2nd Rate Wasp
by Robert Shapard
It was a 2nd rate wasp, one of those buzzing around the wild fig tree, weaving along the porch rail, giddy it seemed with autumn. It had a few weeks to live at most, until the temperature dipped below freezing. One had gotten into a closed travel bag in the house—how did it manage that? I zipped it back up and shooed it outside. That was a 1st rate wasp, one with a travel plan. But he wouldn’t make it to winter, not unless he was a female, thus could live for several seasons. My father was inside fixing a drink. He was a chronic alcoholic, more like a 2nd rate wasp. Lately he’d seemed feverish, trying to get from one drink to another. He’d abandoned dignity. I’d say Dad you can get a drink when we get home, or, We’ll stop at the liquor store on the way back, okay? I was the one who could still talk to him. I knew he suffered. I just wanted him to make my brother’s wedding. I just wanted him to make the divorce consultation. I bribed with promises, though I could tell he didn’t trust them, nor anyone’s. Instead he’d lash out. A counselor told me it wasn’t personal, it was physiological. The trust had been leached out of him. At least he was still eating. Dad, we’ve already got plenty of peanuts, I’d say at the grocery store, or Dad, those are peperoncini, you said you didn’t like them, they’re too acidic. Now he wanted them anyway. And figs, we stopped in the produce section and he said I always loved these. I knew he wouldn’t be with us long, but I wanted his last days to be like autumn, like a wasp weaving in a beautiful autumn.
Robbie’s very short stories have appeared in Juked, 100-Word Story, Flaunt, New Flash Fiction Review, and Necessary Fiction.
In 2020, he helped establish the first curated collection of flash fiction in the U.S., with Tom Hazuka, Tara Lynn Masih, Pamela Painter, and Robert Scotellaro.
To see more go to Smokelong Quarterly for a note by Christopher Allen. Go to Ransom Center Magazine at UTexas for a note by Megan Bernard.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “2nd Rate Wasp”? This is personal experience, fictionalized, paired with an unrelated observation, nonfictional. We see those nonfictional wasps all the time out on the deck at the back of the house. (They’re harmless.) I liked these things together somehow, memory and wasps, and the piece had meaning for me, yet it didn’t quite click. So I kept editing it down—that’s how good writing works, right?—until I had squashed the life out of it. Years later, trying to bring a collection together, I found this little piece again. In spite of its being dead, it still spoke to me. So I tried editing things in, not out. Personal things, all slight, like “a counselor told me,” or “he said I always loved those,” or “I knew he wouldn’t be with us long.” But slight things get magnified, in a story so small. Even the phrase “how did it manage that?” seemed to me not just an aside but someone questioning a memory, and I suppose that applies to the whole piece. Anyway, life seemed to be breathed back in.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
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