The Withholding
by Rachel Rodman
At her chest, in a drawstring pouch, she kept a personal hoard of rats’ asses. They were worn and polished, like leather coins, with empty circles at their centers.
There she held them perpetually, warmed by her heart, so that, whenever the right occasion arose, she could conspicuously Not give them out.
“No,” she would say, lips twisting and eyes slitted, in a withering contempt: “This particular set of circumstances does not warrant anything that I have, stored here.”
Rachel Rodman (www.rachelrodman.com) writes fairy tales, food poetry, and popular science. Her work has appeared at Fireside Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Expanded Horizons, and elsewhere.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Withholding”? I am fascinated by currencies, ancient and modern: shells, stones, beads, ivory, Bitcoin, and so on. I am not aware of any economy that literally employs rats’ anuses. But the idea became embedded in our language somehow. And in fiction, at least, one can physicalize that interesting possibility. So I did.
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Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again March 15, 2023. Submit here.
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