Collections by Guy Biederman

Ray holds the Gondola watercolor painting against the wall next to Watermelon Girl, a pastel, and the charcoal of Fisherman in a Dory, who has hooked a whale but doesn’t yet know it.

“A little to the left,” says Natalia.

Ray obliges.

“Perfect.”

He smiles, wearing his new-to-him-people-pleasing white thrift store peacoat.

Natalia returns to her iPad.

Ray places the Gondola painting, with a gondolier dressed in nautical white navigating a canal, on the table.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to get a picture hook and hammer.”

“Oh no, no holes in the wall,” says Natalia.

“Just stand still and hold in place, please. You’re lovely for doing so.”

Ray picks up the painting and tries to figure out where he had been standing, where exactly he’d held the painting.

“Is this about good?” he asks.

Natalia ignores him

Across the room he sees a woman in eggshell linen holding Cucumber Collage, mixed media. Near a picture window, a surfer wearing ivory trunks holds aloft Breaking Wave, oil. Over in a far corner, a shirtless weightlifter in pale loin cloth hoists a bending bamboo barbell with onyx plates, clean and jerk.

Puzzled, he wonders why anyone would agree to stand for this. Minutes become hours/days/weeks, as time quietly engulfs seasons, years, and vast decades; contemplation merges into being.

Holding art at just the right angle in just the right place —leaving no mark on the linen-white wall becomes a life’s work. Craft of the art holder. Strength of a wall hanger. Ray becomes very good at it.

“Perfect, in fact,” offers Natalia who only rarely looks up from her screen, fingers lifting into the air as she scrolls/types/deletes —mad pianist pursuing ecstatic groove.

Ray breathes deeply, breath is so often the answer, grows fond of the Gondola painting he holds, and its gondolier who stands frozen at his task.

Guy Biederman’s new collection of micro fiction, Here’s Where We Get Off, was published by Blue Light Press in April 2026. A former peace corps volunteer, low fat fiction instructor, and gardener, he leads a nomadic life between Sausalito, New Mexico, El Paso, and on the roads in between. His Starbucks coffee name is Gud, apparently.