Tobey Hiller
Dying Giant
He lay, ancient and babyish, on the ground, his pointed beard wrapped around his striped top hat so its shadow concealed the fact that he was wearing mascara. Out of the cave of his chest a trophy grizzly bear's head jutted. His wings-and he had once had giant ones-had turned to spiderweb transparency, and nobody knew where his autobiography had gone. A mountain of greasy stomach steamed gently in the breeze, and from his vest pockets dangled his trinkets, all dark limbs and hooded faces. One blue eye looked toward sky; the red eye dripped rust. He was so big the cavalry were measuring him to see if he'd fit in the Grand Canyon, but since a vulture missile already loomed on the eastern horizon, they decided not to bother and went back to their poker game. His trinkets moaned.
Bio
Tobey Hiller's publications in poetry & fiction include: --Three poetry collections: Crossings, Certain Weathers, and Aqueduct (Oyez, Oyez, & Clear Mt. Press); a novel, Charlie's Exit (EdgeWork), poetry, short fiction & flash in many magazines and journals, national and international, print and online, and also in 4 anthologies, most recently Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018). --Awards: two magazine firsts for poems; in fiction: "The Seventh Blue," finalist for the 2009 Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, "Splinter," finalist for the 2016 Los Gatos-Listowel Short Story Contest, and "Blue, Wide and Very Cold," current finalist for a Bosque Magazine award. --Her chapbook Crow Mind will be published next year by Finishing Line Press. She's also at work on a short story collection.