Note to a Large Truck

Large Truck, I hate you
in the lane next to mine
swiv-swerving and generally making out that
you have no control

a good-sized wind and you are skittering
across all five lanes
tip-tottering over the divider
or an unwise Sentra that has snuck past
into your lane
where you are no longer
flirting with safety
but disregarding the painted lines

Darrowwood Part Seven

7.

     They had no trouble getting there. The travel arrangements were more than satisfactory, and every single person was nice to them. The flight was smooth, the bus was on time, and the hotel room for Mr. and Mrs. Daniels had already been booked and paid for.
     The girls and Mr. Daniels left Mrs. Daniels with Jack and Sarah so that Mr. Daniels could ride with the girls in the guest car that Darrowwood had so generously sent for them. They did not see the chauffeur's face, but he bowed low. His scarlet livery touched the ground scented with pine needles. Mr. Daniels helped the chauffeur heft the luggage into the truck.
      Soon they started up the winding roads towards Darrowwood. Soon they had arrived.
     “Nice place,” Mr. Daniels said.  He dumped both girls’ duffle bags at the foot of one of the twin beds.  The double windows in their spacious dormitory were thrown open to the beginnings of an aromatic pine forest not ten feet away.

Monica plopped down on a swivel chair and wheeling to face the green wall. “That’s a fire hazard,” she said flatly. It was the first time she had spoken since getting off the airplane.

Attempts At Wit, After Pope

What mimics tides and flows in this grey world

And, constraining stars in a single word,

Pays fairer compliments to bright maidens

Than to the bless’d judgments of great heavens?

Sharp, loud wise men divide by sharper Night,

But minds cannot shine in Nature’s least light;

Nor can relics derive the sky’s azure

In ways of Life, of Force, of Beauty pure.

To jump further and deeper into wit

Means forgoing truth to the blind critic.

An attempt at creating poetry in the style of Alexander Pope's carefully measured iambic pentameter.

Darrowwood Part Six

           6.

     Monica watched her friend’s purple, holey sneakers tear around the doorframe.  Jenny had not worn them since the eighth grade, when a tuba tumbled out of the bandroom closet and broke her foot.  Monica stared at the carpet where Jenny’s adored flip-flops lay, flipped and flopped.  She heard excited shrieks coming from the kitchen and a little girl yelling, “Mommy!  Mommy!”

Craft Wednesday #9 A Thought on Titles

This blog needed a place for talking about writing. "Craft Wednesday" will be me talking about all things writing: how to write, why to write, and my own craft journey. I hope to learn and to share experiences with you.   

A Thought on Titles

     I thought I would give a lecture on how, within the last two centuries, the title of books has shifted from relatively commonplace names and locations ( A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick, The Three Musketeers) to exotic and even abstracted titles ( The Da Vinci Code, Brave New World, The Grapes of Wrath), as if the objective backbone had fallen away from literature and left warm, nebulous, subjective attitudes reflected in figurative and somewhat transferable titles, such as Lord of the Flies.

After Douglass and Jacobs

"An Incident in the Life of a Slave Mother"

After Frederick Douglass’ Narrative and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents

Events from two biographies of courageous African-American ex-slaves inspired a fictitious scene exploring what it would be like to be in the time and place where the color of your skin was the primary factor determining your legal status.

“Go and hide, Master’s coming,” I told Elijah.

He did what his mother told him, the poor obedient child. I saw that he locked himself in the cupboard with the good dishes.  “Ma, is he mad at me for picking his cabbages? I only saw that one stuck up out of the ground where the rabbits would get it –”

“Quiet, child,” I said, hearing the clomp of my master’s new riding boots against the hard, packed summer dirt out on the lane. My feet pulsed against the swollen floorboards as the door open and I saw his face.

If I were able to find the words to describe it to you, I would, but it was all I could do was force myself to look away from the cabinet where Elijah was and face the man cut out of stone not fit to make Adam out of. I figure that’s why God made the first man out of dirt, so he wouldn’t be so hard or greedy when he came against fellow creatures, as surely the Lord knew the darkness in man’s heart.

He’d just come from riding his new stallion, I could tell by the riding crop in his raised hand. “Turn around,” my master said, and before I could he grabbed my shoulder and tore the coarse dress at the collar across my scarred collarbone. It was all I could do to look away from the cabinet and keep my mouth closed, swallowing my shouts as he struck me again and again with the stick, raising welts on my ebony skin.

Darrowwood Part Five

          5.

  “A full ride,” Jenny said, peering over the papers in her friend’s hands.  “It’s more than I dreamed, especially after what happened this year.  Mom’s been putting on a brave face, but she can’t hide it from me.”

          Jenny’s father had lost his job six months ago.  There was not much of a market for bound books anymore, which is why the chain bookstore had closed down several of its stores and fired thousands of employees, including regional managers.  Mrs. Daniels had come back to her work from maternity leave and found a forty percent reduction in her paycheck.  Around that time, Jenny’s grades at school plummeted, despite the hours she and Monica had been studying.

         “That’s just…wow,” Monica said.

         “I know, right?” Jenny beamed, her light blue eyes dancing as she looked at Monica.

          “So why haven’t you told your parents?”