The Rejected Jurors
by Molly Gaudry
After they were not selected from the venire panel, the rejected jurors went out for brunch in Oyster Bay. Ab accepted the invitation because she had nothing better to do and because one of her favorite pastimes lately was observing random people interacting. After a second round of mimosas for the entire party, she learned that the young father directly across from her had spent his summer learning to sweet pickle meats, that his Australian wife had been a leading aircraftwoman for the Royal Australian Air Force before she met him. But that was back in his grad school days (which he offered, Ab supposed, because she had mentioned that she was in grad school studying poetry). Ab learned that the young father and his wife were avid outdoorspeople and that their daughter excelled, of all things, at making a bird’s mouth—the inside angle of a chopped notch that received the edge of another piece of wood. Across from Ab and to the young father’s right sat a speech therapist who told them the useless fact (her words, not Ab’s) that Oyster Bay was the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s grave. The speech therapist specialized, Ab learned, in voicoids, which were vowel or vowel glides devoid of oral friction, like “bouy” not “beauty.” She and Ab got into a conversation about dipthongs, which Ab admitted she only knew about because she had long-ago decided that she liked the sound of the word dipthong and that the bisociation it occasioned for her—dipping thongs in wax, as if making candles out of underpants—was the kind of stimulus word that helped her best when working from word association prompts (another she liked—not a dipthong, simply bisociative—was beer and skittles). So she was getting her MFA in poetry, she said, but, as she often shared in mixed company, she also wrote YA novels under a pen name, which was not true but which was a lot more interesting to strangers than what she actually did, which was write experimental constraint-based poems. On the young father’s left was a marble worker who specialized in jalee work by day but spent her nights dancing the Jaleo. Her partner of fifty years, although they’d only been able to get married a decade ago (“Congratulations!” “Thank you!”), played the castanets while she danced. The dance itself, she explained, was a solo affair. Next to her and at the head of their table was the eldest member of their party, by appearances anyway. He was a cameist from a long line of cameists. Mostly, he did repairs. Unlike his grandfather and great-grandfather, he didn’t make cameos himself. But this was all right, he said. He enjoyed restorations and spending his time so intimately involved with the fine craftsmanship of past cameists. The final member of their dining party, the youngest of the group by far, was a rapper who had recently begun dabbling, she said, in crunk. No one asked what this was, and she did not offer an explanation unprompted as the others had. She had one earbud in anyway, and Ab assumed that although the girl had agreed to come with them for a bite that didn’t necessarily mean she wanted to learn everyone’s whole life story or share her own. All in all, the young father offered, they were a surprisingly artistic bunch, and suddenly Ab felt rejected anew. She wondered just then, Who knew how their own verdict might have turned out? Would it have been the same or different from the jury’s that had, in fact, been selected that morning?
Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novels Desire: A Haunting and We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN/Osterweil. She is an assistant professor at Stony Brook University and core faculty at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Rejected Jurors”? This piece was inspired by the basket ingredients from Chopped 45.1. While watching cooking shows like Chopped or Beat Bobby Flay, I’ve often wondered about how to turn the chefs’ prompts into writing prompts and I think I may have finally figured out how. While watching this Chopped episode online, I looked up the basket ingredients and chose alternative “ingredients” that fell within five dictionary entries above or below. So venison, lacy cauliflower, sweet potatoes, and bird’s nest from the appetizer basket became venire panel, leading aircraftswoman, sweet pickle, and bird’s mouth. Of all the surrounding dictionary entries, I chose those that I was unfamiliar with and thought I might learn more about simply by writing about them. From the entrée basket in this episode, oyster mushrooms, blueberry vodka, bison, and stinging nettles became Oyster Bay, voicoid, bisociation, and stimulus word. From the dessert basket, beer flour, jalapeno, camel milk, and crunchy fruit candy became beer and skittles, Jaleo, cameist, and crunk.
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.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD