Pushcart Prize Nomination: Eli Barrett

Congratulations to our second fiction nomination for this year’s Pushcart Prize: Eli Barrett for “The Imagination Resettlement Program.” Read the excerpt below, then purchase a subscription to Pleiades here.

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The Imagination Resettlement Program

The first one I saw was a tiger with golden stripes— shiny gold, like the metal—breathing fire in my front yard, scorching the hell out of the grass. I still don’t know where that thing came from, maybe a kid’s cartoon or a folktale. All I know is it scared the bejeezus out of me. I hunkered down in my house for days afterward, watching the news. At first, no one could figure out where all these strange creations were coming from. Then they started finding famous ones like Sherlock Holmes and Tom Thumb. A government spokesman came on and told us that centuries of creating characters had caused a crisis. The world of imagination had filled beyond capacity and now it was overflowing.

The displaced characters had to live somewhere, and the government thought it would give the economy a boost to pay people to board them in their homes. For years I’d been scraping by on disability checks, so in spite of that bad brush with the tiger, I decided to apply to the program. Some people got lucky. Imagine having Winnie-the-Pooh living in your house! Or Cinderella! I got Mary. She may only be an advertising character, but she’s better than any fairy tale princess I can think of.

They dropped her off on a chilly morning. She must have been freezing, because with my bad leg it took a long minute to answer the door. There was an icy sort of rain falling, like frozen sand, and it glistened all over her coat and blonde hair. “I’m Mary,” she said, “the bridal detective.” I had no idea what to say. What the hell is a bridal detective? Under her coat, she wore a peach-colored dress with a brooch shaped like two church bells. She held out her hand. I said something polite to welcome her, I think. After I got over my shock, I realized I’d been holding her hand longer than most women would allow. Her eyes shone at me, looking happy and relaxed. Her smile was the most perfect thing I’d seen in a long time.

—Read more in issue 37.2