“The Mother,” a short piece from Lydia Davis’s Break it Down, perfectly demonstrates, for me, the unhumorous punchline where the last line and components leading up to it operate as a joke, but aren’t funny. Punchlines at their best are oblique and unexpected; it’s the minor epiphany of “getting it” that makes them so visceral – keyword here, because what begins in the brain ends in the gut.

Or, from Norman Lock’s Grim Tales:

When he was struck down by his wife’s lover, the scythe moaned in the wheat. In the kitchen, cutting open a loaf, she dropped her knife as the blood spilled out the bread’s fresh wounds.

These actually remind me of haikus; not so much formally, but the mental architecture of their agenda — like the build up and the blast. Oh, and speaking of haiku, I’ll leave you with one of my faves, by Basho:

My eyes following
until the bird lost at sea
found a small island

I love how we follow the horizon of each line down to the semiotic island of “island.” It’s like our eyes are the bird. I’m not laughing, and that’s just fine.

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