Hamburger Magic

by Jason Nelson

Having realized that magic had become a dull and obvious profession,

Gloria, whose fastest desire was to become a worldly magician, searched

for an innovation. From disappearing critters to clairvoyant astrology

to sexual fruit hiding, all the usual acts had been packed with hack

magicians for decades. When she was ten, Gloria lost her left pinky to a

stabbing sword during one of these hack’s act. The shame of a four-fingered

hand kept her wearing gloves at all times, during swimming lessons and

finger painting. So in its place she had sewn a hot dog, which functioned

as a surrogate digit until it began to rot. Since then she had also been

fascinated with meat. Articles on everything from cows grazing to the

marketing of ham in fun cartoon shapes gathered to plot an overthrow

under her bed. Perhaps it was this food flesh obsession that coaxed her

to stop at the butcher and purchase 18 pounds of cheap one-day

out-of-date ground chuck. At the time of impulse she had no reason for buying

the browning hamburger. But on the weaving drive back to her house in

the hills left of town, Gloria uncovered a form of magic unpracticed.

Her car’s slamming brake stop before clipping a Texas armadillo threw

most of the chuck to the floor, covering her

costume shop wand, hat and cloak.

These are stories about towels….(part one)

There is precisely one and one quarter inch between the middle fold of

each Supima plush towel and the deluxe satin divider separating each of

the nine available colors. Although the names of the colors change

yearly, the actual hues and tones of the towels are alarmingly

pedestrian. The man who creates these names lives twelve feet from the

towel factory, in a small round house, the last footprint of the naval

training facility that once weighed down this landscape. Its curving

hallways are stacked with Victorian era newspapers and five-hundred

glossy copies of the March 1964 Scientific American. He says the

contrast between the romanticized past and the only known

article on the mechanical wonders of the Plushnell reordering machine

stimulates his creative and marketing centers.