Old Silver Hair – IV (from Brian Awesome)

Lily Hoang
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The parameters of this bed are all wrong, Old Silver Hair yells out. The room is calm, so she shakes her feet free of her dirty socks, her undomesticated legs flapping feral. This is where the stories are all wrong, liberal divergences and straight up lies—you see, Old Silver Hair does not go to the porridge first. She is a napper, a mid-day rester, and she attempts sleep, and upon failing, she pu- shes her circular body towards the kitchen nook. Sunlight glim- mers through the windows, her pupils lasso in tight. Outside, the

Three Bears are still walking along the waves, their effrontery paws imprinting the sand. They are unstoppable and fearless: they are bears! Meanwhile, Old Silver Hair has tussled all three beds. She eats all three bowls of porridge. Her hunchback unable to align orthogonally, she pushes the parameters of all three chairs until they collapse, not down but out—an explosion. The Three Bears return, and Old Silver Hair is already gone, and then all the stories transform Old Silver Hair into Goldilocks, and the whole fable becomes a polynomial aberration, and this pisses off the Three Bears to this very day.

Lily Hoang is the author of four books, including Changing, recipient of a PEN Open Books Award. With Blake Butler, she edited 30 Under 30, and with Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she is editing the anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on the Avant-Garde and Accessibility (Night Boat, forthcoming 2014). She is Associate Department Head at New Mexico State University, where she teaches in the MFA program and serves as Prose Editor for Puerto del Sol.