very tiring. Or
she said He murdered her, and we should run him out of town, as that sort
of person is undesirable. Then the magician was standing over us, and he
was weeping. We looked at our feet. He kept on crying. He opened an
umbrella. He covered his face with a sheet until the wind took him away
and we never saw him again.

Sasha Fletcher‘s novella When All Our Days Are Numbered Marching Bands Will Fill the Streets and We Will not Hear Them Because We Will Be Upstairs in the Clouds is due out from ml press in June of the year 2010. He is an MFA candidate at Columbia University in the city of New York. He has a blog.