The long redness in the setting of the sun cast silence in Humphrey, Texas, where the coal black sat and pondered the times and found their minds wandering to oblique, shimmering black futures where Christ comes back and the entire world is bathed in righteousness and blood. But day after day oily dirt clapped children would break the desperation of watching the sky, strangely empty, by soiling themselves and others with adolescent repartee and bad acts requiring the familiar whistle of a shrub switch.
The long redness melted into deeper hues; the fire in the sky gave way to a muted amber glow in the west, a calm neon ambience in the east.
but I'm having a hard time following along.It's almost like poetry. Language over meaning. If you simply listen to the language for the language's sake, it's lovely. But trying to grasp any meaning or setting or characters or conflict...I'm just not getting it.
Some of the words confused me, and maybe my vocabularly is lacking. Things like clapped children and coal black didn't ring any bells for me.
Like Dakota (someone well worth listening to around here) I think this piece sounds great. But it needs simplifying.
That first line is way too long and convoluted. It could be a series of smaller ones.
Some thoughts:
I can't see how a red sunset can cast silence.
I am not sure what you mean by 'the coal black'
I am not sure what a shimmering blak is. Shimmering is an effect of light, black is its absence.
I like the line about blood and righteousness.
I love the line 'oily dirt clapped children.'
And this is a great line:
quote:
...soiling themselves and others with adolescent repartee and bad acts requiring the familiar whistle of a shrub switch.
However I would change the image from soiling themselves to something less fecal.
It sounds like you are more or less saying: The sun set red over a quiet town in Texas. Black people watched the fading sky looking for some sign of Christ. Not tonight. The young people kept doing young people things but they would pay.
The sun went down.
Is that the gist?
If it was clearer I would very happily keep reading, but I don't like having to make assumptions at the start of a story that makes it feel unstable.
In short, make it bite-size digestable.
If I have to reread the opening paragraph to try to figure out what is going on, I'm not going to turn the page.
It does show a brilliant capacity for wonderful, new, description--just too much all at once, too soon.
There are a few places where I think the punctuation is off (missing commas).