Wagon, Part II

The next morning, he never remembered tears, only stirring speeches. Those, he transcribed with care into a series of notebooks he called his Manifesto. Cal felt that all self-respecting Marxists should have one, but that it should never get printed by fat, rich-boy publishing houses who distribute it to get richer rather than to disseminate ideas. He willed the Manifesto to me on the back of a whiskey receipt one day while we drove through West Virginia back country.

“Sammy-girl, you can get this published if you want. When I’m dead. Take all the money and give it to an orphanage in Russia.”

“Okay. Can’t I keep a little of it, though?”

Cal stopped rolling the paper bag down around the neck of the Wild Turkey bottle we had just enough money to buy in the last town. I knew he nicked a small bottle of tequila into his pocket while I paid but I hadn’t mentioned it.

“No.”

I didn’t ask again. I understood.

That was they way it was between us. Cal led and I followed. Cal spoke and I listened. When he crooked an arm around my shoulders and said Sammy-girl, it’s time to move on, I packed the van full of whatever we had at the moment: a dress pulled from a neighbor’s wash line, cans of pinto beans, the manifesto, a flat feather pillow, booze. Then, when the mining town fell asleep, we chugged out, on to the next stop, the next platform.

Wagon, Part I

(A short story in progress...read and tell me what you think.)

He’d stand on the barstool or even on the bar depending on how much bottom-shelf whiskey he’d jackknifed down his throat, arms spread in a Jesus pose, his voice sandpaper cigarette low and scratchy deep.

It’s hard to explain to other people and especially to my mother, but Cal drunk was the most clear-headed Cal ever was. He became Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy. Sure he lost his balance, but he was a man with dreams, a man unafraid to yell out against society at a rundown dive where the odds were ten to one he’d get an ass-kicking by two a.m.

Some nights, he railed against the mine company owners. Other nights, he abandoned his sacrificial stance on the stool in favor of a pointed finger. “You,” he condemned the dirty-faced miners slumped over lagers, “are not fighting. Fight for yourselves!”

Usually at about that point, Cal crumpled, landing on the peanut-shell and sticky beer lined floor. Once, he went backwards in a graceful swan dive, dropping behind the bar where a beefy barmaid caught his collapse. The amazing thing is he almost never spilled his drink. At a bar called Mama’s in a town called Scuttleton, he knocked himself out on the edge of a pool table but still managed to keep his glass of rot gut from tipping. When he woke up five minutes later, he started calling me Jenny. My name is Sam.

“Jenny, look at thish whish-key. Didn’t shpill a drop.”

When he got to the end of a night, his rage cooled and his intellectual fervor dimmed, old light bulb style. His words lacked grandeur. His voice shrank, his gestures narrow and timid. His body too, wrinkling and folding like a pair of overwashed jeans. By four a.m. when I poured him into bed, he sometimes cried. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Cal, but I couldn’t stand his vulnerability in those dark hours of the morning, the helpless way he’d hang his head over the toilet bowl, the sour smell of yesterday’s lunch. I couldn’t tolerate the drunk who wanted his mother.

I think of you while I clean the toilet

No I don’t.
I just said that
to make you read this
to make you think
I see you in suds
spinning down the bowl.

Pull My Strings

It’s official. Thanks for the input, Thelonius. I’ve started brainstorming more on idea #2 (see below). I think the first thing to contemplate is logistics. Then begin compiling exercises. I have a few good ones in mind already. No spoilers.

On another topic:

You already know about my failed multimedia poetry experiment. I am not smart enough or well-equipped enough to do this successfully. Let’s say I haven’t stuffed it under my bed yet, but I’m not convinced I can show it to you. Since you’ve seen my poetry in progress, you know this must mean my experiment is especially wince-worthy.

Fiction is in. For me, anyway. I’ve been writing away. Is it related to my lunch time fiction writing? Maybe.

Tonight, I went to my nephew’s lacrosse game. What I know about lacrosse is that it involves referees wearing knee socks

Possible Projects in the Works

If you’re tuning into this blog from another, TV-related blog I wrote in the not-so-distant past, drop me a line. Should enough people hanker for the Easy Mac goodness of a pop culture blog, I may start a new one here on Blogger.

Another idea I’ve been kicking around is to start a blog that gives one new writing prompt or writing exercise every day; this would create an online community of readers and writers where people could respond to the prompts and then post the results. Which would be cool as long as people actually joined in on the fun (insanity).

What do you think?

Poem Movie, Take 1

The multimedia poem I mentioned the other day is a tad rough around the edges. I used still images for the poem below, "Spring," after using them to write the poem. Um, the final product kind of crashed Blogger. So you won't be seeing it any time in the immediate future. But I may post the stills later tonight after my poetry workshop...

Spring

Revising as you read.

What I'm Doing Now Is

playing poem lottery.

This is my new not-so-euphemistic phrase for the submissions process. Ssshhh.

What I am Doing Right Now Is

walking outside.

It’s cold, it’s gray, it’s brown-green. After rain, everything wants to blossom and grow. I’m working on splicing together images with a poem to make a multimedia poem, or a poem movie.

I will try to post the result.

Working on something...

More to come.

Dormant Until Spring?

After being fictionally dormant (both meanings could apply) for quite some time, I’ve decided to do something about it. Every day at lunch, I’m going to write a piece of short fiction, no matter how short, and no matter how shitty. This, I think, will force me to write something other than the novel I’m at work on—the novel that is killing my short fiction by sucking it into a vortex of nonexistence.

I’d like to remain optimistic about my new endeavor before it even begins. However, as you’ve probably noticed, I tend to begin things and never finish them. Sentences, books, thoughts, paragraphs, a literary journal (which was an unfortunate error in judgment before it ever began anyway), relationships, short stories, poems, projects…this sentence itself.

It’s surprising I’ve been writing on this blog for an entire year. In other words, I’m giving myself a day, maybe two, for my new lunch time policy to be observed. After that, I’ll go back to stalking Luna Park Review at lunch time, willing them to find and post new literary news so that I don’t have to do it myself.

Okay, I know, I’ve also been a little blog dormant. I don’t even have a good reason for it. I thought maybe I should abandon this blog entirely for 2.5 days last week. After that, I decided not to, but will probably contemplate abandoning it again in 3.8 days.