The Excerpt:
“The following morning Bida went carousing. He smashed Saint Valentine’s shrine in the church and tried to play the organ. He was wearing a jacket that had been cut from a blue carpet and had an embroidered lily on its back, and he had combed his sweat-drenched forelock over his gouged-out eye.” — Isaac Babel, Afonka Bida (Red Cavalry Stories)
Analysis: Solid imagery. Starts with something reckless, then something solid, and then the unexpected twist at the end about the missing eye.
The Exercise:
“The next day at noon they went into town. They got drunk at the bar and catcalled the women and Maxie tried to balance a glass on the back of his hand. He was wearing the old work jeans he’d had his first kiss in and his shirt had a hole in the elbow, and his hair was damp and it hung over the scar above his eye.”