Hm.

Well that was longer than I thought.
Everything I've written this semester has been eight pages, at least.

I loved your last piece! Great verbs: trees stuffed with birds, for example. I'm excited for your upcoming adventures in Creative Writing classes!
And guess what? I'm coming home in a week!

(I still need a title)

The way they looked at her was even worse than the way they looked at eachother: black-lashed boredom and dismissive blinks. Here and there was a hot salt-water twinkle of interest, but these glances were quick to retreat. They joked with one another clumsily, smiling brief smiles from round cheeks and raw noses, but mostly they hunched in their sweatshirts, looking wary and afraid of something. They were afraid of their fiery brains, definitely, thought Keri at first, definitely; they were afraid of success and their own sharp potential.

“Hello!” Keri felt the smallness of her solo.

Eighteen fifth-graders, assorted, in graphic tees and thick-tongued tennishoes, breathed back at her; they didn’t even look. One boy in a tan snowsuit sucked on paper in the back row.

            “It’s like they don’t even hear me,” Keri told Andrew, after three weeks of straight mouths and dim stares.

            “They’re warming up to me. Great kids,” Keri told five stout chairs in the teacher’s lounge.

            “I want to help you,” Keri told her grey-eyed class, graciously.

            “I want to kill them,” Keri told her mother “Well, not exactly, exactly. Not all the way dead. And then I want to bring them back to life, you know?”

            “Kindof defeats the purpose, bringing them back to life.” Keri’s mother was practical and left-brained. A real trouper, Keri told her friends, and her mother’s friends, after the great divorce and family demarcation. “Kill them or leave them alive; no backtracking.”

            “You know what I mean.”

            “I don’t.” Keri’s mother was swept up, white-blond hair in a clip, the kind with teeth. A light sweater lapped against the shore of her lighthouse neck and two collarbones like sharp rocks worn down. Keri sighed.

            “Me either.”

 

From her desk, Keri watched then move like newborns: sudden head movements, awkward looking limbs, but mostly limp in the hard-backed chairs and still, sleeping through the most interesting chapters of imperialism, and every single preposition. Amber, a girl with dirty hair in the front, who said this is boring like a film critic, like a boring film critic, stared at her shredded fingers.

            “Your first writing assignment is due on Monday,” said Keri, “You can write anyone—grandma, singer, actor, friend—whatever. Just write anything to anyone and bring in your letter, and address, and an envelope, on Monday. Use the format I showed you.” Keri smiled, every tooth a smooth kernel of resentment. Most of the class scored low for literary intelligence. The smart half of the fifth-grade was across the hall with Mrs. Z. The school divided them like that and everybody knew, except Keri, when she was hired for her promising personality and clear teaching merit. Promising personality, don’t we all. Keri was tired. “Any questions?” She looked out at the class, a rebel exodus, expectantly, a sort of joke. Big Ben was talking to the girl next to him, deep huh-huhs like a secret underwater laugh. Alexis was sweet in the corner, quiet and probably listening, careful not to make eye-contact, shrugging finely. Christopher was lost in his clothes, this little guy with a stutter and a fresh skull shirt for every false start: K-K-Kk-Chris. Then Cory, in the back, in the tan, ridiculous snowsuit, eating paper.

            “Cory, quit eating paper,” Keri’s mouth was tight pink and heavy edged. Cory looked at the paper, and at her, fleetingly.

            “Why.”

            “Not for eating.”

            “Sgood for me.” Cory nibbled, front toothed a corner of blue paper.

            “So is school. Pay attention. Save the trees.”

            “I’m hungry.” Cory smiled and the class smiled back, thick-lidded, intelligent smiles.

            “Pack a lunch.”

            “I like paper.” Cory put the paper in his mouth again, and looked at her. Keri felt like a tight black line, stretched between two points. She felt the chill of adrenaline in the back of her neck and stepped closer to his desk.

            “I don’t care,” she said, “don’t eat paper in my class.”

            “Why.” His voice was like a whisper, caught around the edges of the paper. Keri leaned slowly into his space.

            “Why,” she whispered back, “don’t you give me the paper,” and with a sudden twist, she grabbed the sheet he was sucking on and ripped it from his mouth. Her hands were shaking and she held them out on either side of her head. What now? Her instinct was to shove it all back into his mouth. Eat it, she’d say. S’good for you. She threw away the paper, but that night she felt like she had missed something important.

            “Is paper good for you?” She asked Drew, her house-husband for now, until he found another job. She thought of the paper—one ply, half a ply—and the color blue, September sky. And then she knew what she was missing—his face, Cory’s face when she had torn away his paper, rattled his teeth, frightened his gums, that was just it; she had frightened him. He was afraid of her—her disapproval, her hatred, her despair. He was afraid of her eyes, to look and see how she saw him, a big fifth-grader eating paper like a kid. He was terrified.

 

            “Can I write you, Mrs. F?” Charity was begging, because she hadn’t brought an address for her letters, but she had written, a stack of words and drawings, even a black cross drawn in marker, labeled cut out and hang on the wall, or use as necklace. “Mrs. F?”

Keri sighed. F for Farmer. The teacher’s lounge was an alphabet soup: Mrs. A, Mrs. B, Mrs. C, and they loved it.

            “Sure,” said Keri, pinching the envelope gently.

            “Are you gonna write back?” Charity sounded hopeful. She was hopeful sometimes, and the rest of the time she was quiet or tearful or raging.

Bi-polar, said Mrs. B.

            Some emotional disorder, said Mrs. G.

Awful family, said Mrs. A.

Nice kid, said Jo, the PE coach, with a concise and confiding nod. Runs fast.

            “Sure.”

 

            There was old coffee in the teacher’s lounge, and old carpet, the smell of warm paper and the music of paperclips. Keri imagined Cory, eating up all the school copies, all the files, scarfing reams. Mrs. A sat tidily at a black table, legs crossed and clean, thick framed glasses. Her perm was thin and rigid as a lampshade, and she had the shiny, taut look of a button. Keri sat across from her to read Charity’s letter, glancing up to nod and smile occasionally to whirlwind teachers who sucked in their breath and hurled themselves out the door as if they were headed into a deep Alaskan winter without a scarf.

Dear (blank), What is your favorite color. Ok. I like to play music. What do you like to play. My other game is sorry I like that game. My favorite animal is a dog. My dog Dot died and they barride her. She was like my dotter. I loved her so much and I fill like I did it but my Dad was driving. She was going to the bathroom and she hit the tier and died. She did not feel pain and I gottogo Bye.

           

            After that was five pages of a pop song, written out word-for-word.

Boy how could you lie to me/Thought you would die for me/Im not accepting another opology.

            After that was the cross drawing, and another drawing labeled packman eating a flower, and next to that, a rather observant rendering of a pop can with Dr. Pepper crayoned to the side.

            Keri didn’t know what to do with her mouth. She felt the inappropriate stir of a giggle, and the stinging shrapnel of sadness in her diaphragm, both from this letter, a hand-made grenade straight from the fingers of a child soldier. What now?

            “What do you know about Charity Ramsey?” Keri asked, accidentally forceful. She heard herself and imagined throwing Mrs. A’s coffee cup against the wall, and snatching her cross-stitched collar like kleenax, talking real close to her face, tell me what you know! The quivering perm.

            “Who?” Mrs. A looked up, startled.

            “Charity Ramsey,” said Keri pounding her iron fist on the table, “what do you know about her?” Mrs. A thought.

            “She has a bad family, but I don’t know much about it. In and out of jail.”

            “Oh.”

            “That’s a pretty old story.”

            “Mm.” Mrs. A leaned over her coffee mug, trailing a heavy breast through crumbs on the table.

            “Now one of the third graders—his mom tried to drown him at the beginning of the school year. That’s one I hadn’t heard.” Keri blinked and tried not to imagine his eyes round as milk caps, rolling back, or the chill of the water. She thought of her class, and understood, in choking bathtub waves, that there was more to fear than success and sharp potential, so much more. There was your dangerous parents, and your bathroom, for starters, and your teacher, who looks at you the way your mother does, and school, rigged to humiliate you, like everything else. Keri read the letter again, and began printing her reply on a sheet of copier paper.

Dear Charity, My favorite game is Candyland, and my favorite animal is a cat, but I like dogs too. I bet your dog was really nice. I’m sorry that she died, but it wasn’t your fault—

            The rest was lighthearted and silly, like dinner conversation with someone you don’t know very well. Keri drew shooting stars all along the edges of the envelope and licked it shut. Charity, she wrote on the envelope, and checked Charity’s letter for a return address. 45 Nebraska St., the main stretch in Marion, IN, where the two-story-ranch-with-a-walk-out-basement people lived across the street from neighbors with leaky roofs, trees growing in their gutters, and thirty dollars every two weeks for groceries and diapers and chapstick.

            Keri was curious, and altered, for the time, by Charity’s letter, and Charity’s house was two blocks from the school. There was compassion and pity, even guilt for hating Cory, so Keri decided to hand-deliver her reply as a way of saying I’ll be here, anything you need, without actually saying it, and something else—an offer of friendship? Timid, offered like a piece of hard candy at recess, one piece of candy for each of the cool girls, who stood at the highest part of the playground and sang loud. One piece each, and you could stand with them, feel something rise from the mulch to play with your hair and then disappear.

            In the car, Keri fastened her seat belt and sat straight. She found the winding street no problem and maneuvered between wind-blown trash barrels and black eyed children on bikes. Keri pulled her car up to the large-mouth mailbox, speckled with rain dirt, and tossed in the letter. As she pulled away, a blonde twitch of movement at the side of the house made her look past the mailbox, the sinking sidewalk, and the wild junipers. Charity, with a garden spade. Keri parked the car, quick, pulled her letter from the mailbox, and cut through the grass, waving at Charity with the letter.

            Keri couldn’t remember what came first, the fist in her throat, counting all the things there were to fear, or the smell that pushed down her throat like another fist, colliding knuckle to knuckle with the first. Keri tried not to look, but she saw the broad, rotting back of an animal. A dog. Charity was digging up her dog, wiping her forehead with the hard work of pain. Keri put a hand to her nose and here was Charity’s next letter:

My dog died and they barride her,

and I unbarride her, and they barride her again.

And she was like my dotter. 

Paper Planet

I awoke to find the world has flattened. The sky was dark blue, edged with bright orange, as if someone had dipped the sleepy sky in an ocean of old sunlight. The scenery was nothing more than flat black cutouts against the horizon: trees stuffed with dreaming birds, toothpicks of telephone poles poking against the sky, and grain silos that grew into complex, menacing shapes as I drew closer.

Stripped of dimensionality, the silos could have been mining equipment, or cities on the moon. Earth had lost her familiarity. Dusk was settling over the planet, tucking shadows, light, and life away in bed. I was abroad in the world, hurtling through cold space in a small blue car as the old orange faded from the edges of the world.

Inside the car, my driver turned the pop music down while her boyfriend played Pokemon on his laptop. They whispered, not realizing I was awake. I leaned my forehead against the breath-frosted window; had they noticed the world was flat? Had anyone?

We turned sharply; the driver yelled softly in mock terror. The orange faded completely; in the blackness the sky and earth melted together. Bright red blinking lights formed a ribbon in space outside. They blinked for miles; we couldn’t see the end in either direction. Perhaps they were millions of landed alien ships whose drivers had become lost in the two dimensional, spaceless world of dusk. Perhaps they were wind turbines. I snuggled into my pillow and fell asleep again.

Next semester I'm taking creative writing, so I'm expecting posts to be more frequent. Most of what I've written this semester has been research papers and essay analysis This was written on the car ride home from Thanksgiving break. My only semi-creative piece was ten pages long, so it wouldn't have fit well in this format.

Death of a Moth

I found a moth today in my bed. In the dim light seeping through the blinds, I first mistook it for a stain. It was in the exact middle of the bed, the mattress still warm and indented from my body. I touched the furry edge; it was the moth that had been fluttering against the ceiling for the past few days. I had planned on capturing it and letting it outside if it flew low enough. It never did. How long had the moth been in my bed? Did it snuggle up against me during the night, cold and attracted by my furry blankets and fluffy pillows? Did it fall from the ceiling as I sat up in bed?

I cupped my hand over it, to carry it outside and let it free. It didn’t move. Its wings bent under the weight of my hand. I suppose it had starved. Had it died beside me in the night? Had it crawled to my side, too weak to fear, submitting too late to the power that could free it? Had it chose to spend its last moments in the shadow of a giant?

I scooped it up, the furry head tucked gently against my palm. It was unexpectedly heavy, like a marble. I dumped the little body from my perch on the bunk bed into the trashcan at the foot of my bed. I could hear a whole second pass in the silence before the morning begins. It’s body thumped into the trashcan. Small, furry, easily forgotten. It’s life was reduced to a single, soft sound.

Goodbye.

Atlantis

How can you be

so cold, stone

that captured the sun

Back off I need

some air,

what's in a name?

fire

beetles and glowing mushrooms

they're everywhere shedding

light on other bioluminescent creatures

but don't bother me, I'm busy

with my secret lives

my glowing sea creatures

who light up

my life, those special fireflies

send in the clones

I am the new frontier

in bioluminescence research

I don't need you

anymore, my jellyfish are

beyond new

kids on the block

Man-made cool light

-- Epilogue --

There's something unique about this poem...beyond the fact that it sounds slightly crazed...I want your reaction first though.

The saddest thing was when she stopped doing all those things we laughed at: the polite descending a-ha-ha-ha, the crinkling eyes to show she was listening, the joke about a wheelbarrow after we ate good, full plates of Logan’s Roadhouse or Exotic Thai. We had pointed out these quirks good-naturedly, embarrassed by her transparency, her predictable habits that made us think she was shallow. But then she stopped. We hovered over our plates, silver spoons levitating, even the small waitress lingered for a moment, leaning in her polo, but we never heard the faintest creak of a wheelbarrow. When I called home from college to tell her how I made up French for a presentation she said, “Oh that’s funny” without laughing. Merci le’jocul.

We kept teasing her: Hey bucko when a speedy green car with black stripes cut her off in traffic, horsies instead of horses, errr like brakes at every stopsign. Stop I told myself, or what will be left? Something sad. And old. My mother’s age frightened me; I felt her loss: all those years rushing by and what is left? Something sad? And old. She didn’t know yet, and I held my breath. The teasing was an egg toss. When the egg broke, there wouldn’t be another. There was only one wheelbarrow, after all, rusting in some ditch with chicory. So much depended on it. 

This is another character sketch based on another of Melanie's boyfriends... :D Perhaps it will turn into something more? 

*

Mike was an easy read, something with baseball in the title. He was appropriately patriotic, and anti-patriotic; a protestor of the government and a lover of his rights. If you’re eighteen, it’s your responsibility to vote. Or join the military. Or both. Whatever you do, don’t get married right out of college and expect to be happy. Mike was this kind of man. 

It surprised me to learn he was an English major with a stomach full of poetry that he occasionally rubbed, as if his body was a magic lamp, and he was the genie, stretching to fill the room with wonders, and his three wishes? To write a book about the origin of Blues music. To meet Clark Gable. To convince Clark Gable to direct a movie based on his book. But this wouldn't happen, he admitted, and when your fifty-seven, you don't dream anymore. I learned a lot about the Blues from him, although most of the poets he solicited I had never heard of, except for Bob Dylan, of whom I cheerfully approved. 

Mike had started off his career as an English teacher and a basketball coach, Corbit and I will make the play, not ‘me and Corbit’ and then started building houses when he was  no longer comfortable in his own, with Marney, his overweight wife, Emily, his anorexic daughter, and even Matthew, who ate pizza everyday and listened to Coldplay in his dark-and-do-not-enter room. They all left him eventually—for the neighbor, for rehab, for good, and all he had left was a two-hundred dollar hammer and a shrewd mind, sharp as nails. He started building houses on the lake, and soon millionaires were paying cash for his charming designs: floating furniture, the sewing-table vanity, a two-story kitchen. 

Mike considered himself a humanitarian as well; he spent his extra time fixing up crazy wheelchair Dee’s rotting trailer home, evading her inappropriate sexual advances, and despising the local churches for their missions to Mississippi and their donations to Africa when Dee was right there. Her bathtub had rotted through her trailer floorboards, and there were holes in the roof. The gas stove would be next to hit the ground, and then poof it would be over. That trailer would burn like a napkin. 

Mike wasn’t sure how much Dee understood when he told her she needed to keep an eye on the stove. An eye was all she could keep on it, probably; the rest of her was strapped into a motorized wheelchair and buried in fat fat fat. Mike had no idea what Dee ate, or where she got her money, or how she spent it, other than on Christmas decorations, and Thanksgiving decorations, and Halloween decorations, and most recently, Valentines day decorations. She dressed a teensy sugar maple for every season, and the tree looked embarrassed, like a ten year old in frilly socks for Easter, or a clip-on bowtie. Dee looked forward to holidays with relentless pleasure and whatever money she had. Mike wondered why. She didn’t have a job and she never received any gifts. No visits from out-of-town children or caroling Sunday school classes. Her reasons were mysteries wrapped with with crazy eyes, and a rancid grin. 

I've been reading a lot. Just finished the last of three books about families and their little problems. So, naturally, I'm channeling these subjects a bit. :) This is the beginning of a story, maybe, or just a step into a character's development, but I'm warning you that he is not necessarily like-able, neither is he completely dislike-able. Like most people. I know it's long. Just read it when you have a chance. No skimming. :)

*

He was that gelled sort of insincerity that looked like a button-up Hawaii shirt with a gold bracelet, and chest hair. Today, he was annoyed, and his jaw was twitching like he should have something to say. His girlfriend, Melanie, was asking questions about his ex-wife, and there was something provoking about the way she tried to see both sides, the way she tilted her head like she was looking into him, or worse, looking into the past, where his bright-and-popular ex hummed every-other-line of a Karen Carpenter song in the kitchen, looking busy and helpful. His wife’s desire to please him was obvious, even in the memory, a pink fever under her skin. When they touched, this smoldering made him uncomfortable, and guilty for his cool hands with their narrow, almost-invisible blue veins. He avoided touching her.

            “Hard or runny?” She had asked, holding the skillet out with both hands, as if it were very heavy. The uncooked egg had unsettled him, as so many things did at the time, and he had answered her crossly. In the end, she had burned the egg, overwhelmed the tiny sun with the hell of the stove, and possibly the heat of her gung-ho, but with an Oh, Neil, she made him feel responsible for the failure, and guilty for having a egg-preference, and guilty for not appearing grateful, and guilty for not helping in the first place. He thought if he had volunteered to help with breakfast, here honey, give me that, the kitchen wouldn’t smell so burnt, and maybe she would be happy, and maybe she would remember the whole Karen Carpenter song. Neil felt guilty for feeling superior to his little wife in her little apron with her little weak wrists and that heavy iron egg-pan. He felt guilty for buying her the apron and the iron egg-pan, for trapping her with these things, with household items that were nothing special and she knew it. He felt guilty that she knew, and here she was still, scraping blackened egg into the sink, while he hid his shame in the morning paper. He didn’t like to read, but reading was better than talking. He felt guilty because he hated her so much.

            Melanie was still giving him that look, less scrutinizing that blank, as if she was in the long-ago and far-away kitchen with him, reading the sports section over his shoulder, frowning at the egg, and watching his wife, mesmerized by the blue and orange roosters on the apron. She shook it off.

“But seriously, Neil, you’re supposed to learn something from it. You don’t go cheating on your husband for no reason, usually. I mean, I’m not saying you drove her away or anything, I’m just saying—“

            “I know what you’re saying.” Neil was tired, and he noticed, as he looked down at his fingernails, that they were yellow: dirty, unsettling yellow, like a smoker’s wallpaper. Twelve years ago, he had repapered the guest bathroom in his first house; poor ventilation in that room meant that whoever had regularly smoked in there had practically asphyxiated himself with ash and nicotine, and his lungs had no chance of making off better than the wallpaper, so heavy and saturated with smoke that it had begun to peel away from the plaster. Neil had imagined the previous resident, sitting on the toilet after a long day with a cigarette. Probably, his wife didn't want him smoking in the house, or her husband didn't know she burned through a pack a day, or some teenager thought it was his secret, and his mama pretended not to notice that the wallpaper curled and turned. Maybe that mama smoked in there too, because her son was keeping secrets, and her husband was keeping secrets, but in the bathroom there were just familiar drawers, and the sink, and the other household items that she had selected, one-by-one, with power and care. She had settled this room. She had made it match. She had chosen. Nothing like having children. Or getting married.

So the wallpaper was yellow and Neil had to tear it down and air out the room with giant fans, and then reassemble the feeling of order. Out with the old, in with the new. His radiant wife had watched him work with something more intense than approval. 

Melanie was watching him with another kind of intensity when he looked up.

“I left her home too much and she couldn’t forgive me, I guess. We moved to California and fell in love with other people.” Neil watched Melanie trying to fit his story together, and he heard each word strike her eardrums with a hollow dong, like an old church bell pillowed in fog. He could see that she was dissatisfied, so he added, “She fell in love with some Presbyterian, and I met you.” More bells. He hadn’t said, directly, that he loved her, and Melanie had noticed. She fell in love with some Presbyterian, and I—met you. Dong. Dong. Neil knew she would drop the subject now; he had frightened her with his tone, and something more—like she could hear the clock striking too, tasted the fog, and felt they were counting down to the end of something. 

Historical Mind Museums

Everyone should have a museum of memories and stories at least in their head. But we aren't allowed to make physical museums of ourselves, because it would be at least perceived as being arrogant. No museum has been made by the most qualified person to do the job. For example, Abraham Lincoln never got to see how his life would be presented. We're probably leaving out parts that are extremely significant to understanding him. Autobiographies are the only socially acceptable presentation of a plain explanation of self...and even those are full of disguises.

Could the jumble of stuff we stick in our attics, garages, or storehouses be an expression of the personal museum? Aren't sentimental objects kept because of the story? Museums are attics of sentimental objects on a national, or at least more wide spread level. All we need for a personal, physical museum is a bit of organization. It would be interesting if a thing like that became popular, everyone visiting everyone else's museums.

On the down side, sharing your own museum like that is way too vulnerable. Just like in speech, you would have to have levels of openness, doors that only special keys can unlock, some doors that can only be opened by you. Of course the exhibit would rotate as you matured, some becoming more prominent, some only notable for being prominent at one time, some coming out of storage, shy and blinking in the sun, as other people view them for the first time, some hustled into the back, secret rooms with heavy cloaks concealing their features.

I suppose the opening exhibits wouldn't be much different from the opening conversations you have with visitors over the dinner table. Emily Tate, born 1989 to wealthy parents in Dublin, Ireland; went on to pursue career in cooking while at Dublin University for the Blind. Married John Holmes after graduating in 2012, had two children, Adam and Jessica Holmes. Basic opening stuff, not even worth the organization needed to create the exhibit. Is a visit to someone's house close enough to a museum visit to warrant making rooms of information about yourself? All the internal nervousness that comes with explaining yourself to a visitor would become external.

You would watch your visitors inspect your memories. No longer having to explain them out loud, you would feel awkward, apologetic, wondering if the close inspection your exhibit on learning how to make brownies from your mom was warranting was purely politeness. "And this next exhibit," you might suggest, "is significant, because it marked the turning point between following my mom's instructions, and making my own recipes." A low, short table, plastic and childish, something you found in your parents' basement, squats on the floor, a plate of warm brownies inviting your visitor to taste the result of your experimental cooking. You're pretty sure your visitor's resulting excitement is genuine.

I suppose the initial public accusation that such a museum would be arrogant is partially true. If you can make a museum of your life, while maintaing confidence in the excellence of your exhibits, it shows a great deal of naivety and pride. Very few people will want to or even be allowed to view all the important artifacts and stories of your life. But all the same, there's no harm in organizing the attic.

Pretenders

at camp there are fires

every night by the river

and the orange sparks

from the fires

fly up, pretending

to be stars

they rise by the heat

of their burning

before floating

down dead onto my skin

like snowflakes

because space is empty of all

but black

and white

My Summer Vacation

Missiles were part of the economy. People said, "two more built in Colorado," the same way they said gas prices were up and the NASDAQ was down. The strange thing was that though everyone knew there were missiles being built, few asked, "where are they now?" Which looking back from here, seems an important question.

Where they were, was a secret. Where they were, was buried in the desert. The ones in the Black Hills only a few miles from farmers who still used horses to plow the fields. The rocket ships, capable of flying without a man and destroying large chunks of the earth, did not belong in that place, in that time, buried in the earth that some politicians threw over their metal gleam, to keep them hidden.

And one day the war was done. The farmers started using tractors. The newspapers said, "RUSSIA NEGOTIATES THE END!" and people forgot about rocket ships. Tourists started walking around in the Black Hills, so a few nerds who remembered scraped out the plutonium and put it in the government's freezer, to keep for a rainy day. Meanwhile, South Dakota, to keep the tourists amused and alive, put up guard rails and signs that said, "BEWARE RATTLESNAKES," and, "THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRAIRIEDOG," but not, "LOOK OUT FOR MISSILES!" or, "A SIMPLE DIAGRAM OF PLUTONIUM (alert authorities if found)"

There were lots of signs in the Black Hills, though you would think it was enough to look at the candy striped rock while hiking the edges of dusty cliffs, and glimpsing the fluffy tail end of a goat leaping into space before landing in an impossible hoof-hold. But it wasn't. And one day a sign was pounded into the ground beside a beat up shed by the last gas station before a long stretch of pure, government protected rock.

The sign was crowded with pictures: buried rocket ships, smiling farmers, serious politicians pointing at maps with long fingers that had just stopped pounding the glossy tabletop. The sign had a map of the U.S., a map of us, relative to the locations of rockets. And there were arrows pointing into the desert, to reveal their true present position. And there were arrows pointing

at Russia, in case anyone wondered where they could go.

The words, which were short and curled in small chunks in order to hold the attention of a bored tourist, told how once we had the best weapons arsenal on earth, but our rocket ships are forgotten now, and uselessly rusty like the rest of the secrets our country holds. Really.

Gas prices are up again.

Capturing Wonder

The full moon was out, and at first, that was all that made the drive special. Moonlight, tree shadow, the dull thud, thud, th-thud of bug bodies piling onto the windshield. But then, over the hill, a light began to rise, a second moon peeking over the horizon. The headlights of the other car illuminated a cloud of millions of bubbles, jostling back and forth, as tightly packed as a school of fish, or a can of cherries. The seething light swirled upwards continuously, losing its definition in the space of dark between the headlights and the moon.

"What...is..." I breathed, it was magic, it was alive, it was...

My brother flopped his arm onto the armrest, "A plague."

"You mean, they're..."

"Mayflies. Isn't it gross?" His bored expression was briefly illuminated as the car passed us.

Th-th-th-th-thud.

But...they were so beautiful. I wanted to capture that instant before I knew that mayflies could be beautiful; pin it down with brush strokes, and a keyboard. But it didn't work the way I intended. All I could order out was a mildly pretty description of headlights, chased by a cynical revelation, and butchered with a self referential paragraph guiltily explaining my clumsy attempt. I hoped vaguely that it came close enough to the truth.

That Night; We Chased Stars

sometimes stars get lost

and all the blank darkness of space

becomes twisted and rolls

into a face painted with moonlight

and the flaming ball of gas

flees the confusion, blinking

why, please, what

is this

the place

I'm supposed to be

is this

sometimes

children who have only learned

to say why

and are working on the rest

capture the lost stars

and race back

to their sleepy mothers

shaking the glowing jars

yelling, look mama! Fire

flies

Do you remember, Rebecca? The family reunion, and the old playhouse at Aunt Rowena's, when we found old jars, filled them with lightning bugs, and lined them up on the cobwebbed shelves? It was dark, and all we could see was the sparkle of their lights, and the moon through the cracked windowpane. You said it was magical.

enter. space.

My boyfriend bought me a typewriter. Found it

in a grey suitcase with a tricky lock on a long table full of Christmas

characters: sassy reindeer, lean, Great-Depression Santas,

one virtuous Mrs. Claus. There was a choir too, full of little boys with bright 

round O-mouths and angel robes.

The typewriter was among these things, singing louder

than the sopranos and blue,

old-fashioned, kitchen-appliance blue,

like my dad’s first sports car, and my mother’s matching dress.

A tough guy said for five dollars, that baby

was mine. He said five dollars to take it

off my hands.

As we left, he felt the tickle

of loss in his fingernails. He remembered

the keys and the alphabet, mostly, the electric strike

of the machine, and the army son

who left-it-all

and-a-lighter

in Lafayette, the Midwest. What he forgot was that soprano

shade of plastic and dust, the aging baby-

blue, and why it mattered

even a little. 

You are the dark 

the sweetest of summer

that lingers in leaves and lingers

and leaves.

You are the wings at dusk

that hold their gold, their pixie dust

and never land. 

I remember wealthy hair

and the song of cheap chimes

that called me as a child.

I walked softly then, not to lose

the music, walked with my throat

full of wind, stopped at the fence my father

built so the outside was safe.

No one could take us, bright-eyed strangers,

great neighbor dogs who moved like lions,

proud and territorial, sniffing for their cubs,

whose baby scent was still

on every other fencepost. Father saved us

from all this: the strangers and their dogs,

the slight iron singing they’re gone they’re gone. 

Driving at Dusk

A single pine tree contemplates

under the setting sun

a dusty field spread

out flat to dry

a yellow textured cloth

golden, she corrects from the back

seat of the car, as we zoom

past, not yellow

bare toes curl around

the dusty gas pedal

rooted to the machine, we leave

the colors, golden, she insists

golden then, a pine tree

rich in the dropped colors

forgotten by the sun

who fled in haste

to India, where the women try

sewing rainbows of yellows in

the grey dawn for the girls

to swish around

their hips and wear

the dusty cloth

dancing over

bare feet, like pine trees

dance at twilight

holding their thick skirts up

from the solid, slender trunk

the needles brushing their ankles

knobby and pale against the dirt

meanwhile sunshine presses

gold leaf around

the edge of an Indian sky

sings hello while forgetting

its half colored in pine

tree on the other side

of the earth

which is quickly losing its color

under a bleached white moon

The Green Gullible Grass

trimmed grass is fed

on delicacies of fertilizer

tidbits of miracle grow

its greenness unbothered

by the competition of weeds

but

where grass meets wild

wood, it doesn't stop

abruptly, the grass wanders

off in its own brave

clumps to distant spiky cousins

then naively sidles up

and kisses the extremities of trees

roots in the earth, a dark

past under the leaves

where chittering insects turn

silent, a bright remembrance of flight

the trees taste flight in the wind

runaway grass nestles in their roots

distracted by insects

Trampoline

black stretches down with weight

where dirty toes press

against the gritty material

a sponge full of hot, heavy heat

above, blond hair sticks up, out, over

a dandelion full of fluff and sun

bounces, blows away

returns and returns and returns

Good Afternoon

wind flew over her head

tying knots with her hair

a child’s first

attempt at a friendship

bracelet while sunshine begged

for a poem

Cold Earth, Long Horizons

I read yesterday that Finnish people like to live spread out. There was a picture, brown mud in furrowed rows, stretching towards a grey horizon. An old tree slumped in the distance, his leaves muted grey-green and shy. Sleepy, quiet, foggy. Yes, foggy. Not a delicate mist that drapes itself around the sharp edges of branches, but a soft, rolling fog.

Finnish people are shy, said the book. They keep their happinesses close, and hidden. Sometimes, when the fog lumbers across the muddy fields, I think they take out their happinesses and stroke them.

An old farmer would line up all his happinesses in a meowing row and touch each one in turn. Some he strokes, starting with the tiny pink nose, running right along the bumpy spine, bumpy like the potholes in the fog covered road outside. With other happinesses, he can only manage to wind her tail around his calloused finger, before she jumps away. But with his favorites, he gathers them up in his arms, right under his chin, and feels their purrs resonate against his neck.

"Ed!" says his wife, "the calf didn't make it through the night."

When the fog mostly blows off, he goes outside and stands under the single, green-grey tree; looks at the veiled sun. His son told him once that the sun ruins your eyes. Ed didn't say anything, but he didn't do anything differently. He never did anything differently than it had always been done, if he could help it. Now his son was gone, and Ed could still see the fog.

In the winter the sun does not rise for 51 days. Snow covers the potholes and the dirt. The sky is grey, the ground is white, and the bark of the grey-green tree turns black. Ed and his wife, confident in their serenity, sit by the fire. Behind them, in a dark corner, flickering with shadows from the fire, sits happiness, washing her ears.

Status Update

Facebook would like to share
a rare, lonely fish with
YOU!
which also tastes good
in her special peanut butter
sauce which she accidentally made too much of, maybe
because she was too busy
becoming a fan of switching on all the lights at 3am and laughing
like a maniac and 79 other profiles.
John 3:16 I seriously love
the weather and I love my friends and look a picture
of YOU doing a cartwheel
with your eyes crossed and I NEED
COFFEE!!!!! like I need something
clever, something new, something
borrowed, something blue, blue, that's how I feel
without you lalala, hahaha, jk, jk, I need to get off and study,
I'm so bored so call and we'll do
something, something is funny, something is awesome,
OMG, OMG, rofl, no you're not, liar, watch I can be
even more sarcastic more over
the internet than in real life
time is a vacuum and even the ads brag
SO addicting! SO why so what so
long where's the relationship? Relationship
status! Married to my best friend, dating a rock
star, everyone's awesome, unless they're now single
in which case, you wanna talk
about it, because I'm always here
for you, when all our friendship needs is
a few flicks to the keyboard, I love
you, g2g, ttyl! wave in the hall, but Facebook gives
you those inside jokes, so really, you're better
friends for it. Really! All 274 want to know
because you're so cute and always smiling, at least
in your profile picture, and always ready
to do something crazy, and you can tell, because just look
at all the pages you're a fan of! I'm a fan of you, really,
all your awesomeness and amazingness, and bad
spelling, you're hilarious! Stream of information
artificial happiness by a photoshopped head
Really?

Shooting

He launched the orange

black-ringed planet as if he knew

it belonged in space; his feet left

the ground and his heart

trailed the ball like stardust

across a universe silent with fatigue

and ten seconds left

and gravity. A constellation

of sweat where his heart is missing.

So this is a star.

(i need a better title!....I do like how the first and last word go together though) :) 

Matchgirl

Lamplight falls like snow on the face of great age

frosting her with moths like grace. She looks up

blinking like a star, a little

Sirius, and thinks of home.

The halo frozen in her retinas sanctifies

her step and the ghost of a firefly

brushes her cheek reminding her

that she is cold.