Peter Cherches has been writing short-prose since before cute phrases like “Flash Fiction” or “Short Shorts” were coined to characterize the genre. His first books came out in the early 1980’s, from notable downtown New York presses like Red Dust and Benzene. Back then, in addition to publishing his pieces widely in both mainstream and alternative magazines, Cherches performed at punk venues with experimental musician Elliott Sharp as the duet Sonorexia, he edited an underground art and literary journal, Zone, and 
he collaborated with letterpress wizards Purgatory Pie Press on a couple of wonderful artist’s books.
His published work has always had a strong element of performance, sometimes explicitly, in dialogues and trialogues, otherwise implicitly, in monologuish rants. The work has also always been readable, humorous, minimal (more in the manner of Sixties art than Carver), thought-provoking, and too little known. 
The collection Lift Your Right Arm, from a new and adventurous publisher, includes five sequences of short-prose by Cherches, some from decades past, some recent. First is ‘Mr. Deadman,’ vignettes about an alter-ego whose life, so to speak, seems to revolve around morbid wordplay (“Life, Mr. Deadman says, is a death-defying stunt,” reads one page in its entirety), though the puns et al embroider seriously existential fables, a little like Russell Edson’s or Marvin Cohen’s. The second sequence, ‘Bagatelles,’ originally appeared as a chapbook in 1981 and was reprinted in Cherches’ classic Condensed Book (1986); in 2004, Billy Collins selected its brilliant opening piece, “Lift Your Right Arm,” for his Poetry 180 project at the Library of Congress. The writing’s deceptively simple — and still fresh — throughout this batch of playfully-presented conversations, which explore couple relationships in hilarious, ambiguous, and sometimes profound ways. Part three, ‘Dirty Windows,’ also about a relationship, starts like a novel in short-prose, its complete first ‘chapter’ being: “They met at a bookstore. She was thumbing through Finnegans Wake when he came by and said, ‘Nice weather.’ She liked that, so when he asked her to join him for a cup of coffee she agreed. They started talking and he learned that she was a meteorologist.” Thereafter, 24 further verbal snapshots build into a portrait of a bickering (but funny) couple, until, true to Cherches’ devotion to formal experimentation, the ‘novel’ just peters out (so to speak). While both plot and character play parts in Cherches’ constructions, neither is taken too seriously. The fourth section, ‘Trio Bagatelles,’ consists of playlets exploring group dynamics, witty and typically philosophical, and in part five, ‘A Certain Clarence,’ (nods to Michaux and Cortázar), the lead character ruminates on the odd assortment of metaphysical situations in which he finds himself.
Cherches is an experienced, self-aware writer with a great ear for colloquialisms and an ever-restless, clever way with literary structure. His work does what good literature should: it makes readers rethink their circumstances. What’s more, it does so in a really entertaining way. Lift Your Right Arm is an excellent introduction to his stuff, easily worth twice its modest price.
Originally published in Gently Read Literature.
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