February poem
“Like the leaves browning in sun and greening in spring and serving nothing else.”
Prayer
Grass ticks across my skin and it is better than a clock.
An ant will not climb onto my hand.
The sun is so bright that I can’t open my eyes.
An ant will not climb onto my hand when I reach for it,
but when I close my eyes
I can feel her feet tracing each fissure
in the cliffs of my fingers.
When I close my eyes I can’t see anything
except grass or maybe blood-vessels
on the backs of my eyelids,
on the surface of my eyes.
I imagine myself covered in insects
bees touching their knees to my own,
praying, worshipping something,
spiders spinning from my hair
my freckles crawling, shifting.
I arise and only see the imprint
left in the grass,
a space already disappearing
like the dreamlike idea of loneliness.
Eyes shut in the sun, it is hard to reawaken.
The light in my mind is so ecstatic
that I think of snow, dazzling paradox,
drench of white, chill hugeness.
I trace pathways in my mind, where, once,
I walked alone through woods
grown up from the dead soil,
grown not for me, grown not for birds, or air,
grown not for snow to gather upon like a gown.
Arching, the sun shines through the stretch
of the enamored trees and I think
of cathedrals
and what this world looks like
in worship of heat or snow.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Moonlight Sonata—Chelsey Shannon
February post.
Moonlight Sonata
Hold me close, love, in the coffee shop,
table lifting up mug
of black coffee twice drunk
slurped between your lips
which i haven't kissed
in, perhaps, so long.
Dump the cream in and stir it
with your knife.
Make it light as your skin,
shade darker than mine,
reach across the table
which separates our stares
to eat my pickle spear,
crunchy and briny,
slightly sweet.
Kiss me with sweet smoky breath.
I'll inhale your exhale,
let it slide deep into my lungs,
the only second-hand smoke
i'll willingly swallow—
let it settle into my respiratory tissue. Let it
absorb into my blood stream,
so maybe
a tiny fragment
of you
will run through my veins.
I'm no real poet, but at night before i sleep,
my mind invents its own dreams
and you're never far,
so-far-from-me love.
But i could be
all that you want me to be.
What do you want me to be?
For like that unfortunate neglected dog i sit
waiting for the touch of my master's hand,
longing
for the essential food only you can provide.
I wait by your door with baleful eyes.
Do you see me?
I know you do. I know it's been done.
But like the doleful, delusional dog,
i wait for something more.
Love…
i'm writing this by the moonlight.
I think of you by the moonlight.
My script is messier than usual.
I'll go to sleep now.
Maybe this won't sound so true in the morning
when the forgiving lunar glow has gone,
replaced
by the harsh, prying light of the sun.
I think i'll go to sleep now
and try to stop thinking of you.
(Love poetry…for losers.
Throw this away.)
Moonlight Sonata
Hold me close, love, in the coffee shop,
table lifting up mug
of black coffee twice drunk
slurped between your lips
which i haven't kissed
in, perhaps, so long.
Dump the cream in and stir it
with your knife.
Make it light as your skin,
shade darker than mine,
reach across the table
which separates our stares
to eat my pickle spear,
crunchy and briny,
slightly sweet.
Kiss me with sweet smoky breath.
I'll inhale your exhale,
let it slide deep into my lungs,
the only second-hand smoke
i'll willingly swallow—
let it settle into my respiratory tissue. Let it
absorb into my blood stream,
so maybe
a tiny fragment
of you
will run through my veins.
I'm no real poet, but at night before i sleep,
my mind invents its own dreams
and you're never far,
so-far-from-me love.
But i could be
all that you want me to be.
What do you want me to be?
For like that unfortunate neglected dog i sit
waiting for the touch of my master's hand,
longing
for the essential food only you can provide.
I wait by your door with baleful eyes.
Do you see me?
I know you do. I know it's been done.
But like the doleful, delusional dog,
i wait for something more.
Love…
i'm writing this by the moonlight.
I think of you by the moonlight.
My script is messier than usual.
I'll go to sleep now.
Maybe this won't sound so true in the morning
when the forgiving lunar glow has gone,
replaced
by the harsh, prying light of the sun.
I think i'll go to sleep now
and try to stop thinking of you.
(Love poetry…for losers.
Throw this away.)
Barbara—Chelsey Shannon
This is a short story inspired by my work at the library and by a flash i read in one of the books Molly brought. Should have been posted for January, but you know how that goes...Also, i change the name of the granddaughter halfway through and i'm not sure which i wanted it to be. Sorry.
First draft of a story inspired by a selection from Molly’s flash fiction
Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby the week after her daughter and son-in-law died in the fluke car crash. She bought it on a Tuesday night, the night after the papers affirming her guardianship over her granddaughter had been finalized. The Sheik’s Baby was the twenty-ninth romance novel to join her collection, a Harlequin, her favorite type.
She bought The Sheik’s Baby at Walmart for $2.99, stuck it discretely in the plastic bag along with Hamburger Helper and a pound of ground beef for that evening’s dinner. Most of it would go uneaten. Her granddaughter would say she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t blame her. So she scraped the majority of her casseroles and stews into unfamiliar tupperwares and stowed them in the expensive, stainless steel refrigerator.
She was living in her dead daughter’s house with her dead daughter’s daughter, her fifteen year-old granddaughter who she didn’t know well. But there was no one else. Krystin was alone in the world. Now Barbara was a trespasser in her house.
The night Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby was the night she made Hamburger Helper that no one ate. The night Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby was the night she knew she wouldn’t be enough.
Silence at the dinner table was common, the tension in the room stretched twice tauter each time Barbara made a feeble joke or had to ask where something in the kitchen was (“Honey, where’s the bottle opener? Where’s the knife sharpener?”) The night Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby was worse.
A dully-intoned inquiry broke the silence. “Can I get my lip pierced?”
Barbara stared back at Krystin, small frailish girl who she was meant to guard, who she didn’t even know. She imagined a needle sliding through the flesh beneath her lip, a silver ring pushed through the hole, the stinging pain merely echoing the loss and rage she felt in her heart.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now…” She was quiet, timid, as if she wasn’t the one Krystin should be asking. As if Barbara should really have said, “You should ask your mother.” But she couldn’t.
Krystin’s response was immediate. “Why not?”
“Honey, you’ve just been through a huge shock. You might not be thinking clear. Why don’t you wait a couple months and see if that’s still what you want?”
“My mother would have let me.” She fired her words like bullets and they hit Barbara square in her aching chest. What could she say?
“I’m not your mother, honey—”
“You think you have to remind me of that?” Shut down. But the shrill baby voice drilled in. “She would never make this stuff.” An angry gesture toward the ground beef meal. “And she would let me get my lip pierced, so why won’t you?” Silence. “You’re just old! You don’t even understand!” Silence. And an angry push away from the table and she’s gone.
Barbara stared at the vacant chair and picked-at plates. She knew this was what her life had come to: inadequacies, standing in, trying her best and just falling short.
She became aware of the way her cheap sweatpants hugged her stomach tight but fell loosely, lamely around her legs. She was aware of the stain on her t-shirt, the thinness of her hair, the plainness of her face, and she knew that this would never be enough. She thought of her dead daughter, her beautiful wardrobe, successful career, polished appearance. How had anyone so elegant come from Barbara? How could Barbara have created something so beautiful?
So Barbara took The Shiek’s Baby from the Walmart bag that she’d shoved discretely in her purse. She left the food on the table and went to the guest room, impersonal and cheerful, spring green bedspread and small boxy television on an empty bureau. It was her room now. It was anonymous as she could feel.
Barbara shut the door, reclined on the bed, and read the book cover to cover. Then she started to read it again. She read until her eyelids grew heavy and the pain in her heart was sufficiently numbed, compressed enough to be stored away and forgotten. Then she opened the small, olive green suitcase that housed her collection of romance novels, tossed in The Sheik’s Baby, turned off the light, and tossed herself into the bed that was empty and unadorned with rose petals, the walls not bathed in the sensual ambience of glowing candles and incense. There were no clothes piled on the floor, shed in a fit of passion. There was no dashing, charming foreign man drawing a rosewater bath for her in the queen-sized bathtub. There was nothing but Barbara in a plain room trying to get away, and Krystin down the hall, hating her for everything she was not.
When Krystin showed up the morning after her parents’ funeral, silver ring embracing her full lower lip, Barbara didn’t say anything. She served mashed potatoes from a powder and frozen chicken breast tenderloins that Krystin, unsurprisingly, merely picked at. Why settle for such a bland spread, when, at the very same table, there had once been an array of exotic and vivacious delights: spicy, saffron-yellow Indian curries; fresh soup made from the most rustic heirloom tomatoes; ripe, chromatic fruit salads in the summer; roasted root vegetables and hearty stews in the winter. Now, there was the same culinary fare to be found year round: paltry soup from the can, powdered provisions, cheap cuts of meat Barbara was too timid to flavor too strongly, so they all came out tasting the same. The leftovers piled up. Krystin grew skinnier. Barbara would on occasion crack open one of her dead daughter’s fancy cookbooks, but resignedly close them once more when she happened upon such ingredients as chévre or fava beans.
The chasm between Krystin and Barbara broadened with each passing day of failed closeness, threatening to engulf the very house, their very lives. Barbara was a mere stand-in, her major duties picking Krystin up from wherever she happened upon and signing permission slips when necessary.
Barbara did not resent the granddaughter who she didn’t even know. She heard the girl crying at night all too frequently, had seen the lip ring ooze with infection and one day, without explanation, disappear. Each untouched plate, each snapped comment, each request devoid of any respect, she knew she deserved. She deserved it for not being good enough, for not making the best food or understanding everything Krystin needed her to. She deserved it for continuing to live her bland life while her daughter and her daughter’s husband were dead in their graves, the potential that had once filled their lives simply evaporating, gone from the world.
Once Barbara had happened upon Krystin in the family room, pouring over a half dozen family albums, ripe with photographs of the dead. Some of the pictures were recent, even, displaying Krystin, laughing, for once, standing beside her parents. Barbara saw her dead daughter, then alive, and the crisp lines of her tailored clothing, the balance of sharpness and compassion in her celery eyes, the sheen and thickness of her chestnut hair. Barbara saw her daughter shining through Krystin. She did not see herself shining through Krystin. She wondered vaguely if they were even related as she backed out of the room. She could see in her granddaughter’s eyes as she looked up with lukewarm contempt that she was wondering the same thing.
Barbara’s collection of romances grew. It spilled over into the bottom drawer of the guest room bureau. She kept her clothes in there as well, now, sweatpants and loose-fitting tee shirts. The bedspread was still cream and there were no pictures on the walls. She was still a guest to the house. She still referred to the room as the guest room.
Krystin found the collection of romance novels one day. Barbara entered the house to find the guestroom door ajar, a sound of general rummaging coming from within. She stood in the door frame and felt her stomach churn a little.
Krystin perched upon her bed, The Shiek’s Baby in her hands. Other titles—Expecting the Sultan’s Mistress, The Policeman’s Lady—were strewn on the bed, on the floor, flung about, seemingly, with reckless abandon and perhaps disgust. Krystin looked up with a start when she became aware of Barbara’s presence. But she was not ashamed.
“You collect these?” Disgust. Contempt. She saw:
A buxom maiden being carried to bed in her lover’s arms, a shirtless, bronze man riding bareback, rushing to save the helpless heroin. And Barbara, a late middle-aged woman who’d fucked but thrice in her barren life, who had kissed but one man and had never loved fully, as she’d carried on in search of that perfect, romantic, Harlequin love.
She wanted to tell Krystin that she was not dirty, that the novels were all she had, that there was no shame in reading them, that she was a grown woman. And moments before she might have believed just that. But it was too late. Looking into her graddaughter’s incredulous blue eyes, she knew she was everything Emily believed her to be, everything Emily’s mother before her had believed Barbara to be: a detached woman, a boring woman, a woman afraid to take a chance or stand up and fight or defend. She was nothing. She had nothing. She said nothing.
Emily rose from the bed after a moment, letting The Sheik’s Baby fall to the ground like the trash that it was.
“That’s disgusting,” she said, meeting Barbara’s eyes as she exited the room, bound for better things than novels read in one undisturbed evening, leaving but longing in their wake, better things than fear of more than a pinch of spice.
That night Barbara threw out her collection of romance novels. She’d been harboring it for years. She threw it out because she knew it was wrong, disgusting, perverted. But after she threw it out, she had less than nothing. She hadn’t even the unfulfilled promise of something better.
First draft of a story inspired by a selection from Molly’s flash fiction
Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby the week after her daughter and son-in-law died in the fluke car crash. She bought it on a Tuesday night, the night after the papers affirming her guardianship over her granddaughter had been finalized. The Sheik’s Baby was the twenty-ninth romance novel to join her collection, a Harlequin, her favorite type.
She bought The Sheik’s Baby at Walmart for $2.99, stuck it discretely in the plastic bag along with Hamburger Helper and a pound of ground beef for that evening’s dinner. Most of it would go uneaten. Her granddaughter would say she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t blame her. So she scraped the majority of her casseroles and stews into unfamiliar tupperwares and stowed them in the expensive, stainless steel refrigerator.
She was living in her dead daughter’s house with her dead daughter’s daughter, her fifteen year-old granddaughter who she didn’t know well. But there was no one else. Krystin was alone in the world. Now Barbara was a trespasser in her house.
The night Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby was the night she made Hamburger Helper that no one ate. The night Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby was the night she knew she wouldn’t be enough.
Silence at the dinner table was common, the tension in the room stretched twice tauter each time Barbara made a feeble joke or had to ask where something in the kitchen was (“Honey, where’s the bottle opener? Where’s the knife sharpener?”) The night Barbara bought The Sheik’s Baby was worse.
A dully-intoned inquiry broke the silence. “Can I get my lip pierced?”
Barbara stared back at Krystin, small frailish girl who she was meant to guard, who she didn’t even know. She imagined a needle sliding through the flesh beneath her lip, a silver ring pushed through the hole, the stinging pain merely echoing the loss and rage she felt in her heart.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now…” She was quiet, timid, as if she wasn’t the one Krystin should be asking. As if Barbara should really have said, “You should ask your mother.” But she couldn’t.
Krystin’s response was immediate. “Why not?”
“Honey, you’ve just been through a huge shock. You might not be thinking clear. Why don’t you wait a couple months and see if that’s still what you want?”
“My mother would have let me.” She fired her words like bullets and they hit Barbara square in her aching chest. What could she say?
“I’m not your mother, honey—”
“You think you have to remind me of that?” Shut down. But the shrill baby voice drilled in. “She would never make this stuff.” An angry gesture toward the ground beef meal. “And she would let me get my lip pierced, so why won’t you?” Silence. “You’re just old! You don’t even understand!” Silence. And an angry push away from the table and she’s gone.
Barbara stared at the vacant chair and picked-at plates. She knew this was what her life had come to: inadequacies, standing in, trying her best and just falling short.
She became aware of the way her cheap sweatpants hugged her stomach tight but fell loosely, lamely around her legs. She was aware of the stain on her t-shirt, the thinness of her hair, the plainness of her face, and she knew that this would never be enough. She thought of her dead daughter, her beautiful wardrobe, successful career, polished appearance. How had anyone so elegant come from Barbara? How could Barbara have created something so beautiful?
So Barbara took The Shiek’s Baby from the Walmart bag that she’d shoved discretely in her purse. She left the food on the table and went to the guest room, impersonal and cheerful, spring green bedspread and small boxy television on an empty bureau. It was her room now. It was anonymous as she could feel.
Barbara shut the door, reclined on the bed, and read the book cover to cover. Then she started to read it again. She read until her eyelids grew heavy and the pain in her heart was sufficiently numbed, compressed enough to be stored away and forgotten. Then she opened the small, olive green suitcase that housed her collection of romance novels, tossed in The Sheik’s Baby, turned off the light, and tossed herself into the bed that was empty and unadorned with rose petals, the walls not bathed in the sensual ambience of glowing candles and incense. There were no clothes piled on the floor, shed in a fit of passion. There was no dashing, charming foreign man drawing a rosewater bath for her in the queen-sized bathtub. There was nothing but Barbara in a plain room trying to get away, and Krystin down the hall, hating her for everything she was not.
When Krystin showed up the morning after her parents’ funeral, silver ring embracing her full lower lip, Barbara didn’t say anything. She served mashed potatoes from a powder and frozen chicken breast tenderloins that Krystin, unsurprisingly, merely picked at. Why settle for such a bland spread, when, at the very same table, there had once been an array of exotic and vivacious delights: spicy, saffron-yellow Indian curries; fresh soup made from the most rustic heirloom tomatoes; ripe, chromatic fruit salads in the summer; roasted root vegetables and hearty stews in the winter. Now, there was the same culinary fare to be found year round: paltry soup from the can, powdered provisions, cheap cuts of meat Barbara was too timid to flavor too strongly, so they all came out tasting the same. The leftovers piled up. Krystin grew skinnier. Barbara would on occasion crack open one of her dead daughter’s fancy cookbooks, but resignedly close them once more when she happened upon such ingredients as chévre or fava beans.
The chasm between Krystin and Barbara broadened with each passing day of failed closeness, threatening to engulf the very house, their very lives. Barbara was a mere stand-in, her major duties picking Krystin up from wherever she happened upon and signing permission slips when necessary.
Barbara did not resent the granddaughter who she didn’t even know. She heard the girl crying at night all too frequently, had seen the lip ring ooze with infection and one day, without explanation, disappear. Each untouched plate, each snapped comment, each request devoid of any respect, she knew she deserved. She deserved it for not being good enough, for not making the best food or understanding everything Krystin needed her to. She deserved it for continuing to live her bland life while her daughter and her daughter’s husband were dead in their graves, the potential that had once filled their lives simply evaporating, gone from the world.
Once Barbara had happened upon Krystin in the family room, pouring over a half dozen family albums, ripe with photographs of the dead. Some of the pictures were recent, even, displaying Krystin, laughing, for once, standing beside her parents. Barbara saw her dead daughter, then alive, and the crisp lines of her tailored clothing, the balance of sharpness and compassion in her celery eyes, the sheen and thickness of her chestnut hair. Barbara saw her daughter shining through Krystin. She did not see herself shining through Krystin. She wondered vaguely if they were even related as she backed out of the room. She could see in her granddaughter’s eyes as she looked up with lukewarm contempt that she was wondering the same thing.
Barbara’s collection of romances grew. It spilled over into the bottom drawer of the guest room bureau. She kept her clothes in there as well, now, sweatpants and loose-fitting tee shirts. The bedspread was still cream and there were no pictures on the walls. She was still a guest to the house. She still referred to the room as the guest room.
Krystin found the collection of romance novels one day. Barbara entered the house to find the guestroom door ajar, a sound of general rummaging coming from within. She stood in the door frame and felt her stomach churn a little.
Krystin perched upon her bed, The Shiek’s Baby in her hands. Other titles—Expecting the Sultan’s Mistress, The Policeman’s Lady—were strewn on the bed, on the floor, flung about, seemingly, with reckless abandon and perhaps disgust. Krystin looked up with a start when she became aware of Barbara’s presence. But she was not ashamed.
“You collect these?” Disgust. Contempt. She saw:
A buxom maiden being carried to bed in her lover’s arms, a shirtless, bronze man riding bareback, rushing to save the helpless heroin. And Barbara, a late middle-aged woman who’d fucked but thrice in her barren life, who had kissed but one man and had never loved fully, as she’d carried on in search of that perfect, romantic, Harlequin love.
She wanted to tell Krystin that she was not dirty, that the novels were all she had, that there was no shame in reading them, that she was a grown woman. And moments before she might have believed just that. But it was too late. Looking into her graddaughter’s incredulous blue eyes, she knew she was everything Emily believed her to be, everything Emily’s mother before her had believed Barbara to be: a detached woman, a boring woman, a woman afraid to take a chance or stand up and fight or defend. She was nothing. She had nothing. She said nothing.
Emily rose from the bed after a moment, letting The Sheik’s Baby fall to the ground like the trash that it was.
“That’s disgusting,” she said, meeting Barbara’s eyes as she exited the room, bound for better things than novels read in one undisturbed evening, leaving but longing in their wake, better things than fear of more than a pinch of spice.
That night Barbara threw out her collection of romance novels. She’d been harboring it for years. She threw it out because she knew it was wrong, disgusting, perverted. But after she threw it out, she had less than nothing. She hadn’t even the unfulfilled promise of something better.
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