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"Broken Signals" by Jeff Friedman

  • "Broken Signals" by Jeff Friedman

Jeff Friedman’s Broken Signals is a wildly imaginative collection of dazzling fabulist micro tales that reveals a world of inexplicable mysteries in which we struggle to love each other and ourselves. A girl coughs out salmon fillets for the family dinner; a man can’t remember his father’s face; a man’s lover believes he’s Paul Newman…a female mime pantomimes sex with her lover, but never touches him; a flotilla of clouds sails toward the horizon, each with a dog tail ticking behind it. A husband opens the doors through which his wife sleepwalks and a white owl sews together the dreams of two lovers…Broken Signals is deeply serious and knock-out funny!

Each of these potent, minute-length pieces—about family, love, and the inner life—shimmers with the wisdom and emotional precision of a dream. Together they form a moving kaleidoscope of our most urgent yearnings. Friedman’s work is reminiscent of the great 20th Century writer István Örkény, with an intimacy and freshness that is all his own.
—Dawn Raffel, author of Boundless as the Sky
Decades ago, Russell Edson was the writer who introduced me, not only to prose poetry, but also the realization that this form could be funny, quirky, and profound at the same time. Jeff Friedman is a worthy successor. This short collection ended too soon. Reading Broken Signals is like opening a door to a room filled with wonder.
—Gary Fincke, author of The History of the Baker's Dozen

Jeff Friedman


JEFF FRIEDMAN is the author of ten collections of poetry and prose, including Ashes in Paradise (Madhat Press, November 2023), The House of Grana Padano (Pelekinesis, April 2022, cowritten with Meg Pokrass), The Marksman (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020), and Floating Tales (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017). Friedman’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, Cast-Iron Aeroplanes That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, The New Republic, and Best Microfiction 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council. and numerous other awards and prizes.
Friedman is married to the painter Colleen Randall, and they live with their dog Ruby, a mini Aussie, in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. He can often be seen in a large Wallaroo wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses walking 7-10 miles every day with Ruby, whose wondrous barking has become renowned all over New Hampshire and across the border in Vermont.

Facebook: poetjefffriedman

Website: poetjefffriedman.com

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Tags: character, portraits, microfiction, flash, humor, human condition