The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review's Best Acts of 2010

Sensorium 7 Isaac Coleman

I am going to read this story one more time. I’ve read this story seven times now without speculating about the characters’ names. It seems like the plot is more important than their names. None of the characters use each other’s names, and two characters are figments of the imagination of the protagonist.

I’m still not sure how this works in fiction, but all the same, I’m going to use names even though the author didn’t provide any.

Leonard is sitting on the corner of a messy bed painting another version of his vision onto a canvas resting on an easel. The painting in progress looks similar to forty-two other canvases scattered and stacked about. Built-in chestof-drawers line the walls underneath the windows of the second-story bedroom.

Leonard is only wearing blue jeans; a few smudges of green paint cover his arms and tone torso. He is meticulously, frantically, applying tiny strokes of gold to the center of the canvas.

Natalie slowly opens the door and eases her head into the room filled with paintings and dirty clothes. She knocks and speaks simultaneously, “Ready for lunch?” Her voice is nasally and sugary sweet. The noise causes Leonard’s hand to jolt upward across the canvas. A smear of gold strikes through the blue sky.

When I first read this story, there were just generic tags on the dialogue like: says the artist, she says, the administrative assistant says. This time I want to give more depth to the characters which is ironic because if ‘the artist’ knew I was reading his story again, not to mention exposing him to who knows how many more people, he would be upset.

So if you’re joining this reading late, you should know that the protagonist is crazy, and there is a trick ending, but it changes with each reading, so I can’t ruin the story beyond telling you that much. And the ending isn’t at the end.

I’m calling the artist Leonard, which isn’t too terribly clever in respect to the fact that when I think of a painter, which is the type of artist Leonard is, the 100