So Serious Saturday #6

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Commentary

Stories Told at the Oscars

It seemed a good idea to wait about a week to see what would rise, howling, from the bowels of cyberspace before posting any comment about Patricia Arquette's acceptance speech. It also helped to have some time to think about what aspect I could take and focus on, pick at, and expand on.

So here it is: Patricia Arquette is not a writer. Her speech in front of the Oscar crowd was polarizing, but her speeches behind the scenes were, apparently, even less clear.

Both the Washington Post and USA TODAY agree that people were angry.  Why?  Because in her call for equal pay she allegedly didn't include LGBT people, people of color, or women who could not or did not birth their own children. So individuals supporting these groups are voicing their frustrations that they weren't included in her generalized acceptance speech, in which she called for equal pay for women, but only named certain examples of what a woman could be.  What she knew a woman could be, because she has been there.

Breaking Down the First Time Job Search

They say
You need more job experience

I would if I had this job
But you need a job to have a job
to have had experience
so as to gain experience

Look elsewhere
it's not their problem
they are just the buoyed
rolling in the policy changes
you are trying to get into

Getting a date is easier
than getting an occupation
Lips work harder than hands
to get what they want

A place to belong
out in the world
that does not run on heartbeats
but in currents

So you send attachments
without returns

None Alone Three

          We were in his larger camp after my release from prison, and the other missions after that. He had been talking to me for a while as he explained my new home base. He waved toward the girl under the apple tree. “It’s time to meet others. Why don’t you go talk to her?” he said.

            I obeyed and approached her in a direct line from my tent. He had helped me in pitching it, as he had in all other things.

            She smiled broadly when she saw me. “Hello, sister!” she said.

            I glanced over my shoulder before proceeding to ask, “How do you know I’m with you?”

            “Oh, it isn’t that difficult,” she said, examining the leaf in her hand. She ran her fingers over the green veins before saying, “It’s just in the way you walk.”

            “That’s interesting,” I said, at a loss to find anything brilliant to say.

            “What’s your name?” She looked up from her leaf. Her eyes were startling, but not in their color or in their shape; rather, it was in their perception. I told her my name, and then I asked for hers.

Craft Wednesday #1 The Small Room

   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 share experiences with you.

  I find it funny that I am sharing (some) of my work with the entire world. Well, those with internet access. Hello, Venezuela! Hello, England!
     I usually like to keep my writing so private that I hide away when I put pen to paper. This may be because I work best on my own, without many distractions. But I can write comfortably in coffee shops where many people keep up a steady hum - I suppose it is only electronic noises that distract me.
     I could swear sometimes that I feel wi-fi working, each molecule shuffling in the air. It does not feel like a tree when a tree whispers or creaks.
     I need room to breath.  The poet William Wordsworth said, "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."  Sometimes it's nice to run with an idea; it's essential to let something out, though, some piece of yourself set on a page for the world to see. That's what we want when we throw a temper tantrum, right? Or scream at someone, or kick at tires.  We want someone to see. We want someone to know.

Nathan's Porch

     I was amazed the last time I saw Nathan, how we didn't suck face. We were sitting on the porch in the dark when he asked me to hold his hand.
     "What's up?" I asked.
     "Nothing," he said.
     I gripped his palm tighter.It wasn't nothing. He hardly seemed to notice when my fingernails cut crescents into his flesh. His fingers did not fumble for mine, not at all.
     I said his name once, and then again. The third time he looked up from his feet with those eyes I always thought were made of melted chocolate. They were damp now, too.

Sestina From a Hot Air Balloon

I top the clouds, eschewing ground,

ignoring pleas from ones I love.

I will sail, dreaming, worlds apart

from them, where airlessness should kill.

It never does. Over water,

my thought and sense become all light.

Our balloon, painted in suns’ light,

can take us there. Look at the ground

miles below, showing the water

how to stay and listen for love.

Not too close. Hear this: the cliffs kill

the wind and take silk sails apart.

Write, and we will not be apart,

my dove. Though I travel in light

over oceans and plains, and kill

voices of home, you are my ground.

Can I stay warm without your love

in vast night and Arctic water?

I found your message by water

wrapped in linen worn apart

from what used to be made in love

beside the fire. Your chair had light

enough to see by, though our ground

saw your eyes had questions to kill.

No words exist for what can kill

my thirst for you. Bitter water,

where the answer is, binds like ground

my feet to you. Thought stands apart

from what I feel for you – not light,

but weighted – an onus of love.

You should never forget, my love,

your power to save or to kill,

and how you brought me to the light,

to the living land where water

restores all, but then flows apart,

back to the wellsprings of the ground.

Come, my dove, over the water,

where our love will not break apart,

or leaving air I will clasp the ground.

*Sestinas are a little tricky, but yield surprising results. More information about how to write a sestina can be found on the Academy of American Poets website.

So Serious Saturday #5

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Informational Commentary

Differing Grammar Rules

     Have you ever wondered why different publications seem to use different rules for grammar? Or why one book uses serial commas (lions, tigers, and bears) while another does not (lions, tigers and bears). Or even where you should use commas?

Why Dad Lives There

Dad and I were
the same on the phone.
Neither wanted to be first.
I waited before elaborating on the question
I'd asked him before, but differently.

He answered with the noncommittal
timbre he had given her.
But he stayed here.

I said okay.
He said yeah.
His voice hovered as he waited
for someone else to make things happen.

Yuma, After

         I realized something after I dropped Yuma off at her mother's.

         Yuma. We named her after the town near the border where we had laid unbared on the cool sheets. Where the front desk manager asked us for ID, and then he asked us if we were married. I didn't tell him, but she did.

         Never once did someone care to ask me whether I wanted a boy or a girl better, but if they had I probably would have said a daughter.

Xalufet Gets New Teeth

         My best friend Xalufet had just turned into a human.
         "Bite it," I said. "Use your teeth. Like this."  I tried to demonstrate the open and closing motion of the upper and lower jaws, but my physiognomy did not allow a proper example.
         "Like this?" Xalufet chattered the blocky incisors and ended up snapping at the soft tissue of his human lips. "Ouch. These are sharper than I thought."
          "Be careful. They're not going to want to get close to you if they think you have a lip disease." I looked at myself in the interdimensional mirror hanging over Xalufet's hairy head.
            "What's a lip disease?" He wiped the drool on a handkerchief we had bought expressly for that purpose from one of Earth's more fashionable boutiques.

Musing

Am I your Muse?
You treat me so, my dear,
with praises and honey'd lips.

My mind, eyes, those traits thrown by the mirror
are lauded -- all -- by you

through homage well-intoned, and often.
For what? I know not, but
know only that you should soften --
your admirations, worthy meant,
transform into quite different matters
when through clasped hands and close word
they assume the forms of flatters.

For, Mortal Man, I plead you this,
pierce the bright charms and other art
made not to deceive, no,
but to spare your most valued heart.

The Scent of Capistrano

         The porcelain stoppered bottle sat on the shelf and said, "Open me."
         I thought of the stories I knew where a magical being came out of a lamp. Why not see what was inside? Nothing could go wrong.
          I crept over the swept wood floors of the small shop, where the second floor windows opened to the clouds of swallows rising from the mission walls across the street, and the landlady/proprietor was occupied with my mother and her parents at the counter. I glanced their way before my small hands reached for the bottle.

So Serious Saturday #4

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Informational Essay

Dulce de leche

Dulce de leche es un jarabe espeso y dulce que generalmente hecho de leche azucarada y el azúcar. Es muy popular en toda América Latina.

Gag-Gifting: Six

Six

Michael left Gerald some good memories.  As he strode away unlookingly, Gerald grinned.  It was always fun with Mikey.  He saluted, but his friend was already slamming the door.

He drove home and walked in the door humming.  As he tossed the papier-mâché pot roast onto the hula-girl striped tablecloth, a cracked oleander bloom fell out.   “Good times,” Gerald murmured, bending over to examine it.  “Good times.”

Everyone Has To

He rested his head on her lap.  It was nice and cushy, just the way Derek liked his women.  Yellow curtains billowed out, surrounding them both, enrapturing them in lemon, bleach, and ammonia.

            “Here, let me close that,” said the nurse, bustling over.  Her clean pressed sleeve rustled above his head, drawing his gaze to the light stain and damp hair of her underarm.

            A throat cleared to his left.  “That won’t be necessary, thank you.”  Holly stood on the opposite side of the bed, crossing her arms and looking for all the world as though she didn’t want to be there. She had mascara clumps on the tissue on her hand, the only thing that she’d accepted from the staff. 

Her face was younger and prettier without all the makeup on it.  It was only aged by the tightness across her forehead and at the corners of her mouth, a mark of composure which secretaries at the county court offices mastered quickly– but who had been the first sibling to cry when they got the call?  Who bolted out of bed in the middle of the night , ran to the liquor store, and called their few friends, went out to get drunk and crash their car and … no, wait, the car was just him.

Gag-Gifting: Five

Five

Gerald pointed over his shoulder.  “Hey, isn’t that my plant.”

“You gave it to my wife last year.”

Gerald stepped forward, towering over Michael.  “I want it back.”  Michael wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not.  “I want it back,” he repeated.  Apparently, he wasn’t.

“But my wife – ”

Gerald put his hand over his mouth.  “You’ll never have to see me again.”

Michael’s mind whirled.  “Okay,” he said finally. 

It wasn't easy to sneak it out. 

Gag-Gifting: Four

Four

            Michael glanced around nervously, putting his hand over Gerald’s shoulder and steering him toward the brilliant pink oleander in the pot in the corner, away from prying ears.  It was usually in such corners that they had spoken before.  Junior year Michael had dragged Gerald near some poison oak that had itched him for a week. The guy stayed away for that week, giving Michael and the other guys some (relatively) quiet time. Michael hoped it was no different this time.
          "Listen," he started to say. But Gerald's eyes suddenly bugged.

Exiled Design

What is happening is not merely happening:

the Plan is all part of an unseen transaction.

All things are made manifest by light, 

exposing robbed curves and stark straight lines

of Everyman’s modern temple.

Curving or bulging of a thin plastic sheet pulled

taunt speaks of the pressure behind it 

– the explosive quality of the dome –  

while jagged outlines on the plane

of the wall suggest violent disruption.

You ran well from the unmade form;

what hindered Cain from obeying the truth?

A basilican base, kicked away by flourished Gothic,

its roots twisting into the functional use of space.

Note: How to create a found poem - find three sources (here a religious text, an architectural book, and a random fiction work). Then find phrases you like in those works and smash them together, bringing a whole new meaning to the word "Poetry Slam".

Gag-Gifting: Three

Three

It seemed to Gerald as though he had lost sight of Michael.  He had poured his punch and set down the papier-mâché pot roast on the table with the metallic confetti stars.  When he had turned back around, Mikey was gone.  There were some very attractive businesswomen in work clothes sitting on folding chairs.  “Howdy,” said Gerald, waving.

So Serious Saturday #3

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Journal

I am the writer who likes the idea of living in a small apartment, struggling for the craft before gaining success; but when it comes to reality I won't be the writer who survives on fancy cheeses and cheap wines left over from parties with poet and actor friends. No, I am the writer who has ideas that try to fit into a system and spiral and contort until they cancel each other out; when I follow intuition the ideas weave wonderfully into a masterpiece only half my consciousness can claim. I am the writer who wants to inspire and change the world with ideas, but not with the kind of ideas that cause war or make individuals suffer.

Gag-Gifting: Two

Two

A man in a rainbow Hawaiian shirt and khakis rapped a tune on the smart white door.  Michael opened the door and stared, his round, wide eyes blinking behind astute horn-rimmed glasses. 

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Michael finally said, looking between Gerald and Gerald’s hands.  It seemed his old friend was holding a glass of milk, green petals of mold unfolding from the center. 

Generations

They say, Why won't they listen? They grow older.

The next generation says, Why won't they listen? The first says, Why won't they listen? They both grow older.

The following generation says, Why won't they listen? Their parents say, Why won't they listen? And their parents say, Why won't they listen? They all grow older.

 The last generation says, Why didn't they listen?

Freshman Attempt at Making Something Out of Poetry

In the shadow of a very large building

the sensitive observer is rather like a small girl

 in the presence of her headmaster.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing

 nor the ear filled with hearing.

The heart sinks,

the face falls,

 the spirits rise.

Typically,

No reason is given.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,

 but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

None Alone Two

2.

A breeze lifts the hay, strumming it along the bars. No harp could sound so small. The straw somersaults, falls down. It dies with the wind.

I poke at the straw with a toe. It is the only thing that has moved in this little world for a while. Near silence in the corridor - I don't even know if there's anyone else here. Probably not.

Another gust comes in through the high gap in the thick grey wall. It's cold. I shiver, and pull scabby knees up to my chest. They groan as ancient hinges between battered boards.

At the end of the corridor the door scrapes the slabstones. My head perks up like a little pekingese, then drops its tangled mass of hair as it realizes no one is coming. All that's left is me and my hair, me and my hair, quivering in the crisp drafts. And the straw, of course. It stays by the toe, leaning upon its calloused support in quiet petition. It doesn't want to move, either.

There is a definite noise coming from beyond the door. It is not so much of a noise as a low vibration, like that before an earthquake when things unbalanced start to shake, their shifting foundations falling away. I feel the approach of some power. A shot of adrenaline races through my system.

So Serious Saturday #2

Yes, I know it isn't Saturday anywhere in the world. But a novel said to be discovered after half a century is a notable literary event. It is said that Harper Lee has a second book and, perhaps more surprising, she is still alive at the time of this posting. After reading the article on The Guardian's website, I had to think about some of its implications. I came up with this list.

Gag-Gifting: One

One

They called Gerald “The Joker”.  It had nothing to do with his face or his sanity, although occasionally the latter had been called into question in his college years.

            No, he was known for every so often buying gag gifts and leaving them with his friends, his buddies from the good old crazy days.  

Apple Tree

I had a seed and planted it in soil soft and gentle.
The seed took root and soon became a seedling.
Its small green shoots warmed my heart to see.
A leaf appeared, then two, then many more.
Each day the plant grew, enlarging my affections.

I could not imagine looking out and not seeing it there.
The window steamed, touched by breath, hiding my plant in mist.
Its stem lengthened, hardened, and in time became sturdy and thick.
A bark covering protected it from the elements.
Each day it grew a little taller, a little wider, a little deeper.

None Alone One and a Half

1 1/2.

             His instructions are to move to an outpost far from the lands I know.  It is said that this place of low cover and sparse population is brown most of the year.  The only water its inhabitants get is brought from miles away, in buckets leaking, cracked, broken, or chipped.  Supplies are limited – wood is a luxury.  I wonder what I’m going to sleep on; I worry about what I’m going to eat.   Some questions, I think, are necessary.