Costa Rica - 1999

In the spring of 1999, I lived as an exchange student in Heredia, Costa Rica. Excellent fodder for further writing in that experience...however, I found recently these two poems that I wrote while living there. It's strange to reach an age where you can look back at your former self and recognize your own growth and the experiences that expanded your mind, in a time when you thought you already knew everything.

Dirty Feet

These dirty feet from dusty roads
Against old sheets seem not so crude.
Without the leg they could be old
And worn from years of walking home.

Dark lines show where the sandals lay;
Places unhidden from the day.
Blisters that rise in pained dismay
Grow hard and strong along the way.

Blue veins beneath translucent skin.
Thin channels where my life’s blood swims.
They feign a weakness not within.
The blue beneath is not so dim.

This Cage of Skull

I speak to you in simple terms
But you can’t understand my words.
My mind repeats them hopelessly.
The bars, a single tongue, enclose me.

My spirit falls, my senses dull.
I can’t escape my cage of skull.
Unless my cage will bend to form
The words that have caged you in yours.

Writing Candlestick Maker

Back in 2000, after I moved to Washington D.C. and found myself in a cold, dark, hobbit-hole of a cubicle three stories underground making copies, I filled my ample free-time by emailing my then boyfriend Andy back in College Station. When the stories of summiting snow drifts to get to the Metro and forcefully shrink-wrapping my dry-cleaned sheets by order of my nuerotic roommate became old news, I switched to telling him stories. Candlestick Maker and the Devil was one of these stories, written over the course of a few months, each paragraph a one-email installment.

Writing that story kept me going in the dead of my first real winter, far from my friends and family. I looked forward to getting to work each morning, because after my menial morning tasks were finished, I got to write Frederick's next move. That small expression of creativity and having a willing reader was fabulous SADD therapy and led to a pretty fun, albeit random, short story - if I do say so myself.

The Candlestick Maker and the Devil

The candlestick maker was the Devil’s best friend. How, you ask, could that be? How could a human, a man, a candlestick maker, living in the newly minted town of Austin, TX in the mid-1800’s A.D. be the best friend of the most fiendish immortal supernatural being to ever plague the universe? Well, I will tell you.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are the most fiendish immortal supernatural being ever to plague the universe. You really don’t have very many friends, now do you? Even among your hellish legions, thought you are greatly feared, you are not especially liked. And you know, because you share with them an evil spirit, that if your demon horde ever had the chance, they would kill you and feast on your entrails. Even for a fiend that is a lonely existence, especially for eternity. So, about the time human types appeared on the scene, some 400,000 years ago, the Devil, who had had quite enough of being alone, decided to befriend a single human. He would keep his earthly friend for the span of that human's life and when he died (obviously passing in the ranks of the Devil's hellish legions), the Devil would find a new friend. In 1840, the Devil’s earthly counterpart was Frederick Grey, the candlestick maker.

The Leave

The leave is taken on a darkened road.
A sob is shaken from a heart exposed.
A back is turned, the silence falls.
Such fond farewells are as songbird’s calls
for endless springtime; temperate, kind.
The planets circle, the ivy climbs,
And naught can halt the passing time,
Nor keep alive what love must die.

Thus horizon line is the far road’s end.
And to that place we all shall lend
our daily strife in joy and woe.
Though close it seems, we’ve far to go.

Photography and Writing

My friend Nicole Pacetti-Simpson is, like me, aspiring. Her aspiration is to become a photographer. So we are working in cahouts to make our dreams into reality. I have asked her to send me photographs that I can then use as inspiration for my writing.

The post below includes a picture Nicole took of her dog Brie in front of their Christmas tree. I wrote the accompanying poem and challenged myself to get it done in less than an hour. It was a great exercise to focus my mind on a single image, rid myself of that need (that I think many writers feel) to write something "serious" and "meaningful" and to instead, just write. I will definitely try it again!

I've Been a Good Dog

I can’t write a letter
with these clumsy paws,
but Santa, I promise
I’ve been a good dog.

I know that you’re coming,
Dad brought in a tree.
It's covered with balls and
toys that aren’t for me.

The lights are so twinkly.
The air smells so sweet.
I know mom’s been baking,
but she won’t share her treats.

So please Santa, come
to this sad puppy’s home.
Bring me some toys.
Bring me some bones.

Oh, please don’t forget me
because I sat on mom’s mum,
barked at the mailman,
and chewed up dad’s gloves.

I know that I shouldn’t
have frightened that skunk,
peed in the bathtub,
or eaten dad’s lunch.

But I am so repentant.
Can’t you see in my eyes?
I even said sorry
to the squirrels, crows and flies.

I haven’t sipped from the toilet
in at least a whole week.
I stayed off the sofa,
I didn’t pull on my leash.

So, Santa, I’ll wait for you
here by the tree.
I’ve been such a good girl.
Don’t forget about me.

Photograph by Nicole Pacetti-Simpson

Out of the Darkness at Miletus

Out of the darkness at Miletus.
What hope is there beyond the light?
I am not man, now slave.
I am but lion’s prey.
Oppressive dark, my life remaining.
The light, my death, though entertaining.

What is Flash Fiction?

Flash fiction as described on wikipedia is "fiction of extreme brevity." Most often this type of fiction has 500 - 750 words, though some goes as low as 300 or as high as 1000.

Again from wikipedia, "Flash fiction differs from a vignette in that the flash-fiction work contains the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution. However, unlike the case with a traditional short story, the limited word length often forces some of these elements to remain unwritten, that is, hinted at or implied in the written storyline. This principle, taken to the extreme, is illustrated in a possibly apocryphal story about a six-word flash allegedly penned by Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The post that follows is my first attempt at flash fiction. I will continue to play with this type of fiction as it is well-suited to the blog media.

The Fall

Her mother stood in front of the light of the window, a featureless shadow. Her outline against the blinding sun and lace almost more terrifying than her severe and eternally disappointed face, her tightly wound hair, her long sinewy neck. Claire could see the earrings shine as they dangled gaily from her mother's long fingers, casting colored prisms on the walls of her bedroom. It might have been beautiful, even magical.

Her mother stepped forward. Claire took an instinctive step back. Though she still could not see the expression on her mother's face, the tilt of her head communicated her usual exasperated "Oh, Claire..."

The band struck up a rondo downstairs. The guests shoes on the wooden floor echoed through the house. Claire's heart, already racing with dread, beat even faster. Her mother reached her, took her chin in two fingers, turned her head to the side with a snap and let go with a pinch. She took Claire's earlobe and without hesitation pierced the earring post through the flesh. Claire winced, her mother scowled into her wet eyes and held her gaze, daring her to cry. Claire took a deep breath and steadied herself. Second turn, pinch, pierce. Blood smeared on her earlobe and pulsed through her hearing. Her legs buckled. Her mother held her arms in a vice as if to support her, but rather to catch her gaze once more and impress upon her with a look the weight of the occasion.

Murph and Mo

Murph and Mo could have been brothers; broad shouldered, black-haired, brown-eyed brothers. They held their head at the same angle. Their hands were the same size. Neither needed many words to get a point across on the rare occasion when they had a point to get across. Both men’s eyes held the same heavy vacancy, although for very different reasons.

Mo drove, Murph sat in the passenger seat; both of them just tall enough to touch the ceiling of the car with the crown of their head if they sat up straight, which they never did. Murph was the leader of their pack of two, which suited Mo perfectly. Their friendship was as effortless as the mindless turning of the wheels beneath them. Like Cain and Abel, they might have had a chance. But everyone, no matter what god they believe in, knows the end to that story.

My Desert

How many times have I been in this place? How many times have I imagined it when in need of escape? Here, the sky surrounds me like water. If I tilt my head up just a little, blue is all that I can see. I could be floating but for the bedrock beneath me.

I sit on the top of a hill, rocky, sandy, and prickly with barrel cactus, ocotillo, lechuguilla and sotol. The landscape all around me is rocky, sandy and prickly, an extension of my hill in an endless desert of soil and sky without end. The only break in this scene is the Rio Grande snaking through my view, cutting me off from a land that looks exactly like this, but is Mexico. I could swim there, easily, if it was legal and I was willing to spend some time in a Mexican prison.

Overboard

First toes, then knees, then chest, then head
The water closes over us
Here chained together, living dead
But now we will be free at last.

Three weeks we sat and starved and stank
Three weeks there shackled in the hold
But we have chosen death to this
And now are safely overboard.

My wife and child are dead as well
Murdered the day that I was chained
And I rejoiced his bloodstained knife
For now they are at home in heaven.

And if my soul can find that place
From this my placeless grave of sea
Yes, I will join them once again
And forever will be free.

The Outcast

Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived in a large columned white house on the outskirts of town. She was very poor, living on a small inheritance doled out each year by her parent’s scrawny lawyer, along with an ample dose of sleazy innuendo. She would only get the money as long as she lived in the palatial residence her parents had constructed, so she was tied to the house like a dog on a chain.

Though her parents had died years before, her father’s legacy of quirky outlandishness and her mother’s reputation for condescending snobbishness had relegated her to outsider status with the townspeople, leaving her friendless and alone. She spent her days reading and dreaming of escape. What she wanted most was to leave her prison and explore the wide world, visiting all the places that had captured her imagination in books and meeting people who knew nothing of her family, their ridiculous house and bizarre behavior.