Next Line, Please: Long Ago, Shortly After [by Virginia Valenzuela]

Last week on Next Line, Please, David Lehman invited everyone to "go to town" with their favorite clichés, offering up two well known sayings: “Long Story Short” and “I could be wrong.”

Ordinarily, we writers try to stay away from clichés and to come up with new and unique ways of describing the things we see and feel, but the contributors of Next Line, Please, inspired by this most interesting prompt, have proven to me that clichés can still be served fresh.

Timothy Sandefur's “Short long story” turns the villanelle form on it's head, while also playing with the arrangement of the cliché phrases:

I knew the story’d be a little long.
The old man seemed to lose his way at times.
He was in his 80s? Could be wrong;

don’t think he said. Told me he’d belonged
to the Air Force—this was at the time
when it was still the Army—that was long

ago. He was young, had never gone
anywhere past the county line
before. Now in Rome—no, I’m wrong;

Berlin? Anyway, he wrote his mom
or girlfriend just a couple lines,
always kept it cheerful, not too long,

not too detailed; told them bombs
sounded like old tractors. He would sign
off jauntily. Maybe it was wrong

not to tell them more? Sounding strong
with brevity? Then he paused, and I
made some excuse to leave. He died—a long
story—shortly after? Could be wrong.

Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post! And stay tuned for another great prompt.