words like foam on the waves

Gosling

2012-02-29T21:19:00.001-08:00

Face pillowed on her strong arms, she dreams. The long muscles of her legs twitch as she races around the long-vanished track, outpacing her girl-companions. They are all mothers, now, in the waking world. Even her, once. Now, though, there are only the dreams, brilliant tapestry patched together out of a thousand memories. After the race, a feast, the feast decreed by her father for the winner, roasted meat and bone, slick fat dripping onto the coals of many braziers and ascending in smoke to the gods.

In the way of dreams, by now she is no longer in her racing garb and no longer a child. She reclines comfortably at her father's table, the scent of the black broth, prize of warriors, wafting from boiling bowls, the edge of her hunger growing sharp. In this moment, she is refined, a precious blade from the north. Honed to perfection.

Here in her room, she is no longer sharp and ready, but curled loosely upon the cushions. Her well-muscled hands twitch after the dreamfood, and her rose-tinted lips part, a coral blush rising in her full cheeks. Her breath comes short now, and her muscles strain toward unfathomable delight. Her servants, her guards, turn away, fearful of visions sent by jealous Aphrodite, but we gaze on.

The table is set, groaning with the dishes of her youth, and she tucks in, greedy with long deprivation.

Soft and pungent cheese, drizzled with amber honey. Precious oil carried from the Athenian groves, golden-green and thick, grassy on the tongue. Crumbling wheat-cake and chopped herbs. Grilled figs, sour-sharp olives, tender meat and crisp pomegranate seeds. Wine, oh, wine, black like the sea until mixed with water from her favorite spring, wine that flowed redder than blood, redder than crimson, redder than madder-dyed cloth.

Twice-abducted Helen sleeps through the long, hot days. There, she cannot know regret for her vanished lifetimes. There, in the memory-court of Tyndareus, she devours the bread and wine of dreams. There, no husbands or suitors, no ill-tempered gods, no daughter and no siblings torment her with obligation, and even in the midst of war, there is no one who would grudge her this escape.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, The Lime challenged me with "delicious food is involved", and I challenged Lance with "Detective Puppy and the Case of the Missing Knickerbockers".

isshoukenmei

2012-02-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

一生懸命

Bright sun, shining through
rika-laden branch, compels:
shadows flee my heart.
--

Lichen blooms on elderly rock, oh! Sustenance!

--

Gentle white wing lofts
a view of discreet petals;
her fan beckoning.

--

Lucky bamboo, prisoned with rocks, invites--whose luck?

--

Without, sakura drift. Within, bare branches still.

--
Teikei (fixed-form) haiku for this month's format challenge at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Rika, 李花, ume (plum) blossoms, first harbingers of spring. Sakura, 桜, cherry blossoms, full celebration of fleeting spring. Isshoukenmei, 一生懸命, to try one's very hardest, to do as best one can.

Tosca

2012-02-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

Ragged edges and fists pounding against the tiled tabletop. I choke on the tears. They're so raw and urgent that it feels like I've had a wad of cotton shoved rudely into my throat. I can't breathe. I can't speak out against this onslaught. You turn me around, whirl me around the empty center, and I can't tell what I'm feeling, if it's anger or loss.

This is why I disappear into words, into music and books and oil paints smeared in schizophrenic patterns on our empty white walls (sorry about that security deposit, by the way. I guess it doesn't matter now), because they are more real and more vivid than any piece of my life with you. Books are dreams I can fall into when you offer me nightmares.

It wasn't always this way! I know that, I still know that, and I have no idea how we got here. Wasn't I in love? Weren't you? I wish you could hear me, even if you refused to answer.

Later, when I am lying on the kitchen floor, curled around a handle of cheap vodka, I will think this isn't so bad. Later, when you have been gone for at least a day, I might not feel so hunted.

You said you felt trapped, and I guess I can understand that. That's my problem, too, only I'm actually caught in the trap. Some days I could tear at myself like any other animal caught in something it can't understand. Some days it's quiet in my head until you bring the clouds home with you, until you track in hate and fear, black rage-mud ground into white carpet.

I am afraid the stains will never come out of our floor. I wish I didn't have to wake up, but I'm afraid that I never will. I'm afraid of leaving and of staying and of being caught between. I don't know where to go or what to do with myself or how to live with this ending. I don't know how this happened. Maybe I am as crazy as you said. I can't think straight anymore. I'm afraid this is a dream and even more afraid that it might be real.

I'm afraid that a new day is going to come, and I will still be right where I began.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bran macFeabhail challenged me with "Listen to Monotov's Private Opera by Third Eye Blind and humour me with something bittersweet." and I challenged femmefauxpas with "Maybe it's a poltergeist!"

temenos

2012-02-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

on this ash-smothered road,
at the top of a dead hill
there is no punctuation

some red corrections
smeared with bitten fingers,
pressed harsh into yellowed pages

and the year I left
wells up like poisoned water
on the verge of overflow.

step back, look away
from the brink, from the brimming.
I leave no stone unmarked
while evening's ink spills and splashes

around this circle gouged out of light.

Written for Marian's musical prompt at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Pele Comes Devouring

2012-02-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

This gorgeous image found at LUA Technologies' Tumblog.

The drums were pounding, louder than the earth's heartbeat sounding in the womb of Kilauea. The chanting on the crest of the House of the Moon carried deep into the caverns where Pele slept. The music and the drums, the cheering of the people, they drew her out, blinking and rubbing her eyes in the bright sun of the day.

Kahawali was chief of Puna, brightest and best, bold and sure. He stood atop the sleeping volcano they called the House of the Moon and looked at the people. Dancers swayed gently to the drums, decked in flowers. Wrestlers strained against each other, muscles turned into teak knots or rooted into the very earth. His people, he knew, were the best of all possible tribes, and he was the best of them. Kahawali was a proud chief, with wives and sisters and sons standing tall behind him, and his closest friend Ahua at his side.

The drums and music continued to build, and Kahawali gestured to Ahua, allowing him to begin first. Ahua's holua sled was second only to Kahawali-the-chief's, its gleaming wooden runners and narrow corded base sturdy and swift. Ahua lifted it high in the air and ran full-tilt at the holua course, flinging himself onto the sled at the very last second. The crowd breathed as one being and that is when Kahawali, proud and impetuous, took his run. He flew down the slope after Ahua, easily outdistancing his friend. The dancers cheered, the wrestlers shouted. The musicians played ever more loudly, and Pele drew nearer.

At the bottom of the slope, where a spear marked the end of the racing course, the two men laughed together. They picked up their holua sleds and began to hike back up the mountain. When they were halfway up the slope, Pele took the form of a woman of Puna, an elder, but common. She stepped out from behind the rock that hid her cave and planted herself in front of the noble pair.

"Let me take your sled," she said. "I want to race."

Astonished by the woman's presumption, the chief brushed past her without a reply. She appeared to crumple slightly, and Ahua helped her up the slope the rest of the way, to join the rest of the tribe at their festival. When Kahawali shouted to Ahua to hurry, saying that he wanted to race again, the woman grasped Ahua by the shoulder.

"I want to race," she said again.

Ahua was a kind soul. He smiled gently and handed Pele his holua sled, gesturing to the crest. "Please take my turn, honored elder." He turned back to the end of the course to mark the winner and Pele ascended to meet the chieftain once again.

Kahawali snorted when he saw the old woman approaching, but held his peace. There was no magnanimous head start this time. The chief and the old woman leapt for the course in the same heartbeat, equal in speed and skill. Kahawali was astonished and began to use every trick he knew, deftly weaving across the dormant cone, letting the wind rush across his body, waiting for the moment he could pick up speed.

And then it happened. The second-best sled that Pele had been given jumped--just a little--over a rock instead of sliding smoothly across it. The great goddess lost her balance and fell.

Kahawali laughed, loudly and derisively, as he slid into the end of the course. The people cheered. Pele, her disguise still intact, stood and brushed herself clean. Turning to the chief, she offered Ahua's sled, smiling.

"To be fair, now we should exchange sleds and run the course again," she said.

"Aole! You have no rank, woman," Kahawali cried. "You want me to exchange sleds? Are you my wife, that you should be allowed to touch royal property?" He turned and headed back up the slope once more.

Pele followed, remaining polite but insistent, growing ever more furious as the haughty chief continued to refuse, and even mock, her requests.

Kahawali ignored her and defiantly ran for a third time down the course, and that was it. Pele stamped her foot, her disguise falling away, and the people fell back in awe. Thunder rolled, and lightning struck wherever the goddess turned her wrathful eye.

The earth shook in warning, and Kahawali looked back over his shoulder. When he finally saw the true face of what he had been mocking, it was too late. The sleeping volcano had awakened, and Pele's wrath was boiling toward him, red, viscous, and relentless.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Jester Queen challenged me with "Deftly, he wove in and out of the cones, letting the wind rush across his body, holding himself coiled for the moment when he could pick up speed." and I challenged Bran macFeabhail with "Earthy Watercolor Blog Mom meets Biting Invective, the Prime-Number Raccoon."

I didn't want to make this too long; it's already longer than my usual entries. However, the ending of this story is really the best part. I could go on with the many ways Kahawali attempts to escape Pele's wrath, but (spoiler alert) Ka wahine 'ai honua, the Woman who Devours the Land, eventually prevails. At one point, she even surfs down the volcanic cone on her revenge lava and hurls red-hot stones at him, killing everything he loves, including (I kid you not) his favorite pig. Hawaiian mythology is rich and fascinating. If you have some time to spare, you should check it out!

Valentines

2012-02-02T01:52:00.000-08:00

"Attention Barnes and Noble customers, the time is now 8:45. Our store will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your final selection and head to the register."

This is my cue to squat down behind the shelf marked "Computer and Technology" and look absorbed in the latest edition of XHTML for Dummies. The remaining stragglers, a few tweens in the Graphic Novel section that are trying way too hard to be different, begin to file down the stairs to the first floor and the long counter full of registers. Behind each register is a grim-eyed employee, smiling as hard as they can manage in this economy. They may hate their jobs and every customer they have to deal with, but they love that meager paycheck.

Heath is in the queue for the fifth register. The girl he's crushing on, Tish? She's six people ahead in the line, same as every Tuesday night for the past two months. I've watched every time. They always run into each other in the Science Fiction section. Once, Tish's hand lingered on a copy of Heretics of Dune just a few extra seconds, long enough for Heath to reach awkwardly for the same one and brush her fingers with his. This is what they do instead of dates. Neither of them are socially competent enough to even ask the other's name, let alone invite them for a cup of coffee, or Christ, to raid a dungeon with the other's guild.

It's okay, though. It's Valentine's Day, and Cupid is here for them.

I hunch behind the shelf and make a few necessary adjustments to the pistol crossbow in my coat. Ten minutes. If any employees are going to make a final round of the upstairs before closing, this is usually the time. I pull out a copy of Javascript and JQuery and bury my face in it, trying not to giggle at the stilted writing. I wonder who gets hired to write these things. Engineers, probably.

I read some incomprehensible programming instruction for five minutes, waiting for the next closing announcement. No one else wanders by, so I pull out my lovely little crossbow and take aim. I am a very good shot.

I have excellent timing, today--chubby, spotty Tish crumples lumpily to the floor just as her turn comes, and when Heath hikes up his ill-fitting pants to run to her side, I put my second gold-tipped bolt in his head. He falls flat on his face next to her instead, his sweaty hands flung out to her even as he's begun the involuntary shaking and jerking that follows massive brain trauma.

People are screaming and ducking for cover, but I've already made it down the stairs on the opposite side. I put my hands to my face and yell, "Oh my God," a few times. That gets me to the side of the building with the cafe exit, and no one's watching me anymore. They're watching Heath and Tish bleed out in unison, hearts pumping as one, together forever.

I adjust my coat and start whistling discreetly, but it's just too good, so I start to sing softly. "I've got you under my skin, hmm hmm hmm, I've got you deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me..." I even do a little soft shoe to the Sinatra in my head on my way out the door.

True love is such a beautiful thing, I think to myself. I amble through the parking lot, in search of the next lucky couple.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Lance challenged me with "At a Barnes and Noble book store in Daily, Georgia, Heath Dipolo is standing in line behind Tish Bejerano. Have them fall in love in 600 words." and I challenged M. Hunter with

"'C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.'

--Charles Baudelaire, 'Au Lecteur'"

The Week in Someone Else's Words

2012-01-28T16:24:00.000-08:00

An echo, reverberating backwards in time, a bell clanging in my unpadded head.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

19-30, The Burial of the Dead. The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot. Go read the whole thing.

Bolívar 1444

2012-01-26T14:59:00.000-08:00

Buenos Aires, 6:00 AM
She wakes up all at once, eyes snapping open in the cold morning. Her eyelashes are clumped with mascara dried into spiders' legs, glitter and char smearing her puffy eyes. The delicate skin under her eyes is swollen and dark. Her hands are still covered in blood, half-dry but tacky enough to leave prints on the white linen as she shoves her way out of the bed. The pliers make a clattering sound when they hit the hardwood floor, even cushioned by the wayward duvet.

She stumbles toward the bathroom, but appears to hesitate, detouring left into the dining room. She picks up last night's half-empty bottle of whiskey and continues toward the kitchen, trailing her sticky hand along the waxed and polished surface of the dining table, burnished red-gold. The scent of lemon oil hangs heavy in the air. The pile of silver and broken china in the corner has a nacreous gleam.

She turns on the coffee pot and sinks down to the blue tile floor. She takes a pull from the whiskey bottle and sets it gently beside her. Her face is blank, inquiring, the face of a younger girl rediscovering a long-cherished piece of music. The burbling of the coffee pot punctuates the heavy silence and she cocks her head to the left, seeming to listen intently to a whisper that penetrates her personal fog.

She stands decisively once more, leaving the coffee and the whiskey to deal with themselves, striding into the bedroom to recover the pliers. She takes them into the music room, uses them to smash the enormous blue-patterned vase in the corner, then tosses them indifferently atop the leaking bundle of flesh slumped bonelessly in the center of the room. She scrabbles at the shards of porcelain without regard for her own skin, pulling from the mess a wad of cash and a wallet stuffed with rail tickets. She takes these into the bedroom, throws them in an open suitcase, then heads into the bathroom for a long-overdue shower.

She is gone by seven-thirty, and is never seen again.

9:00 AM
The fog of the morning is beginning to burn off already. The house is nearly silent, a dim retreat from the vague rush of the traffic outside. Sometimes people walking by are caught by its distinctive architecture, its inviting glow.

There are broken bits of teeth scattered on the floor next to the pieces of the vase, and they gleam in the new sunlight. The record player turns, ceaselessly, the restless scratch of the record's ending a whisper in the noise of the city. The house breathes, drawing in cool against the heat of the day.

Two weeks later:
The body, eventually discovered by the cleaning staff, is wrapped in black plastic and shuffled off to the city hospital. This case is all dead ends, and the police force is already overworked. No one can bring themselves to care about a pair of vagabond foreigners.

The file is put in the records room, the body cremated. It is a cold case.

The story sinks like a stone into some hidden trench, deep into the black. There is no publicity. The house is cleaned thoroughly and becomes just another rental property. This is not the first time the real estate agency has needed to employ a renovator known for his discretion.

When new couples come to view the house, it puts on its most inviting display.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Amanda Lynn challenged me with "a shattered vase, a pair of pliers, and two tickets" and I challenged Brad MacDonald with "After the wave."

Charybdis

2012-01-20T03:28:00.000-08:00

I am the ocean's daughter,
adrift still on all these years.
Waist-deep in murky water--
is it rain I feel? Or tears?

First attempt at a tanaga, this month's format challenge, for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Refuge

2012-01-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

"Good is restraint in body, good is restraint in speech, good is restraint in mind, good is restraint everywhere. The one restrained in everything is freed from all sorrow."
--Dharmapada 361

In the first pale light of morning, the bell rings. I rise from the mat and resettle my robes. First the samkacchika, the vest that binds, then uttarasanga, our regular robe. I wrap uttarasanga around my left shoulder, its dull ochre weight anchoring me to the cool ground. Antarasavaka, the outer robe, is wrapped around my waist in precise pleats and secured with a plain belt.

It is not too cold this morning, but I fold the sanghati, an extra robe, over my right shoulder anyway. It is useful for long seating, even if the weather continues pleasant. I rub my hand over the fuzzy remnants of my hair. I am pleased to find it still short enough. I am not yet perfectly comfortable with the traditional straight-razor. I pick up my mala prayer beads and step out of the room, into the peace of the morning.

We eat what is offered. I was a vegetarian in daily practice. Now I take hot rice in my bowl and accept anything else that is given. There is strong green tea, bitter and lovely. The trick is to keep from eating too much, as the body then interferes with meditation.

After the morning hours, we fast. More bells ring, softly, and we head into the temple. We enter and execute a series of bows, to the altar, to the teacher, to each other. Some days we hold discussions. Most days, I will sit and just listen. I am practicing silence.

"Do not speak, unless it improves on silence," runs the accepted thought. Not quite a joke, but not quite serious, either. In retreat, there are long periods of unified quiet, the deep hush punctuated only by the tidal sounds of our breath. The heavy scent of sandalwood rises from the 108 beads of my mala garland and the mantras recite themselves, echoing in my head as I breathe and turn the beads in order.

The sanghati, folded, makes an excellent pad for a long meditation. It does not shift under my hips when I move forward to listen to the murmured discussion of dharma and text. I try to let each phrase fall on an empty mind, dew on an untouched field.

For some, this story is a tale of repression or boredom. For me, this is the bliss of each day in retreat. I have decided I will pass the last three days in mindful silence, listening to the pulse of the universe.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, MaryBethC challenged me with "Write about the events leading up to your vow to stop talking for the rest of the week." My prompt, sadly, went unanswered this week.

Bhikkhuni Ordination from Ed Ritger on Vimeo.

smokescreen

2012-01-13T18:58:00.000-08:00

it's a goddamned miracle,
your face in the morning,
rising into an evening of shredded song.

if I dare touch a fountain pen, dark words
fly out, iridescent black feathers
drifting down to lodge in my hair

where last night's sunset is still sleeping.
you remember a mirror image, I know.
you see silver-sharp and frail

when I am bone and ink and ember.
I am all of these, steel and amber,
shimmering oil on restless water, pushing impatient

at the struck match burning so slowly
toward your long fingers. I can let
the past reel out behind us like copper wire. I will not forget,

but I can still breathe you in,
old words tattooed in crimson
stitched into my skin.

Written for Marian's musical prompt at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

Subito

2012-01-12T00:24:00.000-08:00

The sun's cello is bright red. It's bigger than Mt. Everest and is branded with those terrible LV monograms. The sun has played the cello for thirteen years, but is lazy when it comes to practice. The sun bows hard in the third movement, ignoring the baton, playing vivace when adagio dolce e con affetto is clearly marked.

The voice of the cello is the voice of my great-aunt Rose, sobbing in clear and lucent phrase. The sun bears down hard on the cello's neck and Aunt Rose's pitch changes, but never her sorrow.

The sun bows and pain vibrates from the depths of this enormous instrument in keys that drop, harsh and buzzing, until they resolve into the blaring of my alarm clock.

I have this dream at least once a week. Sometimes I think about telling it to my court-ordered therapist, but I know she would only want to interpret it.

The sound of my great-aunt sobbing into a pillow was the last thing I heard, before the man shoved the ice-pick into each eardrum. First the left, and then the right, in quick succession. It was not so much silence, afterward, as it was a great inrushing of air and vibration. The doctors say that ruptured eardrums heal, and I don't waste time arguing with them. Even the great bodily insult that followed has never paused the music that plays in my mind.

When I head downstairs for breakfast, my toes curl themselves into the green carpet and my palm meets the banister with a soft smacking sound. The shuffling and sliding weave themselves into the movements of my dream's symphony. Each different action I take creates a new tempo, a new addition.

A bite of toast, and the tympani shudder into life; the kettle whistles and the flutes echo its rush. I know my ears are healing, because two weeks ago, the shrieking of the kettle was inaudible, and I burned my hand; I reached over the spout to see if I could feel the steam emerging, and realized my mistake only when an invisible dragon raised blisters on my palm and four of my fingers.

My hearing is improving, but it doesn't matter. I was unable to conduct the performance of my career, and now no one is sure that I will have a career left when I return. My great-aunt Rose is dead but still sobs after me in my sleep. My therapist insists that I must remember the face of the man who violated my body and destroyed my life, but in my memories it is blank. There is nothing there at all.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kat challenged me with "Create a story or poem based on this personification: The sun bows as pain vibrates." and I challenged Lance with "Distributed computing debauchery."

precipitous

2012-01-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

You hover outside my sphere of influence,
ever so close to penetrating within. Just out
of reach, I run my hands along the barrier.
Now, barometric or interior,
pressures are shifting,

the wind is changing. You tell me
my eyes have informed the green of the sky,
the air, and just that fast,
it turns--the supercell whirls gaily toward me.

Your heart, the very center of the bow echo,
sets all the warning sirens shrieking.
That unearthly whine shifts all my dreams,
pierces and stitches. A careful injection
of your inimitable attempts at nonchalance,

at caution, anathematic caution.
For me, caution is just
the laughing mouth of the funnel,
its cruel gape breathing thunder down my neck

while I pull up my striped stockings,
slot garter buttons into each keyhole,
while I step into bright red boots
and wait for you to touch down.

Written for the Personal Challenge at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

summary

2012-01-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

At the very end,
a stubborn, lovely flower
bares its head, holds tight.

The Point of Roughness

2012-01-05T03:40:00.000-08:00

Midwinter spring is its own season, each day in grey and smoky green on muddy snow marching in sodden boots toward the solstice. It's cold in small bites, then suddenly warm, every breath of air fastening its teeth in a lover's ear, whipping loose hair across the face, then the shock of ice down the neck.

It is a fleeting season, fleeing before the gnawing specters of the longest night, the coldest months.

There is a hedge along the hill, still green against the rocky drifts, and it is covered in the wind's scattered offerings, blossoming not with petals but perfect geometric crystals. If you came this way, taking the route you would be likely to take, from the place you would be likely to come from, you might never notice the difference. This is the hedgerow that held out handfuls of honeyed blossoms in the hot summer when we said goodbye.

It is not the end of the world. That lies in England, or so I am told, by many a poem and song, somewhere behind a headstone, somewhere in the fog of the night's passing. Somewhere in the mist let out like the breath of green and living things. And there are other places, which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws, or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city, but this is not why we are here, not something to speak in words on the shortest day of the year.

So we go behind the hedge, past the rocks in the hill, crooked old teeth of the earth standing still in a cast circle. Taking the hand of the person next to you in your own is an act of contrition, tribute paid to the dead shaking and sweating under our feet.

There, yes, there and then, what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead:

The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. They whisper their threats, only just inaudibly, into the black and terrible night. We refute them with our pulse, with the song of living breath, with our stories and laughter held bright against Godfather Death.

We will speak of their dim lands someday, surely, but not today. Today we keep vigil for the extinguished sun, the brightness descendent into the underworld to speak with the dead in our place. Here, the intersection of the timeless moment between one year and the next, one inhalation of deep night exhaled into blue-banded dawn, inhaling: never. Exhaling: always.

So it goes, never and always. Earth and air, fire and water, incense rising from a burning cup into the last pale stars. The inexorable dead are silent for another three-quarter turn, the dead who rattle their bones against the dreams of held hands and gentle kisses. Implacable and resolute and tasting of despair.

Silent, yes, the dead may be, but they still make their motions in my sleep. They dance under my feet and leave me wakeful, wakeful. Thick yarn dangles from wooden needles, and there is Earl Grey tea in a white teapot under the world's blanket of snow, until the winter melts away into spring. I want to grow roses in blue clay pots. I want to write arias, bridges belling, belying the flutter in my stomach, in my heart. Then the newness of the year steals away all the words I might have had.

Summer has never returned the favor of my vocabulary, even in the Communion chalice of red-staining blackberries, hand-picked from martial canes, the juice mixed with blood from thorn-pricked fingers. I dance with the dead and hold silence in my heart.

There are reasons, but what they were I cannot say. They rely upon words I can not now speak in any comprehensible fashion, for last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice.

--

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Tara Roberts challenged me with "New Year's resolutions - your own or a story about keeping or breaking resolutions."

The italicized lines are taken from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," the fourth of Four Quartets.

Care

2011-12-29T02:48:00.000-08:00

Strange, to wake up in a place you only half-remember.

Missy and her sister Millie hold each other tight, fat hands clenched around the other's like anemones on tide-pool rocks. The loud noises and the thumping of last night have ceased, but the smell of stale beer in the front room means stay down and pretend to be asleep. They are quiet in the pale dawn. They have learned many things in their little lives but the most important one is this: Daddy likes quiet.

"Missy," mini Millie whines into their shared pillow. Missy shakes her head slowly side to side until the thread of Millie's whisper dies down quieter than the memories.

You're the big sissy, Missy, Mama said when Millie went to sit in the car with Uncle Brother. It's your job to follow and keep your sissy safe, you hear? Missy heard, and she followed her little sister to the car. Mama's face and the thin line of her mouth looking away into the dark house disappeared into the night, all lit up with red lights and goodbyes.

Uncle Brother drove in silence all night and all day, stopping for red Mountain Dew in big bottles and a candy bar sometimes. Missy sat up front, her thin legs dangling over the edge of the seat and bouncing with every rough patch. She was proud when Uncle Brother put her in charge of the fat yellow-and-black pills, because she was big enough to take care. One every hour, Miss Missy, he said then, and Miss Missy giggled when her name doubled up and fell all every which way out of his mouth.

Then it was night again and Millie was sleeping hard against the back door, Missy was nodding and Uncle Brother's eyes were red and wide and scary staring at the road blue in the bright headlights. Uncle Brother wouldn't sleep, but Missy fell down into dreams like Mama had tucked her in a front-seat-shaped bed.

"It's my girls, ain't it," an angry voice fussed just outside Missy's window next, and breaking glass, and Millie screaming into a black night.

"Uncle Brother!" Missy yelled over Millie, but the loudest noise ever boomed out into a hollow-sounding empty place, and Missy had to scramble into the backseat to take care of her sissy, the feeling bigger than the world or the scary sound, take care of sissy, take care--

Then a white face like a mushroom with a flashlight beside it poked in the broken window, lips quivering, and the angry voice said, "My girls! Look at you, all growed up! Get on out here and come with Daddy."

Daddy, Missy remembered, doesn't like it when you don't listen. Millie is too little to remember Daddy, but Missy knows. She unbuckled Millie and shoved open the back door, climbing over her baby sister to stand in front of Daddy so he knows they're listening. Listening good.

He put them in another backseat and checked their seatbelts, breathing something heavy and sour into their faces. He is clumsy but fast as fast can be and then they are driving on another blue road. Daddy's hands are dirty and the car smells like old pennies and sweat. He won't stop so they can pee, and then Millie won't stop crying when she can't hold it anymore.

"Hush-a-bye," Missy sang to her little sister, quiet under the humming of the wheels against the road, until they both fell asleep again.

Daddy's boots tracked redblack from the car to the hotel doormat and the woman at the front desk smeared her hot-pink lipstick all over his face last night in big kisses, laugh-yelling at him for keeping her waiting. They got real loud together. They drank out of cans they threw into the hall, then big glass bottles. They broke those on the walls. Missy and Millie curled together underneath the window, and Missy covered her little sister's ears up tight so she would go right back to sleep.

Because Millie's not scared. Her big sissy is right here, and Millie always wanted a Daddy, even a mean one with dirty hands and pink Injun warpaint. Even a loud one who throws beer bottles is better than no Daddy at all, she thinks. But Missy knows better.

Daddy has a pig mask in Missy's dreams, a pig mask over his whole head and a lollipop that he holds just out of reach, and Millie keeps whining into the pillow, the little couch cushion Missy stole from the hotel lobby when no one was looking. Missy has a piece of paper and a pen hidden in the back of Millie's pink t-shirt and Cheshire-Cat face pajama pants, and she whispers back that she knows it's scratching but it has to stay a secret. Stationery is a word she learned out of Mama's big dictionary only last week, but Millie won't know it, so she just says paper.

"The Dew Drop Inn," she mouths almost-silent in her baby sister's shell-pink ear. "This is the Dew Drop Inn, and Mama's gonna come for us, Millie. Now hush up."

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, runaway sentence. challenged me with "your heroine spends a night at the Dew Drop Inn." and I challenged Kurt with "Write a complete short story, flash fiction, 500 words or fewer (not including the header). Use a style completely opposite from the one you normally employ: if you are generally comedic, try tragedy. Hardboiled? Try fluff. Stretch."

What Lies Ahead

2011-12-22T16:53:00.000-08:00

Domestic Disturbance

2011-12-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

"More coffee, honey?" The waitress shakes her coffeepot at me impersonally until she catches sight of my face. Then her starched white blouse creaks a little as she leans down, favoring me with a genuine smile. Her lipstick bleeds out around the edges of her mouth. There's some on her front teeth, but she smiles wide like she doesn't know what a walking cliche she's become. "Can I get y'all anything else?"

I have to smile back, even when it pulls tight against the split in my lip. "I'm fine, thank you. I think I'm about ready for the check, though," I say as clearly as I can. She bustles off and I put my head back down. It's funny, how you can hurt so bad for so long that you forget what you look like. I didn't even need to see the reflection of my misshapen face in her eyes. I saw it in her whole face, a quick flash of shock replacing that practiced foodservice cheer. When she comes back, she slides the check face-down in front of me and rushes off to the ringing of the kitchen bell without looking at me again.

Order's up. I study the surface of my coffee, the milky dregs of it long cold and unappealing. It's that dry stretch between the lunch rush and dinner. Still, there are enough people in here to keep me looking down at my own table. I wrap my hands around the thick mug, even though there's no heat left in it. I hear the other customers talking to my curvy, garishly redheaded waitress with the lipstick issues. They're suited slick guys. Lawyers. This diner's real close to the courthouse and it's a popular place.

I didn't think of it, coming in here. So many people with their eyes sliding over my face. I rummage in my big black bag for my winter hat and tug it down over my ears. I can't pretend to be faceless if I can hear them chatting about their damned cases, voices lowering only slightly every time they say something about "paternity suit" or "restraining order" or "women's shelter" or whatever insufferable thing.

I don't care. All these people pretending to be busy, their worlds circled around them like eggshells. I pull out all the cash in my wallet and leave it on the table. The chatter mutes a little as I ease myself out of the booth and wrap my scarf around my face. My back is straight and my head high as I walk out, even when I pass the one who reeks of clandestine Scotch and he says, too loud, "A man that beats a woman like that, Jesus. Guess he didn't learn from his daddy like I did. Guess he didn't learn not to hit in the face, huh? Lord have mercy, you gotta teach 'em where it don't show."

I don't stop to see his colleagues' reactions to these priceless nuggets of folksy wisdom. I head out the way I came, downtown. Scarf and hat and gloves and I could be anyone on her way to work, to school, the store.

Five minutes later I walk into the police station and the matron is already on her way over to comfort me when I say, "I need to turn myself in." All the eyes on me brim over with tears, I swear, and they try to shush me, already talking about shelters and filing restraining orders. I shake my head and try to tell them again.

"You don't need to say another word," the matron starts to say, and I can tell they've taken the wrong idea from my face.

"I didn't kill him because he did this," I have to say through split lips and missing teeth. "He did this trying to stop me." Still, they keep staring at me. So sympathetic, until I pull his head out of the bag.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Billy Flynn challenged me with "You're sitting in a diner by yourself, all around you are the noises of people's busyness; for them, the world is spinning 'round, for you it's standing still, tell us your story." and I challenged Tara Roberts with "A mortar and pestle, a skein of silk thread, acorns, rowan, and mistletoe."

waive

2011-12-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

You push out of bed like a backstroke,
surfacing into the morning light,
leaving me behind. There must be
a word for that shift, instinctive
in that moment right before you pull away:

I press closer, rub my face into
your shoulder-skin, asleep to the realities
of all our deleterious nights,
breath serene as if I might never wake,
arms tight around you. You break

my hold, push a pillow into my arms
as if it could replace you. I remember
the days I could swim back down into sleep
after you left, listening to the bell
sounding dour in all those grey mornings.

We cannot go back into the wide space
between night and white dawn. We can travel
only in the direction of endings, and never again
savor the taste of beginning. I am weightless
in my dream-sea under heavy blankets

and even when you are here,
I can see you are already gone.

Nishikigoi

2011-12-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

錦鯉

The koi swims upstream, against any current, any opposition. It is the sign of perseverance, much like a salmon. One that has never known the fear of a shaggy-pawed predator. It is also "koi," "beloved," just as we say to each other in the foggy mornings, embroidering on our eyebrows and drawing in our lips before we face the dawn.

We paint each carp in moonglow and scarlet petals, copper and gold and inky black. They shine in the sunlight like articulated jewels.

At sunset, we set them in the pond and release the fireflies. Moonfish and sunfish and autumn-leaf-fish circle turn and turn about, gape-grinning at our hands, slender hands entwined and resting upon the curve of the red-lacquered bridge. We drop cakes and rice wine into their friendly mouths.

"Ochiba, my heart," she says to me, "in the cold night let us swim together for warmth."

"Hanako, my pulse," I reply, "apocalypses could not keep us from touching."

We return to the workshop, hand in hand, where we will dine upon green peas and watermelon. We will drink scalding tea, the color of our pond, that tastes of endless summer. Tonight we await the rising of the moon, full and lovely, an enormous silver carp swimming in the black waters of the sky.

--
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Carrie challenged me with "big fish in a small pond" and I challenged Sir with "Cor Serpentis."

The exchange of short poems between lovers is a well-documented obsession of mine. Go back and count the syllables. Yes, those are haiku. Yes, I tried to write them in Japanese first, though I'm more certain of Hanako's line than Ochiba's. Yes, I am a little crazy.

落葉、寒いて夕方泳ぎましょう?
花子、私がつもり金輪際ては触れ合った。

seining

2011-12-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

What can I tell him about this place?
I have seen bright finches eating peaches
left hanging on a ragged tree. Persimmons
and thyme-scented lemons throw themselves
into my waiting hand.

I could live on rice and jasmine tea, the
scent of pepper floating out of the trees,
the shadows of autumns past still lingering
in concrete under my path.

But here there are no camellias,
shy flowers peeking from behind glossy leaves,
no cemetery incense or old tatami,
no sutras or silken banners tucked away
in ageless forest, no temple open to retreat.

Tonight the moon is a paper lantern
about to burst into flame, hanging low
in a blushing sky, tipping all the red leaves
in gleaming gold, the present as elusive
as the past,

and I can never capture silver-scaled truth
with the nets I weave of troublesome words.

containment

2011-12-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

Once, I rose dripping

from a bath, and in drying,

my hand descended

from the nape of my neck

into the deepest cut,

right along the shoulder-line.

I touched all those pieces

that grind on each other

carefully, the wet tongue velvet

of the insides of our skin

lapped up against oily layers

and ragged edges, pushed into

dark places, prodded at wads of

linen and kerosene-soaked tinder,

my interior landscape primed

for a resurgence,

poised to burn.

Eightfold Path

2011-12-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

There are too many people in this world. People everywhere, cars spewing out a thick coat of invisible poison, factories and furnaces, killing the skin of the world we inhabit. They're everywhere, hemming us in on all sides with squalling infants and trash and terrible little clouds of germs. Particles. Maybe spores. You never can tell.

It's mostly the noise, the clashing and creaking, the wails and grunting that play marimba on my spine. I creep around in my apartment because, upstairs, the man who plays bass in some terrible cover band never takes off his shoes. I hear him thumping around every hour of the day. It doesn't bother me as much now that I don't sleep.

I hear voices through the walls, whispers and murmurs of people who might be alive or dead or somewhere in between. I never see my neighbors if I can help it. Everything I need can be delivered, except the gun. I had to buy that from a wizened little man in a bad part of town. His eyes were shark-cold and black, blacker than the hole in the muzzle of my new handgun. He never asked why I wanted such a thing, of course. I imagine someone in that line of work would rather not know his customers too well.

There are footsteps outside my door again, people running up and down the stairs. I think they tread as heavily as they can on purpose, hooting like monkeys who have finally discovered acoustics. There are people everywhere.

Before, I practiced avoiding notice. I tried as hard as I could to become invisible. I think it's worked; cabs don't stop for me, but then again, in this city it would be more of a surprise if I managed to catch one. At night I meditate instead of sleeping, holding a full clip in my loosely cupped hands, waiting to look into the void of empty mind. Without desire, I can achieve anything. The trick in that, though, is that I long to accomplish something great. I have not reconciled these emotions, and I will not reach nirvana in this way. Of course, I can't believe I will reach nirvana with all this noise around me.

Sometimes, in the holy hush of three in the morning, I walk down to the river and watch the lights in the water. Sometimes, yes, even then, there are people in my way. The people in my way at such an hour are never, ever missed.

I wish everyone would disappear, everyone in this city, leave me alone and let me meditate under the wide window, open to the sky. I would never become a bodhisattva and that is okay. Let them all vanish into smoke and dust and ash like the girls in the incinerator.

I could go out into the world and sit under a tree until another homeless man stands too close to me, offering drugs and requesting things I don't have to give. I could walk to the park, if another thoughtless young woman with a stroller too wide for the sidewalk wouldn't simply shove me aside with its nearly-armored sides. I am running out of places to put the loud, the rude, the hapless, and the damned.

I will stay in here with the candles and the bits of unburned bone until I hear silence out there, or until another knock on my door signals the loss of my invisibility. Or I will go out and remove another piece of trash from my city, one bullet at a time, one more splinter of annoyance pulled from under the nailbed of my soul.

The incinerator is the only quiet thing in this building. Sometimes I go into the dark and lie in front of its iron mouth, whispering sutras into its heat. Sometimes I see the faces in the fire and I am so grateful they are silenced forever. Sometimes when I blow out the candles on my windowsill, I make a wish, but then I remember that desire is the enemy. Is a wish the same as desire?

I cannot escape the prayer for silence, the great and sacred responsibility that has been laid upon me. I wished to be of use, I wished to remove obstacles from my destiny. I wished to live in an empty place, for an empty mind, for the peace of perfect enlightenment. If I could just quiet the voices, I could get there, but people are everywhere. So, one person at a time, I strive. When all is silent I will reach again for the truth, set out upon the eightfold path that promises detachment from these earthly desires.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Tobie challenged me with "Make a wish and blow out the candles." and I challenged Wintervixen86 with "Pierrot and Columbine".

Things We Never Said Out Loud

2011-12-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

Dig my way down, I dig, one hand over the other. Like a baseball bat. Let's not talk about the baseball bat, though, let's leave that for last. Oh, love, let me lull you to sleep with my songs. Sit here with your head upon my knee and see the stories I spin for you, always for you and your silent stone heart. Shovels are uncomplicated things, thrust them in and let them do their work, one hand over the other and a growing pile of dust, of dirt, of mud and clay. I could almost sing to you while I work, almost, if you were listening, send you a message that meant more than this.

I never bought that plastic tarp. We laughed about it, oh yes, how we laughed. It's funny until it happens to you, and then you regret all the quicklime and chainsaw jokes. Or so I'd suppose.

Who knows? Not me, I am so quiet and kind. I make toys for the children in my spare time, trains on tracks and racks of gently smiling dolls. Never mind the noises from the basement. Hammer and nails, lashes and tongs, bits of chain and leather thongs. Tools of the trade, you might say.

I don't know why you left or where you went. It was always for you, the weight of the sledgehammer handle socketed firmly into my fist, the scissors and the baseball bat, the broken glasses, the plates. I've waited beside you, oh, waited, wondering why you closed your eyes that night and never came back. Now I can hear your dresses decay in the dark and drop dust-bunnies onto the closet floor.

I have missed you less, before; but this is a joke. I never miss. One last kiss, and into the dark you go. I'll lay you next to your beloved cat, cover you gently with your favorite quilt. Throw in the pieces of the baseball bat, and tuck you in--and that is that.

The Albatross

2011-12-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

"Look, kid, this is ridiculous. There are no lamps out there. It's physically impossible."

"I know what I saw, Anchormaster," the boy insisted. His ragged sailcloth leggings rustled as he shifted uncomfortably. "I know I wasn't supposed to be in the ambassador's quarters, and I'll take the lashes for that, but I am not lying. Was a man, on a cobblestone street, bold as brass, true as iron."

The anchormaster looked down at the rough-sanded planks, considering. The boy's bare, calloused feet scraped quietly as he shifted position again. "Report to the whipmistress in the morning. Five for trespassing. I will speak with her as to the rest of your sentence after I visit the ambassador. You will take the night watch on C deck and keep the whole thing quiet until I finish my investigation. Is this clear?"

The boy saluted and left hastily, perhaps afraid the anchormaster would change his mind. Punishments were not usually so lenient aboard this particular ship.

Anchormaster Lenn walked toward the foredecks, glaring at his timepiece. The ambassador was in one of her meetings for at least another hour. Plenty of time to check her quarters and make sure the boy hadn't interfered with anything important. He could even be back to his post before the Captain made her rounds. He headed into the lodging corridor, moving as quietly as he could. Too many people on this trip kept odd hours. He thought how glad he would be when this shipment was over, and of the spiced coffee he would drink when they made planetfall. It had been far too long since his last shore leave.

All his musings were cut short when he noticed the door to the ambassador's quarters hanging open. His mouth compressed in irritation and he mentally added two lashes to the boy's punishment for leaving the corridor unsecured.

Annoyed, he strode into the lodgings, less concerned now about the noise than about the potential security breach. The automatic lights shifted on, and a quick survey of the suite yielded no visible problems. He stood in the center room for a few moments, listening for any movement. When the silence remained, he headed into the receiving room, where the boy had claimed to see his latest impossibility. Two steps into the room, he froze.

There, in the port window, silhouetted against the infinitude of space, it was clear. A section of cobblestoned street, a wrought-iron streetlamp, and a man where no men should be, framed by the bulk of the planet looming over them all.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kat challenged me with "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw him standing under the street light..." and I challenged GUS with "Malachite and amber, mother of pearl and stars."

liturgy of the hours

2011-11-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

Where, oh precious, can I find the gate
into that novena-lit and comfort-laced,
steep-staircased tower?

No map yet aims wide enough,
no route traced in jewels,
rivers inked in green or blue,
no arrows point my way.

I am not lost, I am seeking.
I know what I want when I find it,
the twisted tumbler of that one locked chamber
singing in my cathedral heart.

exhaust

2011-11-22T23:58:00.000-08:00

I have an empty
tin can for a mind, through which
the wind rises, scours

oatmeal-colored cell-
stuff from the bony walls, screams
in suffering ears

its manifesto.
I dare not resist. No good
can come of retreat.

Time and a Half

2011-11-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

She pulls down the long zipper of her dress, starting at the nape of her neck, holding the pile of her long hair out of the way with her forearm as she presses the neckline flat with her left hand. In her underclothes, she lets the thick bundle of hair fall, and begins to fold her dress. It's black.

Most of her clothes are, but this is special, an asymmetrical piece of slubbed silk, deeper than midnight. Cocktail dresses are her favorite, and this is a particularly graceful variation on the style. She leans over to release the ankle straps of her seven-inch heels, placing one hand on the bookshelf for balance's sake. Stepping out of her right shoe, and then her left, she stands in stocking feet at the foot of the bed. She leaves her dress folded, neatly, on top of the deep blue counterpane and pads out to the kitchen.

She fills a wide-bottomed glass with whiskey and lights a cigarette, smoking silently, taking little nips at the glass between drags. The clock in the hallway chimes softly, and she heads into the office. The laptop is open, humming the quiet accompaniment of dancing electricity in the empty air. She puts her cigarette out in the desktop ashtray and disconnects all the laptop's cables. Looking at the red light of the built-in webcam, she takes a long swallow of her whiskey and sets down the glass.

"I'm not turning on the speakers, and I won't repeat myself or take any questions, so you had better listen carefully," she says. "I'm not here to make friends. Don't ever try to contact me or interact with me in private life again. This is your only warning." She presses her lips together, narrows her eyes at the red light, and then steps away from the computer.

She pulls the office chair into the hallway, gazing critically at the line of sight into her bedroom, and stacks three thick books on its seat. She steps back into the office, retrieves the laptop, and sets it gently on the stack of books. Heading back into the bedroom, she stops, spins on her heel, and goes back for her drink.

When she is comfortably seated on the floor at the foot of her bed, she pulls a tiny butterfly knife out of its clip at the top of her left stocking, casually manipulating it with one hand, open, and closed. Open. Then closed. With the other hand, she picks up her cell phone, shakes it warningly at the little red light shining from the darkened hallway, and sets it back on the floor beside her right hip, returning her attention to the glass of whiskey. When her phone vibrates against the hardwood floor, she checks the mobile banking alert for the right set of numbers, and begins.

She pulls one garter taut and slashes through it, then the other. With a flashy flip of the blade, she cuts a shoulder strap, right below the collarbone. After two more quick slices, the lace cups of her deep red bra fall slowly to the sides. She slides the flat of the blade along her hipbone and works it under the seam of her matching thong, moving it up and down, in and out, in vicious parody. She raises an eyebrow and smiles, cruelly, the corners of her mouth drawing up in what could be either a smirk, or a snarl. She bares her teeth at the red light of the camera and drags the sharp little blade through each side-seam of her panties.

She stands, abruptly, and the scraps of fabric flutter to the ground, puddling splashes of scarlet next to her still-stockinged feet. She flourishes the blade back into its handle and tosses it on the bed. She moves sinuously toward the laptop in the hallway, and crouches down in front of the chair. When she is at eye-level with the little red light, she pulls her hair up off her neck and arches her back, showing off her chest, then hits the button that turns off the video feed.

She pulls off each stocking and lays them gently over the side of the clothes hamper, leaving the shredded remains of the rest of her underwear in a pile on the floor. She rummages in the top drawer of her dresser and steps into a black satin bikini, fastens the matching bra around her ribcage, and lifts each breast into a plain, but glossy, cup. She works each strap up to her shoulders and steps into the walk-in closet, pulling on a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, a grey sweater, and thick wool socks. She tucks a bigger knife behind the waistband at the small of her back. She heads out to the hallway and steps into her favorite black boots, tying her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. She grabs her keys from the table by the front door and hurries to the car, already looking forward to her grandmother's pumpkin pie.

"Sorry I'm late," she practices aloud.

"Some accounts," she will say, "don't pause for Thanksgiving dinner," with a gentle smile. She would bet half of the night's take that for the fourth year in a row, no one will ask exactly what it is she does for a living, now.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Mera challenged me with "A memory connected to Thanksgiving." and I challenged Hannah with "All caps, no gaps."

four ignoble truths

2011-11-18T06:03:00.000-08:00

A whetstone, cold and grey. From my knuckles to my fingertips
I am rough and red. I have a sharkskin pad for bright green
wasabi and a yellow porcelain bowl filled with deep pink ginger
pickled in sweet rice vinegar. I know what is hidden, rooted
in these cupboards, in the shadows behind the flour and sugar,
I know my ingredients. I know what I have and what is missing.
I am full up on the wretched ignorance of samsara, overflowing
with desperate illusion and the blatant grieving half-life of desire.
I don't have satori. I have no locks on my aching heart, ground
under your heel like an inky stone. I have these days and nights.
I don't have you. Now I sharpen, I grind. I place the chips and
shards of my heart in the mortar bowl and bear down on the pestle,
bear down, endless. Are you hungry? Let me feed you.

between the bones

2011-11-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

Lemon-peel sour

and sharper than kitchen knives,

that taste in my mouth.

I burned us to ash, swallowed

charred silence and empty years.

Carthago Delenda Est

2011-11-16T23:02:00.000-08:00

The arrow-threat of occupation sighted firmly on my high-walled city, a looming specter of dissolution above the harbor. A pyre built of memories and shame. Pile it up, then, throw oil onto my fires and let the world burn as I do. As for you, Tyrians that were, people of my people--lash his children and all his people with your hatred, give me their suffering as a gift, a holy sacrifice to these ashes. Let there be no affection between these peoples, let there be no unbroken treaty between our tribes.

Now the couch that we shared is ablaze, the fragrant oil burning blue where his dark head once rested, the hungry flames advancing to my seat. As I rise to greet the stars at the dawning of the world, may every god bear witness. The sword is sharp. My time is short. Let the shore make war upon the shore, waves against waves, weapons against weapons; let those fools and their descendants be at war forever. Let them rue each smear of char, each drop of royal blood.

And you, O avenger, unknown. May you rise from my bones and make them regret. Make them remember. With the strength of my hatred arisen from a wretched heart, make them pay this funeral gift.

Like Tanit I arise to the night in flames, singing of the sea.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Major Bedhead challenged me with "I don't want the world, I just want your half. - Ana Ng, They Might Be Giants" and I challenged Floreksa with "I hate strategy games."

Queen Elissa of Carthage, more famously known as Dido, makes her most dramatic appearance in Virgil's Aeneid. I found a glorious translation of her final speech (by Mike Salter at Ars Latet Arte), which appears to not only be my favorite part of the whole book, but his as well. If you read that (you ought), you will note that I based this piece heavily upon Mr. Salter's translation, because it was so perfect. I encourage you to visit his site and read the Latin to yourself, out loud, repeatedly.

truisms

2011-11-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

A flower of silk,
well-kept, will never wither.
Well-watered, must fade.

Causality

2011-11-14T23:58:00.000-08:00

It was five days from my birthday. My heart and mind were with you, and I was having trouble sleeping. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could offer. I clicked on the video, knowing I would regret it, but needing to hammer this truth home, to offer up my peace of mind as a sacrifice. It was nothing like a fair exchange for the price you paid.

We only learned about you in bits and pieces, fragments, days after your death. It was a wildfire in my brain, obliterating all reason. It roared behind every thought, every second: the whole world was watching when you were shot, when you lay on the ground, face uncovered to the sky, blood pouring out from behind the hands of the helpful. The whole world was watching, and nothing was done. The whole world was watching, and I could not explain to anyone the fury blazing in my heart.

Here, it is not the same. We are not under the same burdens, but we are still being silenced. I see the raw energy of my people and I am stalled. Every day I feel it building, the knowledge that we are paying the price of indifference, the fury and resolve. I am afraid that we will have our own martyrs, and my heart is breaking.

I will go into the camps, and I will be there for you. I will march in your memory as I have before, and I dream that it will have more of an effect. I will carry a picture of you and pray that this is the beginning of a true and lasting change. I will pray that you do not look down in contempt on a world that appears, superficially, to be the home of a free people. I will pray that there are no martyrs like you in our midst, and that the appearance of our freedom will remain intact.

These are the nights that I whisper, "the whole world is watching," and remember the lost, and pray that I am not lying to myself. This is not Iran, and these are not your people, but please know that you are remembered, and your voice is not silenced. My voice is small, but I raise it for you, despite my terror. I will not be a coward anymore.

I have stayed out of this conflict for too long, quietly supporting it from the sidelines but never contributing. Now I occupy for the people who inspired these protests. The Iranians, who still hold my heart. The Egyptians, whose success encourages us to persevere. But mostly, I occupy for Neda Agha-Soltan, whose dying face still haunts my dreams and whose memory commands me to fight for the America in which I long to believe.

"Neda, don't be afraid. Neda, stay with me."

Hijacked Frequencies

2011-11-11T21:28:00.000-08:00

(begin transmission)

(radio static fades into sprightly music, slightly fuzzy)

"Hello again, everyone, and welcome to this week's broadcast of Cooking with Rye! I'm Rye Ellison, and tonight we're making soup, just like last week and the week before that! Everyone have their rifles handy? Good.

We'll begin by heading out into the backyard and bagging ourselves a chicken. If you didn't have enough foresight to learn to keep poultry and livestock before the, uh, before last year, any carcass will do. The fresher, the better, though--we want to keep all those nutrients in useful forms.

You shouldn't need your rifle for this, but we never go anywhere without one, right? Good.

I've prepped everything in advance; here we have one large onion, some celery, lots of freshly chopped garlic, and herbs from the garden. I like to use rosemary in just about everything, that brightness really comes through, even if you cook it too long. There's some savory, a little sage, and of course thyme, our Old Reliable.

Once you've dressed out and plucked your chicken, or prepared, uh, your meat of whatever origin, no judgment here, haha, you can drop it in your large stock pot. Cover it up with fresh water, and let it cook until it's done. This will yield not only the meaty centerpiece of your soup, but the delicious broth that binds the whole thing together.

Take that meat and broth and set it aside. In your stock pot, now, you'll want a tiny bit of fat, oil, what have you, to cook those onions in. Saute the onions until transparent, then add your celery and garlic. Let those cook gently for just a few minutes, but don't let them brown. Few things will draw unwelcome, ah, guests like the piercing smell of burning garlic.

Now you can pour that broth back in, skimming off the fat if you prefer, but remember: fat equals energy! Tie your fresh herbs into a bouquet garni, if you have string, and drop it into your stock. Leave this going over low heat while you turn your attention to pulling the meat from all these tiny bones.

Now, when you bury your trash later, be sure to save some of your hollow bones. They make great pens and you can even make jewelry out of some of them! Bones from larger animals can be used for ammo boxes, salt cellars, just about anything.

Soup is just such a reliable, high-energy food for people in our, uh situation, you really can't go wrong--"

(footsteps clattering, a lower voice hesitantly volunteers something, mostly inaudibly)

"Oh, hey there! Hey, Peter! Listen, everyone, this is my friend Peter, he'll be joining us for dinner tonight!"

"Uh, hi, everyone--how are you all doing out there?"

"Everyone inside? Wonderful. Peter, you locked the doors, right? Great. So now we pull that stock pot off the fire, and open some bottles of water for a real treat tonight.

Okay, here's our soup! Wow, it smells just wonderful. I'd love to share some with you, but there's really no more room in the bunker, ha ha--"

(glass crashing, the obscene sound of metal doors being bent inward)

"Oh my God, okay, got your rifle handy? This is where we sign--"

(microphone screeching, the clattering of a table being overturned)

"Oh shit, Peter! Peter, are you okay? Peter! P--"

(multiple gunshots, the dull sound of bullets in flesh, a low moaning)

"NO! NO! Oh my GOD, PLEASE--"

(a revolting lip-smacking sound, then something bubbling through thick liquid...someone gumming mashed potatoes, perhaps.)

(increased feedback from the microphone mingled with full-throated screams, an ear-piercing burst of static)

(end transmission)

patchwork

2011-11-10T18:18:00.000-08:00

I never grudge your
silence, even while it grates
against stitched-up wounds.
I'm loath to throw out these scraps,
remnants that ought to be whole.

prescription

2011-11-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

Three tasks: to climb a hill of glass barefoot;
show your iron will by staying awake
to catch the Firebird at thievery;
to build our castle beneath the lake.

These are the riddles I set. To catch me,
you must also survive on stories.

curmudgeon

2011-11-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

I can never change--I am a mandrake,
rooted in dry and sour soils.

avarice

2011-11-08T22:01:00.000-08:00

I want a snowdrift
in which to keep you, falling
at my feet, abject--

or just you, writing
ghost stories at the window
in winter. The cold

can't win out over
the warmth of words, slipping through
interlaced fingers

under a blanket
of snow in muted colors,
this endless feeling.

Netjeret

2011-11-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

The harbor was a green and fragrant place, a bulwark against the dusty gold of the desert. There were fish and markets, scribes and antiquities. The sheep's-wool and wide-striped coarse cloth of the desert tribes sharing stall-space with the mist-weight silks and fine light linen of the river people, the tumultuous embroideries, sinuous animals and flowers of thread that had traveled from a strange and distant empire.

The scent of the market, nearly indescribable, a riot of offal and onions, thick cakes soaked in spiced honey, studded with nuts and dried fruits. Horses and baking bread, grilled meats and carefully tended vegetables. The endless perfume of flowers mingling with cones and piles of exquisite incense, precious scented oils, attar of rose, balms and fragrances and beeswax candles, the dry scents of papyrus and reed baskets, dried black figs and purple-dyed linen.

The sounds of happy people, amused or wry, light and pleasant, in many languages. The merchants and their customers alike, fat with good living, joking in slippery Greek or dark-spiced Egyptian, with so little of the solemn speech of Roman citizens, and less of the vulgar Latin of the sharp-faced legionnaires.

It was always a mystery, to him, to walk among them and remain unrecognized, to speak to the people in his clumsy Greek without terrifying them into silence. When the sun fell sharp behind the crimson slash of the horizon, and the night rose like a curtain all around us, we drank wine like madder velvet from silver bowls, drank deep. Our lips and fingers stained with pomegranate. Those nights are gone, torn like wet papyrus into shreds against the howling desert wind.

Today my harbor is full of quinqueremes and libernians and there is no bulwark against the legions. Our armies have joined with Octavian's. The remaining men mutter lies to my husband. People fleeing in the streets squeal that I have betrayed him. Hissing like snakes, their whispers tell him that I have abandoned him as I have abandoned all my husbands, condemning him to a traitor's fate. I cannot be here when he returns; how could I face that pain, the wrath of perceived righteousness?

I built the two of us a tomb. I wanted to sleep there with him, forever, the safest place in Alexandria, filled to the roof-beams with the treasures of Egypt and the Ptolemies, the pharaohs of Upper and Lower Egypt, buttery gold and carnelian. Malachite and lapis gleaming in every corner, jasper and turquoise and the silver bowls that once held our wine. I can send another messenger to my husband, can bid him come, meet me in the home I built for our long night together, but will he listen?

I pull away from the wide window, kohl-dark tears smudged along my cheekbones. The view of my desecrated harbor is spur enough to order my maids away, to pull my last pieces of jewelry out of trunks. I look in the mirror and see, truly, at last. The Pharaoh of Egypt must always descend into the underworld, must weigh a heavy heart on golden scales. I will go to my tomb alone, though it is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I will await my husband, and we will prevail or die. We have no choice.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kurt challenged me with "It was the last thing I would ever want to do, but I didn't have any other choice." and I challenged Mary Terrani with "King of Pentacles".

This is tagged "well-mined myth" for a reason. I wouldn't even call it "historical fiction". Can't hit a home run every week, I suppose.

Articulate

2011-11-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

If you missed my article on the awdl gywydd for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Kate Dempsey has graciously reposted it over at Writing.ie's guest blog, Poetic License. I meant to tell you this last month, but somehow it slipped my mind. Many thanks, Kate!!

Your modestly miraculous Captain,
Grace

haunt

2011-11-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

On the days I find
myself thinking of you, there
might be autumn in
the air, or spring, or any
number of times in between.

Harbinger

2011-11-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

She's killing baby cockroaches with disgusted glee in her shitty third-floor walkup, for what seems like the eight millionth time, when she hears his familiar step on the wrought-iron stairs. She smiles to herself as she washes her hands in scalding hot water from the tap and grabs her good bottle of gin from the top of the refrigerator on her way out the door.

"Hey," she yells down to the second landing, "didn't I tell you I never wanted to see you again?"

He stops dead in his tracks and looks up at her, blue eyes wide and startled in his face as his mouth drops open. "I recall something like that, I guess," he says, unsure but still game.

"Well, I suppose this gin won't drink itself. Got any cigarettes?"

He doesn't answer, but holds up two packs of her favorite. It's a peace offering, of sorts. She grins down at him and slides her bare feet into a pair of ridiculous cork-heeled sandals. She pulls the elastic out of her walnut-brown hair and runs the fingers of her right hand through the locks, primping for just a second while he's still out of sight. She smooths her oversized sweater down over her skirt and then bounds down the last flight of stairs, gin in hand.

He's still waiting on the second-floor landing, holding two cigarettes in his mouth. He watches her run down the stairs and lights both, holding the second one out as she skids to a stop just inches away.

"Hi," she says, leaving a multitude of words unsaid, reaching out to take the cigarette he's offering and smiling up into his endless blue eyes.

"Hey," he replies, and wraps his arms around her as she smokes silently, the two of them leaning on the railing. She pitches the cigarette butt over the side and turns back in, pressing her face into his chest.

"Let's go for a walk," she says, muffled by his jacket. She grabs him by the wrist and begins to pull away, lacing her fingers in his even as she starts to head down the stairs to the street. He finishes his cigarette, flicks the butt away, and lights two more. They walk close together, hands linked, arms touching and shoulders pressed together, until they leave her block. Then they let go, in case someone that knows them might see. Although it's not so much her friends she has to worry about, but his, or worse, his girlfriend's. They walk a few blocks in silence, passing the bottle back and forth.

"Could be trouble," he says, finally.

"Could be," she replies, and takes a long swallow of gin.

breath

2011-11-01T21:59:00.000-07:00

Panic has no name
in the brightness of the day.
It just lives inside.

Agave

2011-10-31T18:32:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the desert scrub with my sisters all around, drank the cold light of the stars like water in winter, grew tall and strong. I took up the pen at twelve and tore songs out of my heart like leaves from my sisters, leaves we would twist and knot into thread and clothing and homes. Women dressed properly, then, tying their headdresses in gaudy knots, and made pulque in the shelter of rocky overhangs.

I could not. I tore at the earth and watered fields of doomed flowers with droplets flung from bloody fingernails. I cried out to Xochipilli Chicomexochitl with every breath I took, and he took notice. He followed me down into the hardpan waste and kissed my scars and open wounds, the scraped flesh quivering under his painted lips like the great serpent, rising in flame from under the world.

"Mayahuel," he sang to me, "one night you will bear fruit and disappear into the earth, and all the world will mourn the loss of my favorite poet." His singing melted my bones like boiling chocoatl and we were fallen down onto the ground again, lost in the night all around us, snarling and tearing at each other like jaguars.

I gave birth to many daughters and suckled them, fitting delicate words into the puzzle of strict meter all the while. My flower prince went singing into the night, the songs I made for him sweet on his lips like the aguamiel in my heart. My children went out into the desert scrub to drink the cold light of the stars like water in winter, and I began to lose my language. I wrote in rhyme and in free verse, hymns and platitudes and holy beckoning. I let blood from my wrists in the hopes that it would sing in the silence, but it fell flat to the earth and sluggishly dried, still refusing to speak.

I churned within, seeking aubade or threnody, wailing couplets, unrecognized, into the dust storms blowing through our desolate home. I began to diminish.

One day, when the sun blazed down, drying the shine from my thick black hair, I lay flat on the ground. I pressed my scarred hands into the red dust and began to stroke pictures of the words I still wanted to sing. I could no longer rhyme, could no longer call up jewel-like painted miniatures from the arid scrub, the wizened twigs that were all the words left to me. I turned on my side and wept bloody tears, all the moisture my body still contained flowing into the dust, sticking to my burning skin. I gave up.

The earth rose up around me like an embrace, its benevolent chill soothing my blackened flesh. I could not sing its praises, nor tell it my story, nor even weep. My body drifted deeper with every hour, my head and hair pressing out of the ground like my doomed gardens bearing fruit at last. I was dry of all meaning, drained of all my life's work, and I was alone.

When Mictecacihuatl rose from the mud beside my face, her flayed bones sheltered me from the heat of the sun, and I saw her jaw open to devour the light. I could not say, then, why it was so beautiful. No matter how hard I tried, I could no longer wrap my tongue around the iambic pentameter of the comfort of darkness, standing tall against the dreadful light.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Indie Adams challenged me with "No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't get my head around iambic pentameter" and I challenged Lance with "The apothecary's daughter."

the last ritual

2011-10-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

lovely recoloring of the Rider-Waite deck

illustration by Pamela Colman Smith,

found here.

Woodsmoke and bone, raw sugarcane,
spitting splinters into the rain,
on the waning of the moon
we wait, fight impatience. Resist
our baser urges. They exist
who missed, who set out too soon.

I light the fire with my cut hair,
each snaking curl a brazen flare
ringing an alarum blast.
This blazing fast consumes the bone
and leaves only the dark. The Crone
upon her throne sits at last.

The herbs well-pounded, cold and green,
taste of slow death, of sights unseen
by man or wean. How they cry!
As I've become, I laugh aloud.
I stand so tall, inside Her shroud;
hush the crowd--and prophesy.

Questions answered or denied flat,
all cards are laid out on the mat.
Hear that? The barrier thins.
Circled magic wins over all;
the coming year awaits our call.
With nightfall, the song begins.

The rain now stopped, the air is fell
with mist and life and fear of hell.
Hollow shell of me, disperse
into the dawning of the year.
I try to breathe it deep, but hear
our end clear in chanted verse.

Second attempt at a cywydd llosgyrnog for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Somehow, they all end up as aubade.

For my beloved coven, celebrating Samhain for the first time without me. I miss you all.

grasp

2011-10-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

I hate the steady
drain of time, slipping over
the daylight's edge with
aplomb. It tastes of secrets,
candyfloss that melts away.

Eurydice at Dawn

2011-10-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

"'Oh, I don't know,' he said. 'Πελλαίου βοῦς μέγας εἰν Ἀίδη.' This was something to the effect that, in the Underworld, a great ox costs only a penny, but I knew what he meant and in spite of myself I laughed. There was a tradition among the ancients that things were very cheap in Hell. " --Donna Tartt, "The Secret History"

I know all the things you've never told me. I know the late nights and the gnawing feeling in your chest, the dreams from which you wake, clawing your way out of tangled bedclothes. Gasping for air.

I know the jobs you've taken and the ones you've refused. I know the desperate twin chains of inertia and fear, the fear of hurting someone who truly cares for you. Sitting up at night, you think of me, but only when you can't distract yourself. I'm still waiting, though. I've been down here a long time, but I'm doing okay. Getting around only costs me a penny, and everyone in this place knows just what I'm going through. I'd never leave you if I had any say in the matter, you know.

Some nights I think you'll find your way home to me, follow your heart down here. Then I could make my escape. I could touch your hand and all the years we've been apart could dissolve into nothing more than the swirling rainbow film on a puddle of water in the parking lot. I could make you remember. I could make you forget.

I remember you, upright in that leather jacket. I played at vegetarian disgust and secretly longed to be folded into your arms. I didn't actually care that you were wearing a dead cow. I have this thing for writers and percussionists. The craziest guys come down here, and it's true, I have my fun. You're not here, so, it's true. Every time I close my eyes, though, it's you. Always you. I wake up from my dreams in tears, muffling myself in the pillow so I don't disturb whichever one is in my bed this time. They don't matter, only the dreams. I dream of you and your hollow days, pushing on in denial. Other times it's of the past, of the comfort of apples, the weariness of love.

I think you are refusing my calls, refusing to believe that I could still be here, burying yourself in the meaningless pursuits of the upper side. Cowardly, clinging to the sunlight you never loved. You don't even play your music anymore. You never write to me, for me, of me. I think you've given up hope. I think you've sold the dream for her scraps of passion, and worse. Even in a Hades market, I think you're selling the dream too cheap.

For this week's IndieInk Writing Challenge, Billy Flynn challenged me with "Selling the dream cheap", and I challenged Diane with "Old Scratch and El Salto del Colacho. Make it funny if you can--if you can't, make it terrifying."

There is an interpretation of the Orpheus myth that colors him a coward, afraid to die to be with Eurydice forever. Instead, he defied the gods to retrieve her, because he wasn't ready to leave the upper world. I find this rather less romantic than you might think.

Jack

2011-10-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

Scrape it carefully,
this orb of autumn's dreaming,
carved face, mirrored mask.

apothecary

2011-10-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

The scent of rain and stormy air,
a Pumpkin King's candle-lit stare.
Candy corn, preserved, bottled
with hot toddy and some cut grass,
one blazing leaf stuffed in the glass.
Then age the label mottled.

tapped

2011-10-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

sticky amber and sweet,
gouged hollow and still too full.
it's not an oxymoron. it's
the way of things

when the future is unsettled
and time stretches out, gumming
up the works like resin,
pitch perfect.

I boil over, sometimes,
and you reduce to syrup,
that dark hint of winter nights
flavoring all I do.

method

2011-10-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Old dogs to new tricks,
like ducks to strawberry jam,
are perhaps a bit
slow to take. Yet applying
jam to tricks is just as wrong.

Annexed

2011-10-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

It just happens, one day. You're walking down the street and the kid who mows the neighborhood lawns over summer break is walking ahead of you, his iPod jammed in the pocket of a pair of weirdly furry pants. You start to yell hi, but when he turns around he's had those weird nubby horns installed under the skin and giant gauged ear flaps. Plus, those weird goat-footed boots, just like Lady Gaga? Kids these days.

Then you walk into the bakery and the nice ladies who run the place have been replaced. The woman behind the counter tries to sell you New and Improved Bread, made from a giant puffball mushroom, but you hate mushrooms, and you just wanted some toast. She wrinkles her entire face at you when you ask for brown bread, the kind with a little salt sprinkled on top, and tells you she might as well keep Cold Iron in the shop if you want her to sell that kind of crap.

You're confused, because isn't bread usually baked in an oven? And wouldn't that be hot iron? You shake your head and go around the corner to the florist's, but the door is locked and there's a sign on the door. "Closed indefinitely by Royal Edict," which is truly odd, because your country hasn't had royalty for hundreds of years.

It's not a great day. It's like everyone you know has up and moved, overnight, and a lot of strange characters have taken over. Still, you have to eat, so you head over to the grocery store. It's next to the elementary school, which is even louder than usual. In the playground, they appear to be playing some kind of complex war game, with blue face paint, bows and arrows, even a cute little blowgun or two. You wonder why you never had friends like these, who would pretend to shoot you and then be patient while you acted out your thrilling death scene. Some of those kids are really hamming it up, too--convulsions and flailing around on the ground like landed fish--mostly the ones who were on the wrong end of the blowgun "dart". It's pretty cute.

The school bell rings, and you turn into the grocery store parking lot. The recess war looks to have been decided in the blue-painted team's favor, but the ones who are left lying on the ground are really committed to their death scenes. You remember how hard you played at that age, and smile to yourself as you head into the store. On your way in, you pass that wizened old school bus driver. Smiling and nodding, you head over to the organic produce and start picking through this week's crop of tomatoes. Your hand on the cool, dry surface of the crimson tomato reminds you of something, but it can't be that important, or you would remember, right?

You wander the aisles, putting into your basket anything that catches your eye, and with a start, you realize that the hat your old bus driver was wearing is an oddly rich shade of red. Plus, wasn't it just a trucker's cap last week? This one was pointed, and seemed a little damp. Sodden, even, is the word that comes first to mind.

You check out at self-service and stop making eye contact with the other customers, because the anxiety is kicking in again. You always feel like you're the center of hostile attention. Time to get home. Heading out, you see the bus driver standing outside his bright yellow school bus, all the tiny blue-painted savages lined up to board. The kids still lying on the playground, those must be waiting for rides home. Funny how they haven't gotten up yet, though.

You're walking past the school bus, and you tip a salute to your old bus driver, when you realize it's not your old bus driver at all, and his hat, that strangely pointed hat, is dripping slowly. You're walking on past, in a hurry to get home, because things have started to feel really weird and you'd like to get to your medication, and it's then you realize that he isn't a man at all, but a Redcap, his teeth and fingernails and hat all dripping thick blood the color of old rust.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Chaos Mandy challenged me with "Fae and Children", and I challenged Cheney with "God's away on business."

This is not technically a ghost story, sadly--the prompt was pretty specific. I'm okay with a delightfully murderous gang of pixies and a Redcap or two, instead. I hope you are, too.

waning

2011-10-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

The moon rides out on
cloudy trails, its gleaming back
a lucent puzzle.

The Lazy Fisherman

2011-10-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

In a certain place, at a certain time, lived a fisherman and his wife. They were a poor but happy couple whose home was quite near the Imperial compound. The only characteristic that marred their marital bliss was the unfortunate fact of the fisherman's laziness. The fisherman's wife did her best to keep it a secret, but the neighbors all knew, and pitied her.

"What a hateful thing, O husband," she would wail upon his return each night. "Today the noodle vendor told me of a thing that I would believe impossible! And yet, it is true." The fisherman's wife would tell her husband of a different celestial punishment visited upon the lazy each and every night, until even her deep well of invention began to run dry. It made no difference, alas, and her husband continued to be known all through their village as the lazy fisherman.

At the same time, gossip reported that a small pond in the shrine next to the Imperial compound was close to overflowing with large and fat fish, the likes of which had never been seen. It was said that this was proof that the kami favored the masters of the shrine, and that luck was sure to follow those who visited and paid their respects. One afternoon, as the fisherman remained abed, he heard a conversation from outside.

"So many fish I have never seen in all my days! The smallest one was as large as my forearm," said the noodle vendor, whose forearms were wide and bulging with the exercise of pulling the stock of fresh soba and udon. "I offered a coin to the shrine and on my way out, an enormous carp leaped into the air, its golden scales shining like the sun."

"I, too, visited the shrine last week," interjected the salt woman. "The fish were leaping in greeting, and the shrine maidens were dancing with joy. A more beautiful sight I have never seen."

The lazy fisherman sat bolt upright. The long walk to the lake in which he was usually forced to cast his nets would be no more. If only he could find a way to fish in the shrine pond! He was not a man who was much concerned with the gods, and not one to think about consequences.

The fisherman leapt out of bed and began to check his nets for holes. His wife, startled by this unusual flurry of activity, hurried out of the kitchen.

"Husband, you have risen! And a full two hours earlier than usual! Can it be that you have decided to honor the gods and live a more fulfilling life?"

"Cease your intemperate noise, wife, and sit with me. We must repair all these nets by sunset. I go to fish in the shrine's pond this evening, and with such a heavy catch, they must remain well-knotted."

His wife sank to her knees, her mouth agape. "Have you lost your mind, O husband? If you dare to kill the living luck of the shrine the gods will surely curse us all!"

Scoffing, the lazy fisherman continued his work without her help. He repaired his nets long into the twilight, while she wept and wailed about ill luck and disaster. When the moon rose, he bundled his belongings upon his back and set out on the short walk to the shrine, still ignoring her warnings.

At the top of the hill, where the road split between the forest and the shrine, a large rock marked the fork. As he passed the rock, he began to hear a soft weeping, and turned in surprise to see a beautiful girl sitting in its shadow. Her soft black hair swept down in long waves around her slender hands, which were pressed against her face as she wept. The fisherman shifted his weight from side to side as he thought about the large catch awaiting him at the shrine, but his conscience, usually so silent, spurred him to stop for a moment.

"What is wrong, O maiden? Can I be of some service?" He was careful to address her respectfully, as her clothes were of the highest quality. He began to wonder if she had accidentally wandered out of the Imperial compound. "Though I may be unworthy to speak to you, I do not wish to leave you unattended in the night. Pray, O maiden, lift your head and let me know how to serve you," he begged.

The girl turned away, still weeping into her hands, and her shoulders began to shake even harder. "I cannot tell you, fisherman, for I see you are on your way to a heavy catch," she whispered.

The fisherman gritted his teeth and attempted to sound insouciant. "I have more time to help than I have to fish. Please tell me what is wrong."

"Very well, O fisherman, I shall reveal to you my secret," she spoke, only a little louder than before. "I mourn for the fish you are about to slaughter, for I am the guardian of the shrine pond!" As she said these words, she dropped her lovely hands from her face, and the fisherman fell back in horror, for the front of her head was as smooth and featureless as an egg. With a shriek, he dropped his nets and ran for home.

As he dashed down the main thoroughfare of the village, his feet tangled in each other and he fell, sprawling, at the feet of the man who ran the ramen shop.

"There, friend, where do you run with such speed?" The ramen vendor reached down to help up the lazy fisherman, his wide, friendly face round and smiling. "Your wife has been weeping and worrying all night. Come into my shop and rest before you go home, or you will frighten her even more!"

"Oh, thank you," the fisherman panted, unaccustomed to such exertion. "You will never believe what I saw tonight!"

The ramen vendor placed a bowl of soup in front of the fisherman, soup so hot and fragrant with red chili oil that the comforting aroma drove away the fear in the fisherman's heart. As he sipped the soup, he began to tell his strange story, slowly relaxing under his friend's familiar gaze.

"Your wife warned you about intruding on the peace of the shrine," the ramen vendor laughed. "And you were lucky enough to meet with the guardian before you killed the fish, weren't you?"

"Well, yes, but have you ever heard of such a creature?" the fisherman asked.

"Oh, my, yes. I've heard of a spirit who can take on the face of a familiar person and one who can wipe it away. There are many spirits in these hills, you know," the ramen vendor continued. A strange feeling began to rise in the fisherman's throat.

The man's hand rose to stroke at his chin as he began to tell a tale of the vengeful Noppera-bō, the faceless ones. The fisherman watched in dread as, with each stroke of the hand, the ramen vendor's once-familiar face disappeared before the fisherman's horrified eyes.

The fisherman fell backwards out of the ramen shop, still-hot soup spreading across the counter, a red sheen of oil staining his hands and clothes. He scrambled away crabwise as the ramen vendor approached slowly. The faceless one drifted closer, his feet no longer seeming to touch the ground, and a low moan emerged from the blank skin. Just before it came close enough to touch, the fisherman's nerve broke completely, and he jumped up and ran home.

He collapsed onto the porch, where his wife was still sobbing about ill-luck and curses. His heart was pounding in his chest like a taiko drum and he was covered in the dust of the street and still-fragrant chili oil. His wife arose in a hurry and ran to comfort him, but upon hearing his tale, jumped away.

"You failed to heed the guardian of the shrine?" She raised her hands to her face in shock and it melted away like cold fog on a sunny morning. A shriek issued forth from the pale and empty oval of her suddenly formless skin, and the fisherman's heart finally gave out.

This is a famous Japanese folktale, though I've cobbled together a few iterations of it. Editing help was kindly given, when I ran into a pronoun situation, by Maren and Wendryn of IndieInk.org. Our forum rocks. Thank you so much!

empire

2011-10-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

There is a song I hear, here
where blacking fear does follow;
a shadow deep-lodged in truth,
a fruit left sleeping hollow.

"κυρία, ἐ," on each note,
quotidian insistence--
"In the midst of revelry,
the pity of existence."

I will not sing along, though
it lays me low with sorrow;
cannot feel that hope is lost,
though at what cost tomorrow?

Second attempt at an awdl gywydd for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. The Greek should read "Kyria, e," a riff on the Kyrie eleison, recast for a Creatrix who, I'd imagine, might be a little disappointed in our current state of affairs.

resentment

2011-10-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

It's time for candy
apples and crisp scarlet leaves,
pumpkin carving and
ghost stories by the fire,
not this surly sweltering.

Good Samaritan

2011-10-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

George didn't stop to think much about it, when he saw the girl in the dress. Looked like she'd been left out in the middle of nowhere by her prom date. He didn't know much about dresses, but he could tell when things were expensive, and this girl was wrapped in a good chunk of change along with some flowy purple stuff. He pulled right over, because if he'd ever had a daughter, he would have wanted someone to do the same.

"Hey, you okay?" He stepped down from the high cab of his rig and held up his hands. "I saw you walking, and I don't think a lot of cars come through here. You need to use a phone or something?" He was careful not to advance on her. With the rep some long-haul truckers had, he didn't want to scare her into the woods. "I've got a cell. You don't have to get in the cab or anything, or talk to me if you don't want to. You just looked like you could use a hand."

She frowned up at him, heels half-sunk in the mud of the shoulder. "I don't even know where I am," she confessed. "I was with Johnny and then the car broke down, and Mom's not answering her phone."

He relaxed a little. "Well, can I do anything for you? I know they say never ride with a stranger, but if you've got a phone and no one's headed out here for you I can at least get you to the 24-hour diner in Bucker. There'll be lots of people, and you can wait for your parents there, maybe?" He was worried about coming on too strong, but he really didn't want to leave a teenager on the side of the road so late at night.

"I just live off Exit 94. It's pretty close to the diner. I don't know why no one's answering at home," she fussed, pulling a surprisingly big mobile phone out of her little purse. "Is there any way you can just take me there? It's a pretty well-maintained road and I know my dad will give you gas money."

If he doesn't shoot me first, George thought, but merely said, "I can definitely take you there, no gas money needed. Do you need to call Johnny? Should we pick him up, too? How far away is the car?"

She shook her head. "I'm never talking to him again. He can find his own way home, he's probably got the car running again already." She picked her way over to the cab of his truck and glared at the display on her retro phone. "I can't believe I missed my senior prom because of this!"

George tried not to smile as he climbed back into the truck. "Well, your parents will be glad to see you home early, I guess." He leaned over to help her into the cab, her small hands gripped tight around his large one as he pulled her in. "Hey, you're freezing," he said. "Let's get you some heat." He started the truck, its patient rumble overwhelming his hesitation at having a strange teenage girl along for the ride. He cranked up the heat and, with a muffled exclamation, eeled around to rummage in the back. "Here, I knew this was kicking around somewhere," he laughed as he handed her a huge yellow-checked down coat. She took it, smiling, and wrapped it around herself like a blanket.

"Thanks. It was getting kinda chilly out there, huh?"

"Yeah," he replied, and busied himself with adjusting the heat. He signaled his turn onto the road as if there were twenty cars waiting and pulled back out. The familiar lull of highway driving soothed his nerves, and after about fifteen miles, he absentmindedly flipped on the radio. Ole Hank was singing, and George glanced quick over at the girl to see if she might mind the twang, but she had put her phone away and was leaning against the big window. He thought she might be dozing and turned the radio down a little. It was just a few more exits. He could wake her up once they got closer to the diner.

"I'm not asleep," she muttered. "I hate sleeping on the road. I told you where I live, right? It's about a mile past the diner you mentioned." After she gave him directions, they fell silent once more.

Ev'rything's agin me and it's got me down, Ole Hank sang plaintively into the night as George crossed the Big River bridge, just one exit away from the girl's. If I jumped in the river I would prob'ly drown. He looked reflexively over the guardrails, the moonlight shimmering on the fast-moving river, and shuddered. No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world al-- Grimacing, George reached over quick and snapped off the radio.

"Not such a good song for a moonlight drive, huh?" He grinned and looked over at the passenger seat, only to slam on the brakes as he realized the girl was no longer there. He backed up as fast as he could without fishtailing and jumped out of the cab. He ran frantically over to the bridge, leaning over the guardrail and scanning the river for some sign of her. His coat, her flowing dress, anything. She'd have to be visible. But he'd never heard the door open, he hadn't heard anything! He ran back to search the cab of his truck, and found nothing. In a daze, he climbed back into the cab, buckled his seatbelt, and headed on into town.

George was jolted from his reverie when he realized he'd absentmindedly followed her directions straight to what he assumed was her home. For one frantic instant, he thought about peeling back out of there, but it was too late. The house was lighting up. It looked as if they'd heard the truck and were looking for the source of the commotion. With one helpless glance at the still-empty passenger seat, he stepped down from the truck and walked up to the porch.

"Can I help you, son?"

George started, unnerved by the voice from a seemingly empty porch, and there was a chuckle.

A man probably ten years older than George himself stepped out of the shadows and down to the walk. "I'm Erica's dad," he said. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

George began to sweat. "Well, I don't know her name, I mean, yes sir, but--"

"Don't worry, son. Happens every year," the older man said. "Picked her up outside of Bucker, right?"

"Well, yes, I mean, she said the car broke down. I didn't want to leave her," George said plaintively.

"Her ma and I would sure appreciate that, son. It's all right. Then you went over the Big River bridge and she was gone?"

George opened his mouth to answer, but no words followed. He stammered for a second or two, and blurted, "This happens every year? What the hell?! Is this some kind of joke?"

Erica's father rubbed at his eyes with a slightly trembling hand and sighed. "My daughter was killed in a car crash ten years ago, son. Her boyfriend was taking her to the senior prom and someone ran them off the road. I guess he was killed on impact, but the paramedics said Erica had been trapped in the car. She tried to call us on her new mobile phone, too. Hell of a thing, to hear your baby girl breathed her last calling you for help, and you didn't hear."

"This is a joke," George growled. "I don't have time for this, I'm on a schedule." He began to stalk back to his truck, fuming.

"I wish it were a joke," the older man said. "It ain't all that funny to talk to people every year as swears they were giving your girl a ride home, only to find she's disappeared partway home." He shook his head dolefully.

"Hell of a thing," he repeated as he turned back to his porch and tottered slowly up the stairs as George fumbled with the keys to his rig.

"Wait a second, son," he heard a moment later, and the older man came rushing down his porch stairs again.

George saw him coming and rolled his eyes. He wasn't going to be taken in by whatever scam these hill folk were trying to pull. And he was out a pretty pricey down coat, too, however this stupid trick worked. He was willing to bet he'd never get it back, either. The old man was tapping on the truck door now. Ridiculous, he thought, but grudgingly rolled down his window.

"Churchyard's just a mile down, you don't believe me," the older man panted. "You go on over there. My Erica's in the back left corner. Got a little rosebush behind the stone. You go on, you'll see."

I am sure the hell not going to go poking around in a graveyard at this hour, George thought. Then again, it's on the way to the Interstate, and I could call in a report on these people for fucking with my schedule. Why the hell not? He backed onto the road and gunned it for the church.

Thirty seconds later, he was poking around the overgrown graveyard, emergency flashlight in hand, when he spotted them. First the rosebush, white roses, really pretty but kind of creepy under the full moon's light. Next it was his yellow-checked down coat, folded neatly on the grave.

The month of ghost stories marches on! I hope I didn't stretch the prompt too far, as this was the first thing I thought of upon reading the challenge...

For the Indie Ink writing challenge this week, femmefauxpas challenged me with: "It had all happened exactly a year ago. Or had it?"

I challenged Sarah Cass with "Knife skills."

Foreboding

2011-10-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

The moon is full, white and wild,
its bony smile malice-taut,
all a-brim with ill-laid plans.
In its hands, a bubbling pot

foretells quick death. Cats and kings
alike hear it sing its song,
its ode to chill havoc wrought
with grievous thought, bleak and wrong.

This rather overblown and Octoberesque awdl gywydd was written for this week's Format Challenge. Check my post at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads for the rules and link up!

time travel

2011-10-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

I travel through time
only one way, facing front.
Don't leave me behind.

Hell Mouth

2011-10-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

Your face is smudged with sleep, each careless line written coarsely on skin that should remain unchanged, and I hate you. Your eyes tight closed, peaceful. You appear to be lost in an infinity of pleasant dreams, and you are curled so around her that I cannot tell where you end and where she begins. Her hair is sun-gold and stick-straight, as far from my dark curls as it is possible to get, as if you looked for the one woman in all the world who didn't remind you of me. That ought to be a relief, and it is not. I fling myself at the bed every night, but the two of you only shiver and cuddle closer. I hate you.

The taste of apples in autumn, plucked sun-warm from the tree, crisp days welling up in every juicy bite, I remember that. I remember the way you held my hand in the orchard, the warmth of your lips on my cold face, then the warmth of the blush rising straight into my hair. Oh, god, the way good vodka evaporated in my mouth, straight off my tongue, as if it had run straight into my blood. The dizziness of a few drinks the same as the rush of falling into your arms. Silk on my skin and velvet under my fingertips and look who is in my bed.

Then, I claw at her face and she smiles in her sleep, unable to see what my fingernails have become. Her blissful face is the curse of all my endless days. My hair sweeps the floor clean after I wash it with a bloody ocean of tears, I scream out strings of vile words, I hate--and if you stir, you only move to close the curtain against what you imagine to be a tiny draft. Some night, you will wake, I know it. You will wake and see me in the moonlight, smell lilac and woodsmoke, and I will scream until your hair turns white, white, white as the bone-bleak pool of the full moon, and I will tear you apart, I will bathe in the black pool of your blood under the unlidded eye of the heavens. I will reach you with these fingernails, one day.

I hate you a little less than I hate her, because it's you I love. You're holy basil and cut grass, opium and caramel, the electric air of the pause before the storm, and I am hungry. You laughed when my mother told you to burn our letters and offer hell money at the altar, you laughed and joked about being fresh off the boat, but she knew. She saw my face in the glass and my long, long hair, wrapped like a noose around your stinking neck. She sees me still, and cries, and I eat her sadness. I lick the tears from her face and the nourishment from her food and this is how I survive.

I survive to reach you. Oh, how I hate you, my love, and I am so hungry. I will reach you.

you and I

2011-10-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Can two strangling vines
exist? Not in the same place,
though our roots tangle.
One will win. One will thrive, yet
the other cannot survive.

Ex Machina

2011-10-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

"There was nothing for it. I could see them approaching, exactly as I expected! I simply had to act on my impulses or else I'd--"

I shook my head impatiently. "Computer, stop program. Run diagnostic level theta six."

The computer chimed quietly. "Level theta six diagnostic complete, Ben. No errors detected."

"Well, that can't be right! Listen to the dialogue. Run diagnostic again."

Another chime followed. "No errors detected, Ben. Program has not degenerated. Dialogue intact."

I jerked my head out of its resting place atop my arms and glared, hot-eyed, at the terminal. "This is ridiculous, computer. Find the source of the dialogue and retrace." As my desktop hummed quietly, I pulled out my hard-copied notes. I'd gone over these a million times but this time, a footnote caught my attention. Gregor Samsa, The Metamorphosis. By an auteur designated "Franz Kafka". "Never heard of 'em," I muttered. The computer heard me and thrummed expectantly.

"Source confirms dialogue's accuracy. Continue playback?"

"Oh, fine--yes, computer, continue playback. Please."

"There I go again, being overtaken by an urge. What now? Will I really? But then, won't I become nothing more than a criminal? But just what is a criminal anyway? And--"

"Seriously?"

"I don't understand the query, Ben."

"Computer, identify source of current dialogue."

"Yes, Ben. Source of current dialogue is Web user Drusil Renfield, ID 2308/507WWIA53233, designation GregorInsekt. Affiliation unknown. On lockdown until 41013.7 for assault on a senior officer. Your file is cross-referenced with the prisoner's as a result of your position as counsel for the defense. More?"

"Thank you, computer, I am well aware of my reasons for having to listen to this tripe. I still think it's gone garbage somewhere in the copying. Skip to the end and let's get this review over with."

"Last paragraph, Ben. Going to record of defendant's testimony. Voice and video available."

"Yes, computer--show the video, instead. It's not that you don't have a lovely voice..."

"Affirmative, Ben. Video replay beginning."

The screen leaned haphazardly against my wall, waiting for me to install it properly. Its serene blue glow was shortly replaced by the visage of a deeply unfortunate-looking human. Unfortunate-looking, how, I couldn't tell you. It was something in the skewed geography of his face, the planes under his skin, maybe.

His grey eyes bulged impossibly from his face, and his skin was patchy and coarse. His hair frizzed out at all angles, and his mouth gaped horribly, silver drool collecting in the trough of his wasted lower lip. I could see no humanity in this man's eyes. He looked like a burnout, or worse, a spaz, a person so invested in life on the Web that he'd let his real life shrivel into nothing.

He was talking, I guess, but it was more like a string of unrelated words. Not gibberish, exactly, more like very convincing lorem ipsum, and every few words, a flood of saliva spilled from his mouth. He'd jerk his withered arm up and swipe at his chin, the clawed hand affording him a few dry moments and a few more mouthfuls of outlandish statement. He jabbered through all of the paragraphs the computer had already read to me, and the computer was right--there was no degeneration in the file. It was all in this creep's head.

"If desperation comes knocking on your door...what wouldn't you do to keep yourself sane? If indeed, this could be called sanity. In this world of chaos, busy laneways and cobblestones, anything could be called sane," he pointed out.

It seemed this was the end, and I was leaning forward to key in a rewind, when his butcher's eyes snapped forward, as if they were focusing directly on mine. Disconcerted, I jerked back and fell awkwardly into the chair. I felt his gaze like a punch to the midsection, so real that it took my breath. That was the end of the cast, though. Wincing, I thumbed off the screen, resolving it into its normal calm glow. The computer hummed quietly on the desk behind me, and I found myself convulsively wiping my chin.

"Anything could be sanity," I said. It felt different, voicing his crazy diatribe, letting it take shape on my tongue for a reason unknown even to myself. The more I parroted it, the farther it penetrated. It felt plausible. It felt familiar. I looked down at the notes on the desk and smiled for the first time all evening.

I'd been freed from the computer and reborn into a new host. In this world of chaos, anything was possible. Even me.

For the Indie Ink writing challenge this week, Tereasa Trevor challenged me with

"There was nothing for it. I could see a person approaching exactly as expected. I simply had to act on my impulses or else I'd...

There I go again, being overtaken by an urge. What now? Will I really? But then, won't I become nothing more than a criminal? But just what is a criminal anyway? And if desperation comes knocking on your door...what wouldn't you do to keep yourself sane. If indeed, this could be called sanity. In this world of chaos, busy laneways and cobblestones, anything could be called sane."

I challenged Reinaldo Martinez with "the physician of last resort".

studious

2011-10-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

The anxiety

expands, a balloon swelling

to consume each day.

Eternity

2011-10-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

"My hairbrush is gone again," she said, through a mouthful of bobby pins.

"Hmm?" He wasn't really paying attention to anything but the squat glass in front of him, squarish and green with numerous imperfections, cradled in his hands with a pool of slowly warming, caramel-colored whiskey nestled in its base.

"My brush. You know how I just bought another because I thought I'd lost the first? Well, this one's gone, too, and--"

She was off on another tirade, probably about the maid service or his brother or any stupid thing. I could see the careful lack of expression on his face from my hiding place in the corner. I remembered that expression. I knew it well from all the times I tried to speak to him as soon as he returned from the office. She was fighting a losing battle here. I could almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

She stabbed the last pin into her chignon and kept talking. It's really quite marvelous, I think, that he keeps picking these tiny tank-like girls, who are so adamant in their organization and their requirements for attention. Do they remind him of me? I don't think I was ever quite so needy, but they say everyone is blind to their own faults until we see them in others.

"And then Elizabeth said that she'd seen a girl who said that her cousin used to work for you and your second wife, the banker, right? Anyway, this cousin said that your second wife's belongings went missing in the exact same ways while she worked here, I think she said her name was Maria? Well, they're all named Maria, aren't they? And you switched maid services and she lost her job, yes, another sob story but I was wondering..."

Was that all in one breath? He's not even looking in her direction and she's talking like she'll be paid by words per minute.

Finally he looks up from his drink and I come out from behind the vanity. I know he sees me. He always has. His hands tighten around the glass, nearly hard enough to break it, and he tosses off the last swallow of whiskey in a rush. When he sets his glass down, hard, on the corner table, I drift over to stand next to him. I smile at him, and staring deep into his blue eyes, I begin to unbutton my dress, the high neck and ribbon collar sweeping down over my collarbone, the livid rope burn still standing out like a brand on my pale skin. It undulates like a finger of seaweed in a tidal pool with my silent laughter, moving up and down across my vocal cords.

It does still hurt, God knows why, but it's all worth it, every long night of moving stupid things around, all these years of having to stay so close to the man who threw me off the twenty-third floor with a nylon rope knotted clumsily around my neck.

It's all worth it, then, because his jaw tightens and in the next instant he interrupts her neverending flow of words and questions to bark, "I don't believe in ghosts." He's still looking at the mark around my neck and the best part is, she wasn't even talking about her missing hairbrush anymore, she's moved on to the weekend's social flurry, and now she looks as if she's wondering if the stories might be true. If the suicide of his first wife might have driven him a little crazy. Or if the other stories are true, and it wasn't a suicide at all.

I steal a couple of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and touch him on the back of his neck. He jumps slightly, and the sweat starts to bead on his temples.

"I'm going to the bar," he says, cutting her off again, and nearly running for the front door. She just stands there with her well-bred little mouth clamped shut, and I pick up a lighter from the hall table, because after all I've been through? At least I don't have to worry about lung cancer.

a letter home

2011-09-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

You don't sweat in the desert, not as much as you'd think. You're hot and grimy and you feel that drop of moisture begin to roll down...and then it's gone. It's a creeping feeling, wrong in all the ways we learned in our youth, though at least the bugs are a good deal less. It is never humid in these mountains, and we have not seen rain in months. We have to be careful around the tribes here, careful of the roads and paths and water rights. The right of a goat to drink before a man has caused more than one confrontation.

At night, we march. We set up camp in the bone-colored light of the desert dawn and it's then I have time to write to you, before the sun fully rises and we can do nothing but try to sleep in the oven of our tents, the sour wine and tough flatbread of our daily ration furring our mouths as we grope after dreams under a molten-silver sky.

I know you wanted me to resign after the last campaign. I hope you've forgiven me by now. I spent only six months in Persia, made such a tiny contribution to our new homeland...well, I wanted more. I want to heap glories on the name I've asked you to share. I didn't know I would be here so long. I don't regret coming, but I do regret our parting. It can't take much more than a year in this wasteland; the great Alexander rides as if Athena herself were at his side.

I wish I could have brought you instead of all the wine in the supply train, though the women of the camp would make you poor companions. They are desert women, draped in their fortunes, with hawklike grins hid behind a number of veils. The odd, muted clashing of their robes and coins reverberate in the silent morning as they go about the homely tasks of making bread, pressing the cheese from the whey for our nightly meal. The complaints of the goats, and the odd tribal tongue in which they are addressed, have become our lullabies instead of the poets in your courtyard.

I think of you constantly, and wish to have you by my side. I cannot see you here yet. Perhaps in the new Alexandria we will build upon the river, the one they call Oxus. The desert people have already named it in their own tongue as well, Ai Khanoum. I am told it means "Moon Lady", a fitting tribute to the future home of my own maiden. May Artemis guard you, my love, and Hera Teleia guide you soon to my side.

It took the army of Alexander the Great six months to conquer Persia (present-day Iran), and something like THREE YEARS to subdue what is now Afghanistan. The pre-Islamic history of the country is fascinating, and something I think a lot of people forget about, which is a shame.
This week's Indie Ink challenge came from Kevin Wilkes, who gave me this prompt: "Write a story about a soldier in Afghanistan".
I challenged Amy LaBonte with the prompt "You only love me when you're leaving".

parfumerie

2011-09-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

Stifle the nutmeg and bring out rich leather, weave in notes of dying hay and cold stars.

It is still too warm here to hope to catch autumn's scent, the bitter chill and crackling sounds. It is the end of summer of all our end of days, here, so far away from dim nights lit by poison-green firefly flashes and a single kiss in the darkest corner of the porch.

Every overheated day I weave another daisy chain of dull words, despite the heaviness, the dreary humidity. I want book-weather, knitting-weather, bright-orange and musk-weather. Pumpkin pie and ginger cookies, ground whole green tea leaves untouched by snowy sugars. I want the mossy drip and drizzle of what passes for winter, here on the wrong side of the world. I want the rubber scent of rain boots, the taste of forgetting, the joy of scattering crystal drops from copper curls.

I want New Orleans in October, but I will settle for graveyard dust and marigold petals, cigarette smoke and thick rum that is as old as I am, black lace stockings and a fistful of candy corn.

remember

2011-09-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

Inchoate still, a longing that grows
unbearable with the heaviness of time,
as swift as, from mountains, any snow-melt flows,
inchoate. Still, a longing that grows
is hot and ridged; like an old scar, it quietly shows
hints of its existence. It prophesies decline,
inchoate still--but a longing that grows
unbearable, with the heaviness of time.

but that was a long time ago

2011-09-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

the singing crickets
and bitter scent of autumn
conspire to break me.

discrepancies

2011-09-27T18:32:00.000-07:00

Come and find me, dear Doctor Sleep,
and I'll press my poison into your heart.
I require a dram to fall into dreaming deep,
lest they come and find me. Dear Doctor Sleep,
I'm afraid of the blade and of the final leap;
I'm certain to need your delicate art.
Come and find me, dear Doctor Sleep,
and press me like poison into your heart.

This week's format is the triolet. Here's my first attempt at the form for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, with a little inspiration from my hero, Stephen King, who refuses to get out of my head.

mob rule

2011-09-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

shake me to the core.
words beaten into weapons
jump into the crowd.

your fire sparks more,
a resolution of truth
lodged in every heart

that returns, now pressed
into remembrance, into
the blazing future.

Green Harvest

2011-09-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

"Jesus said, 'I am the vine, and you are the branches,' but I am in a position to tell you this statement was not entirely accurate. The Old Testament brings up vines a lot, the Chosen People being vines and wheat ears and, I don't know, whatever else the writer was eating for lunch that day. Ridiculousness. Even if you leave the Eucharist out of this, we still go back to the Greeks, all the way back to whichever tribes settled down and planted. I probably don't have to tell you about wine as the sacred blood of Dionysus--unless they lost or dropped that aspect of the Mysteries? I don't keep up with current events in archaeology, to be perfectly honest. Even with the internet, I've been so wound up with business for the last forty years that I only have the sketchiest of ideas about what you people think you know. Not even mentioning the amount of sheer physical effort that running this place still takes.

I mean, it's a big family, it's not like I have to do it alone, but someone has to be in charge, right? Well, I've always been assertive. It was one thing when we got here to build the vineyards and kick back, and another one entirely to start harnessing all our fruit and manpower to manufacture this business. Of course I'm proud of it. My whole life's tied up in these vines...

...Pressing the grapes for the first time was hard. It was like raising children specifically to take and sell, a slavery of sorts..."
--from the final interview with Moriah Landsdown, 1996

She is, or was, a thin brown woman with eyes the color of the underside of a leaf on a stormy day. She looked (or looks) about forty, and had for the last six hundred years. She said that she settled on forty because she was tired of being harassed by so-called gentlemen, and at that time, hitting on a forty-year-old woman was like molesting your grandmother. She was arrested and tried as a witch approximately sixteen times, due to occasional mistakes with the neighbors or knowing things she shouldn't, failing to take part in searches for missing persons, and the general run of "she cursed 'em" accusations. Of course, this was a long time ago, and records would show that it's not the same woman we spoke to, because that would be impossible. Regardless, these days, the only neighbors are all closely related.

The Landsdowns own most of the parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada that the government doesn't. The P&A vineyards are not the sort of wineries that give tours. You can call ahead and see if they'll show you around, and if one of the daughters (it's always one of the daughters) is not out in the fields, she'll talk to you for a while about irrigation and terroir, hybrids and tannins. She'll talk to you about inconsequentials long enough for you to get bored, drink some wine, and thank her profusely. Then she'll talk to you all the long walk back to your car about the details of winemaking, shake your hand in both her strong, blunt-fingered ones. She'll stand in your wake, wave good-bye, smiling widely all the time, and you'll go home vowing never to set foot on their property again, lest they talk you to death. You go home as fast as you can.

Unless you don't. A surprising number of visitors to the family vineyards immediately decide to move away, to take jobs overseas, go on spiritual retreats, take holy vows. Those visitors abandon their previous lives quickly and quietly, and most are never heard from again. Wine can have that effect on some people.

The vines in their vineyards are not the scraggly, stick-like things you see tethered to posts in other vineyards. They're green, more green than you would ever believe, and they are unbound. They run riot, winding in incestuous tangles all up and down the hills, all coiled snakelike in the field, their violet-black grapes modestly covered in brilliant leaves and guarded by the swirling of the vine. They make a wine as rich and dark as sin, red as blood. It's salt and slick in your mouth and ends thick, burning caramel on your tongue with lingering sugars. The family jokes about a superstition that if too many visitors come onto their lands, the wine will become thin and bitter, and they'll tell you, this is why they discourage tourists.

They're pretty good at staying under the radar. They've been producing wine as Peel and Ampelos for centuries, the family growing and extending tendrils across the globe. It's nothing new to them, the wine business, and the matriarch of the family usually heads up advertising and publicity. When Moriah gave her last interview, they were able to keep most of the controversial stuff out. Though, as it turns out, it didn't really matter. She'd been called crazy long enough that the interview was heavily edited, and all the incriminating bits were laughed off, or worse, pitied as the first signs of dementia.

It was easy. There's no reason to believe she's sane if you do hear the original. She talks about leading the missing people into the field under the dark of the moon, allowing them to lie down beside the vines. She talks about the sound the vines make as they draw the people into their embrace, the sighing sound. It's so clear, the way she imitates it. She can tell you about the ecstatic moans of the visitors as they are absorbed into the rich dark soil, or the occasional shriek of terror as they rouse from the afterglow of their orgasm only to realize they are being consumed. It's an odd thing to listen to, the longing in her voice. It's a compelling thing, that interview, her café au lait voice reaching through the tangle of websites that sprang up when she disappeared. You can still find clips of the oddest parts of her diatribe, the pain and pleasure parts, mostly dubbed over S&M videos by fetishists and disseminated through forums and porn sites.

Every now and then, she'll become a sample in an indie band's song, the near-whisper of her explanation being pushed further into the grasp of myth, the lascivious anticipation in her voice raising the hair on the back of your neck or the ghost of a nipple against your t-shirt, right before the drums crash in tribal ecstasy and the guitars begin to wail like cats in heat. She draws that kind of music. Some people just have that gift.

I still have the tape that she spoke so clearly into, her dark green eyes boring into mine as I took notes, simultaneously terrified and aroused by her clear interest in the pale skin showing above my too-low neckline. I went in thinking I shouldn't have taken the assignment, and I was right. I never took another. I never told anyone that I kept the original tape, that I mailed in a copy out of some obscure desire to hold on to that sultry whisper, to keep her in my hands.

Me, I don't know what happened to Moriah Landsdown after that interview. I don't want to find out. I stay in the Midwest on the shores of dirty lakes, far from viticulture, deep in city centers and industrial pollution. I erase myself from the internet religiously. I am learning to avoid notice by example, using tactics from the very competent family that became Peel and Ampelos International.

Last night, I read that 75,866 km² of the world is dedicated to the cultivation of grapes, that the area dedicated to vineyards is increasing by about 2% per year. I tossed and turned all night, thinking of white bones desiccating under a riot of grapes, feeling the sweat rise on my skin at the thought of her voice only to shiver when the chill of unsought knowledge turned my own hands, hovering at the juncture of my thighs, into the grasping of her many daughters' sweetly callused fingers.

I don't want to go back, I don't want to go to their home place. I don't want to go into the field at the dark of the moon, but I have these dreams, you see.

iron

2011-09-17T21:42:00.000-07:00

Sweat and blood, I come
as if from war. I fill my mouth
with rum and grin, I swallow with
my teeth bared.

This is how we survive,
regardless of opposition. We
bear down, we spite. There
is no question,

we go on. With wine spilling
like fountains from our mouths
and burns rising like red ghosts
on our arms, we go on. Of all

the dictionaries I've eaten, the
one definition I could never stomach
was the meaning of surrender.
Skull-grinning, clenched teeth,

until it kills me, I go on.

ambition

2011-09-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

You played your celestial music in Hell,

and bright tigers wept, blossoms grew

at your delicate feet. I will never

see the fragrant mountain,

never weave a song so true

that a thousand and one souls

leap instantly to paradise. Each

day adds a black stone to my cairn,

aches my joints until I join in,

too, with all the cries of the world

pressing down on the moon until

she goes dark. I am afraid.

Form is emptiness, and emptiness form,

I hear, ringing like a bell at

the temple's entrance. The lowering

sky outlined in tattered clouds

will have to teach me now--I cannot put

on your robes, cannot hold desire

at bay. I want so badly that scope, a

liberty delineated by yearning, yet

my heart's sutra

is without compassion. It tells

the tales and then it goes.

Locks unlatching in its wake,

it's gone

gone altogether beyond.

---

μὴ μὰν ἀσπουδί γε καὶ ἀκλειῶς ἀπολοίμην, ἀλλὰ μέγα ῥέξας τι καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι.
"Nay, but not without a struggle let me die, neither ingloriously, but in the working of some great deed for the hearing of men that are yet to be."
--The Iliad, Homer (translation by A.T. Murray)

only in dreams

2011-09-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

The touch of your hand, I crave, so light on mine
and so heavy with lovely meaning. Must I decline
the sweet invitation of your hesitant eyes, those blue
pools alight, so rarely, as I lean in so close to you?
They're too deep to escape, I think--and that is fine.

The hush of our home like the misty breath of a shrine
draws me in dreams. I long to curl around you like a vine
and relish that, forever and always, it is gloriously new,
the touch of your hand.

Someday, I pray soon, with you I'll be twined
when those numerous plans fall in place and in line.
We'll be awake to see light on red morning's dew,
and breathe in the peace of a most foreign view
where no one could see and no one would mind
the touch of your hand.

Rondeau attempt number two for the imaginary garden with real toads. Well...at least it's not about zombies?

fine dining

2011-09-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

"Why are you so slow?"
The insolent question cuts
faster than I can.

Still, I slice, precise.
Would you have it done quickly?
Or have it done right?

Give me time, I think
fiercely, to get up to speed.
Or do it yourself.

Good Night, Sweetheart

2011-09-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

It's all at once, and terribly so,
a dead hand closes on us--and we know
they'll never relent, no matter how
we beg and plead. And on you now,
that grim and hungry grey-green shadow,

the pariah sign that says you must go
into the dark. We can't take this slow.
Give me your shotgun, take one final bow,
and that's all. At once.

Were you toothless, I'd wait and show
you the longing that could lay me low,
the lust I hold for daylight on your brow.
You're a deadly danger, I cannot disavow.
You're human still, inside, I know...
but you all were, once.

This week's challenge format is the rondeau. This hasty entry does not adhere precisely to the rules, so I'll post at least one more soon. Besides, writing about the zombie apocalypse is no way to be taken seriously...right?

one thousand jiaozi at mid-autumn

2011-09-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

Time is running out
of the glass, of the timer,
pressing heavy on
my hands, shaping translucent
crescents filled with summer's end.

The Flood of the World that Was

2011-09-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

"Hail to thee, O Nile!

Who manifests thyself over this land, and comes to give life to Egypt!

Come and prosper!
Come and prosper!
O Nile, come and prosper!
O you who make men to live through his flocks and his flocks through his orchards!
Come and prosper, come,
O Nile, come and prosper!

Hail to thee, O my god, Hapi of the North and South, lord of fishes and birds of the marsh, husband of Meret, Naunet, Nekhebet, Wadjet, father of our beautiful Kem, king of Ta Mery, hail. Hear us, great Hapi, and have mercy. Have you been detained in the world of the dead? The black sweet mud of your banks is drying to blow out over the red lands, and our people cry out their bone-deep hunger. We have given you jewelry and meat, sent our children to call you home. We dry into hollow reeds, hard and old, suffering the lack. Hap-Meht or Hap-Reset, god of Ta-Sheme'aw and Ta-Mehew both, attend your people, do not let the flood fail-- "

The tablet ends there, its voice silenced forever by events unknown. Iterw, Neilos or Nilos, the Nile we know today is not the same, never the fulsome blue god with overflowing breasts, rising from the Elephantine Isles, traveling through the world of the dead to bring life.

Kemet is no longer Herodotus' gift of the Nile, black shining jewel of the desert, the fruitful land. We have traveled deep into the red lands of the desert and cannot return. Hap-Meht or Hap-Reset, papyrus or lotus, Upper or Lower, neither now will hear us over the growing roar in the lands below, the sharp sounds of missiles and airstrikes, machine guns and hand grenades, factions and fundamentalists.

There, in the mist and the silence that hangs over the yearly inundation of the great delta, the relics of the father of cultivated lands are hidden in the mysteries of other gods, hidden under centuries as heavy as damp wool blankets. Now we are Egypt. Now we are Masr, and the glyph of our name that meant not only "precious blackness" but also "the ending of things" is hidden forever beneath the Greek and Arabic and English of the future tense.

This week's Indie Ink challenge comes from The Drama Mama, who left me a fragment: "...because the river runs through it, an even divide, the old world on one side, the new world on the other like a mirror of past and future." Which seemed very sad to me, in the context of ancient civilizations and rivers, and who better to articulate this sadness than the prototype for all desert river civilizations? Hence, my elegy to the world that was. The fragment of a hymn that is the first paragraph and the names of the ancients are as accurate as I can make them--everything else, I made up.

At any rate, my challenge went out to Kerri, and you can read her response here.

Interview with a Pirate

2011-09-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

Much to my surprise, Phillip Thrift over at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads slotted me for an interview this week. It's been posted, so if you care to peek at my underpinnings for a bit...here you go.

Your brightly blushing Captain,
Grace

it's true

2011-09-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

The inexplicable bourbon is nearly always all my fault.

overwhelmed

2011-09-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

rushing in my head
past an alert in orange,
a portrait in greys.

je suis folle de toi

2011-09-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

C'est pas ma faute
l'hiver rapide est arrivée.
C'est pas ma faute,
c'est mon coeur qui très lâche tressaute
et tout le monde sont captivés.
Le tourbillon inexpliqué,
c'est pas ma faute.

NB: If there are any French-speakers in my audience, please let me know if I have absolutely bollixed this--I'm eleven years away from being able to speak competently, and I refuse to use Google Translate or similar, so this was done with my dictionary and memory alone. Merci mille fois!

den lille havfrue

2011-09-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

At fifteen, I rose to a strange surface, finally

took a deep compelling breath of weightless air.

It was freedom. No different from rebirth, it became

a sea-change that left me mute and gasping for you.

It took me ten years, then, to stop holding my breath,

to remember how to sing, when every step was

disjointing agony. Still, I learned how to run away.

Too many years now have passed for us, for my

seaweed-tangled hair all the colors of sunset

to lure you home. I want to live in deeper

waters now. I am so tired of walking on knives,

so tired of bloody footprints marking this dance,

that I could lie down right here, regardless of

any storm that might blow through. Damp

soothes dark circles stamped around green eyes,

and I can dissolve

into rough scratching brown-sugar sand,

from sticky sea foam into airy oblivion.

Not the End of the World

2011-09-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

Painted pretty paper dolls, picking at a scab, pressing their pinking shears deep into pale skin. Push them away and let's go down, down into the dark and into the dim eaves of the evening, the queasy sizzle of fat in the fire fizzling at the font in which your baby girl is sitting, still is sitting, still is sitting. Her face, which you thought would be your face, does not look the same.

She's been draped in a vastly different shape, a solid surly silhouette erected to the memory of her father's flechette. Darts taken in at the hips and the waist, not a drop gone to waste but the taste is, I must admit, quite queer. What is going on in here, you ask me, and still we sit and wait for anyone to operate, to come in, to seal our fate, even to answer your silly questions. Meaningless thoughts in embryonic state expressed in insulting inflections. Well, I can't help but wonder why we walked this way, when whatever wit you wound up with wasted away in the wide, wide desert. I don't know why I follow you. What folly. Still.

Saddle up, she said to me, when I was a small and silly girl, wound around her stubby fingers. So I did. There's something in the way she looks up at me, batting black lashes over those limpid lamps, until I would bend backwards over creosote stinking railroad ties and ride into red sunsets, rushing west, regaling the rest with tales and tails, running restless and red-eyed over rude and rustic trails. All of this I did for her, and for what? Not much.

Mollify me, she said, and I never could. I never made much of those minutiae, mimicking the marginal march of the mute over my madness, or worse, the sadness--a soft and satin state, slow as stalled syrup, an admixture of a mixture of a tincture, a fixture. Never registered for much on the Richter scale. I guess I failed.

Well, fuck that. Feel how the forceps forces its way down into your false face and try to fight it. Go ahead, I can wait. I have all the time in the world, a woeful whale-sized wallop of wasted time. It's fine. I don't mind. Even with Mayan mystics making predictions, warning men and missions of impending catastrophic maledictions. My time is my own. Miss, can you open a little wider? I want to work this wedge in a little deeper. Go to sleep, sob yourself senescent, you selfish little slag, I'll never stop. Never.

No. Now you know. It was bad enough the first time, which is always, always the worst feeling at the worst time, but now or never, I don't care. Whatever. Pull out the stops and pills, drink your fill and dig a grave. Give me good news or give me bad, still, we're sitting, still we're sitting still. Sorry? Sorry is stupid, sorry is not something you can say to someone you've just sent screaming into the outer darkness (if such a thing exists). It's sour, sour enough to make my mouth twist and tongue curl. The sole survivor of this sullen century calls me cold. I am not. I am bold. Bite down here, be brave. The future is not bright but it is not yet bleak. Bear up under the strain and push on. Persevere.

Press on into the precious night, never knowing for certain what havoc your bitter caution will wreak. You're weak. Worthless? Well, we always said any kid you had would end up dead. Careless? Who cares?! Cast on some stitches, sew up my gouged first edition, and don't forget to wish those protesters into perdition as you pass them, praying pissants. Peons of the patriarchy, pleasant-faced provers of my argument against passion, haters making hope into a house of horrors.

Let them cast their pearls before not swine, but actual human beings baring their teeth against that particularly pungent brand of religious redundancy. Regard their misfortune with as much kindness as you can muster, read them the riot act, and rest in peace. Probably, they'll never realize your lack of regret, and really? It is not your problem. Your problem is to go home aching, concerned about infection and, from now on, even more stringent protection. Please.

Valium is very kind, not a true delirium, just a candied kiss against the caustic bliss of this relief. You remember this, a relief that came once from rectifying a situation, the one that is even now galvanizing our stupid, stupid nation. The one platform on which a politician can only always or never win. The one thing you thought you were smart enough to avoid repeating for the rest of your life, the last thing you thought you'd ever have to go through again. Go home and have another diazepam, cradle your angry heart with loving hands. Commit once more to informing the frightened and the damned. Rest, recuperate, relax, and never regret. Your path is set. Now follow it.

It's Indie Ink challenge time again, and this week's prompt came from Michael, whose blog Innocents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations is cemented firmly into my own blogroll. His prompt was a simple "I didn't think I'd have to go through that again", and I wish I had a better story to hand in. My challenge went out to Bewildered Bug who tried fantasy for the first time here.

Bookkeeping

2011-09-01T00:11:00.000-07:00

Since all the stuff on here is already "published", it only made sense to send some of it over to Goodreads. I won't get to be listed there as an author until I, you know, publish something, but I am pleased to be a Goodreads Librarian. It's my only claim to the glorious honors in which my sister and the rest of the librarian mafia bask daily.

So, if you are not sick of all the self-promotion yet? Please head on over and give my ugly little word-children some love.

Your rushed and restless Captain,
Grace

inked

2011-08-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoroughly pleased to let you know that my poem, "deracinated", is featured on the front page of Indie Ink today. Please go give it some page views if you feel so compelled, print it out and tack it to telephone poles. Get a megaphone and shout it from clock-towers and high places.

You know, just generally make a nuisance of yourselves.

Your verifiably vivacious Captain,

Grace

bad habits

2011-08-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

Forget greeting dusk.
I have exchanged sleep and time
to hide from this day.

welt

2011-08-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a green hat, half-filled with sand soup and diving clams,

violet shells banded, a royal hue staining in rigid lines.

Take them up in your hand and you will be marked.

Take me up in your wretched hand and I will sting,

even after I die.

ruby-throated

2011-08-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

Crimson sparks flashing bright

dress up this hovering, otherwise-drab hummingbird.

Crimson sparks flashing bright,

an unexpected treasure, a shocking secret overheard.

This day may not be ending as I would have preferred,

but I can look forward to stars glimmering in the night,

and crimson sparks, flashing bright.

This week's format is the rondelet, about which I've posted AT GREAT LENGTH on the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads for the Tuesday Format Challenge. This is my first attempt, and while it isn't particularly awful? I'll be adding the rondelet to the growing number of poetic formats that require more attention. Sigh.

conch

2011-08-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

A bitter breath exchanged in tides,
a pounding in my head.
The pulse of distant rushing scythes,
the hunger that must be fed.

Oh, do not promise to take sides!
I follow footsteps carved in red.
Something black on my back still rides
and rises in me like the dead.

On Tour

2011-08-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

In or around the SF Bay Area? Want to hear me read a story that hasn't been published on the blog?

The Revenge will be dropping anchor at Red Rock Coffee for their Monday night open mic. I'll read something new and hang around for a while to pass out some of my awesome new business cards. If I get a decent response I'll make this a regular occasion, even though I may or may not prefer Mountain View's other coffee shop.

You'll find me easily! Because I'll be the terrified-looking redhead in bright red lipstick and pirate stripes.

Get directions here if you need to: http://g.co/maps/t297
Or let me know via Twitter or Facebook that I might see you there!

Your painted and panicking captain,
Grace

Saturday Night

2011-08-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

"Dude! Here, quick! Enter the code!"

Eric grabbed the proffered controller, hands trembling slightly, and punched in the cheat code. He'd discovered it by accident, trying to enter the Konami code and getting the order wrong, and now he was the most famous guy in three counties.

The group of thirteen-year-olds erupted in cheers as the main character, an extremely well-endowed half-elf warrior princess, favored them with a striptease, complete with some seriously nasty bumps and grinds. Eric's friends gathered around the television as he began to run the last dungeon, his half-elf warrior still running around in the nude.

"Hell yeah, go! Run that bitch!"

"Shit, look at her titties bounce!"

"Look at that sweet ass!"

Eric frowned, trying to concentrate on avoiding the last orc, who was invariably armed with the Misericordia morningstar, a high-damage weapon with an attack radius wide enough to take out not only his elf princess but half the dungeon behind her. He held his breath as he mashed the buttons frantically, ignoring the hooting of his classmates and squeezing the elf through the tunnel to the boss fight. This was trickier than it looked, especially without her armor bonuses, but he'd done it a million times before. He leaned into the controller and tuned out the increasingly graphic comments. Here was the gate. Now all he had to do was jump to the ledge above the Eldritch Oak, get in its branches, drop a vine noose, and choke the everliving fuck out of the Moribund Skelpy, captain of the Vermilion Seven.

"Oh my GOD, dude, she's fucking the tree!"

"FUCK YEAH she is, take it, slutbag!"

Eric shook his head and ran the elf to the other side of the ledge, dropping her even lower and extending the noose. The skelpy ran straight into it, and he hit X triumphantly. The room got even louder as the elf princess spread her legs and dropped, wrapping her green thighs around the skelpy's neck.

"Holy shit, was that bush?"

"NO WAY! I missed it!"

"Aw, man, is there instant replay on this shit?"

Eric rotated the analog stick thirty degrees to the left and the elf arched her back, breaking the skelpy's neck with her thighs. The loot began to drop and he relaxed slightly, looking around at his audience. "Anyone else want a turn before I re-equip her armor?"

His friends began to fight over the controller and he leaned back against the couch. Up until last month, he'd thought he might want to be a writer when he grew up. After the Slut Code, though, and his corresponding uptick in popularity, things were changing. Writing was for nerds. Naked video games, though? That would be one kick-ass business card. And he just knew the Penny Arcade guys would have something to say when his game hit it big.

Oh yes, it's Indie Ink writing challenge time again. This week's challenge came from Binaryfootprint, who instructed me to "write a fun, full of life story of how one dream path ends and another begins". While I'm pretty sure my idea of fun is different, no one can say thirteen-year-old boys aren't full of...uh, life. Oddly enough, she also ended up receiving my challenge--so hopefully I will get a response this week.

low tide

2011-08-22T18:21:00.001-07:00

In the tidal flats you see strange things. Some misplaced, some unhomed, some left--just for a moment! to be reclaimed after this frozen lemonade.

In the inlet it smells of old salt and mud, and the things I find could be the products of some old and distant country, a people long unremembered, neither living nor dead nor missed. There are no gasping anemones, no fish. Sometimes a crab will venture over to grasp my stick, to look up at me with quizzical eyes, its misplaced hope reflected from discarded scales and fins.

Or maybe it is all in my memories, all in my head, painted in slow strokes of squid ink dragged, protesting, along those poorly-focused synapses where all the trouble begins.

rising tension

2011-08-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

A sponge is too light
to be worked with careless hands,
to be pushed aside.
I am not delicate, I
fall--but don't bruise easily.

Taxonomy

2011-08-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

Scrawled on the sidewalk in an unsettling shade of electric blue, I read, "Laughter is the best medicine". I walk as fast as I can past it, looking neither left nor right to see who might be watching. At least it was spelled properly. Gotta concentrate on the big picture, because if you zoom in to look at all the details, you'll lose it. Reading the newspapers or mags or TMZ in the last few days of human civilization was detail. Making sure I had enough food for a while, weapons, all that stupid preparedness shit? Detail, no matter how necessary. A lot of people I met back near the start of all this said they concentrated on the details so they wouldn't have to focus on the big picture. Me, I can't work like that. I think it has something to do with my job. Had? Hard to say. I was, am, a veterinarian.

I don't really know which tense is appropriate now. I'm sure there are other doctors left, there are a lot more people left than you'd expect. I haven't met any lately, though. Headed out of Denver last week, I saw a little group being escorted back into the city center. One of them was wearing a white coat, but lately, that just means they're about to bite it in some particularly awful way. One white coat seems to stand in for every hairspray-testing motherfucker in the history of our species.

I'm confident, though, if anyone, any human, needed medical assistance, I could still provide it. Vets have done a lot more for human medical advances than anyone might feel comfortable knowing. Still, you'd think we would have noticed, before the dogs started barking commands, you'd think we would have noticed the growing communications network.

Squirrels, man. Squirrels are everywhere, and their teeth are huge. Pigeons, you know, every city's winged rats, not to mention the actual rats. Draft horses are bigger than fucking cars. Cats don't give a shit about anything. Fucking gulls, even urban opossums. The dogs, those were the worst. When even the dogs turned on us? There was no way we were getting out ahead of this.

I pass weird graffiti like this every day on the road. I don't know if it's our version, the human version, of the old hobo signs, or if they're learning, the new animals. That sounds unbelievable, I know. I've seen shit I don't want to believe either. Like the men who traveled from town to town, docking ears and tails, rusty knives in briefcases and hotel bathtubs full of blood, they're still around too. Most of them can still get around like those horror-movie guys, the limbless beggars on skateboards, but they don't live very long. I don't think they even care, or that they have any life left in them. They're only left to us as a warning, their lips cut so carefully back to show the teeth, ears just ragged holes. "Declawed" people or neutered ones, hands and balls both just cauterized stubs. You can tell because they aren't left any clothes, just the collar. If these sidewalk scrawlings are human graffiti, I can't understand it. I've been left out of the loop and I don't think I'll ever get in.

Vets have been freed, sort of. The good ones, the ones who really cared for our patients, with soothing voices and careful explanations. We aren't kept in the cities, in the kennels. We keep moving, place to place, treating the injured and guiding the lost to their flocks or packs or herds. I don't know if I'm a prisoner or a collaborator, I don't know where I'll have to be tomorrow. I don't know where I'll even be allowed to sleep tonight--a plush pillow by some gentle cow's fireplace, a dirty blanket in an abandoned sheepyard, an old farm dog's slat-sided shack, hunkered down in the dirt. I refuse to think too hard about the future. Today I have to assist at the birth of a new litter, and that is enough. I ignore the details and keep just an eye on the big picture, because the big picture is I'll have to work like this until I drop. They'll see to it, just like we used to, just like they saw to the quick elimination of any dissent. And it's for damn sure they are not going to accept a platitude like "laughter is the best medicine".

It's Indie Ink challenge time again. This week, my prompt came from Sunshine, and as you may have gathered, it was a saying I particularly hate: "Laughter is the best medicine." The original title of this draft was "Must Love Animals", but I think I am saving that for something even worse.

My challenge went out to Katri, who will be posting her response any time now...I hope.

ready

2011-08-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

dim shades, clacking quick
against the hot day, speak in
bones, rattle and click.

the nuclear family

2011-08-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

What is that pounding, wretched sound?
Like a heart, trapped under glass?
You can hear it from miles around!
What is that?

Neon mushrooming up from the blast,
the pulse was enough to pull us down.
Will it cease when we are safe at last?

I hate to say, I think it used to be a town,
before pools of light rose from the ash.
But underneath that pressured round,
what is that?

Good news, everyone--the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads has allowed the lovely runaway sentence. and me to present our format challenge over there every other week or so! If you care to watch me wax pedantic about poetry forms, this week I re-did the roundel. You can find the post here. This will bring some changes in the lineup, I hope, and if you've wanted to participate but haven't had that particular kick in the pants yet? Now is the perfect time.

Yes, this roundel is basically a joke. But it only took me five minutes to write. Perhaps this is the next challenge? Five-minute formats? What do you think?

pause

2011-08-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything for you today. There is good news coming tomorrow, and the 31st, but not today.

I was writing when I heard a sound from another apartment. The happy song of a Zojirushi rice maker. And I started to cry. Not big, embarrassing crying, thank god, because I was in the courtyard, basically in public, but little, painful, vicious tears I couldn't control. I want it back, my life. I want it more than I want food or drink or love or shade on a hot day. I'm homesick for a place that wasn't really my home, couldn't be, really. I don't know how to get back there and it breaks my fucking heart.

Please forgive my lapse.

the house of despite

2011-08-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Bottles of Florida water on a green velvet vantage point
gurgle and mutter, chattering in the dim red light
reflected over deep polished prayer beads snaking
around a pair of black silk gloves, cuff and placket
pressed flat around the glittering jet that used to clasp
a tiny wrist close. Over the cinnamon and orange,
dust and flowers, sorrow and time,

the swamp presses in hard, or is it just
the dark-green smell of a vase left unattended?
Prim petal edges singed brown,
papyrus-weight roses, pollen dropping at a breath,
a golden dust laid on you, heavier than any sin
on your hand. Light the cigarette from the pillar candle

and pour out red dirt in a pretty pattern,
press it into swirling spirals as prayer goes up in shifting smoke,
laddered in the wet air, blue or grey, as indecisive
as any of the thoughts swimming behind your eyes,
flickering silverbacked eels I can catch, easy as anything.
Don't look at me directly.
Reach into the bottom drawer there and take it out,
what you don't know can still cut you. Watch the edge.

Listen to the drumbeat of your heart,
and strike fast. Sketch the truth in blood
and rum, sing out. Ink and hot peppers,
corn liquor and woe. Tear the laces off and run,
little girl, run. Don't you look back,

'less you like salt.

pumpkin

2011-08-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

The breath of God wafts
through autumn, from my oven,
rising happiness.
Come and join me! We'll have tea
and sympathy, and muffins.