—After Youth Making a Face by Adriaen Brouwer*

Knife stowed in hat a good plan: hands up to ward off blows, and there it is. The boy moves from shadow to shadow in the tavern. Waits for weary travelers to nod over plates and snatches bits.

And then he’s paid in ale to sit! What trick is this? The paying stranger, drawing, looks up and down. The light is not good—only a door swung open upon gray sleet slant falling.

Enough. The boy makes a different face and bolts. Off to his bed in a hay loft.

Later, in summer, the drawing man passes through again. Sees the boy from his wagon and nods. He lifts a cloth to show a painting he’s delivering. And for once the boy is stilled, stunned. Marveling that a picture might be made of such a thing.

* Youth Making a Face (oil painting on canvas, c. 1632-35), by Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer (c. 1605-1638), is held by the National Gallery of Art:
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.86204.html
(link retrieved on 22 December 2023).

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol