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Westlake High School
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The Final Draft
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Lucas Belury Matt Brailas Lucy Ellis Ruth Hook Perry Lines Jeff Olson Bandi van Kooij Anna Vaught
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Sally Davis Leila Farhood Lauren Nelson Lily Pipkin Jordan Ruiz Zach Wasfi
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Principal Linda Rawlings The English & Visual Arts Departments The Westlake High School Library
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Writing is disorderly and chaotic. The words will do what they want, no matter your original intention. They will tell the story they want to tell, a story that bleeds through the piece you thought you were writing. Usually, we run from the pandemonium, categorize the catastrophe, seek to understand the upheaval and the madness. But now, we are attempting not to attempt to organize our collective mess of feeling, thought, and emotion. We are embracing the HULLABALOO.
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But we will never win.
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generate into word schrapnel; words double and redouble over themselves, exploding into jumbles of letters. Letters trip over their feet in a hurry to escape their confines. We try to control them, to force them into sentences, lines, paragraphs.
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Walking Concrete John Keller
Georgia O’Keeffe Holly Heinrich
Truth Michelle Doughty
Mother Memory Hetty Borinstein
Kudzu Matt Brailas
Haiku Ian McCurley
ADD Lucas Belury
Vultures Laurie Hursting
Haiku Ian McCurley
The D.C. Bus Hetty Borinstein
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IV 7.4.9 John Baker
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Clouds Bandi van Kooij
Untitled Prianka Ghoshal
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I Am Not Your Father Jordan Ruiz
Cow Poem Zach Wasfi
Kayla Lauren Niu
Sweet Gravity Luke Crawford
Growing Up Austin Garrard
The Aftermath Lily Pipkin
Where Old Things Were New Jackie Gase
Dream Weaver Samantha Enders
The Chair Jeff Olson
Sometimes Lily Pipkin
Pirates Austin Garrard
The Front Door Perry Lines
Untitled Laurie Hursting
Up in Smoke Matt Brailas
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Michael would never take baths alone. He understood the rule—no suds unless you got a buddy. Most of the time Mom had to sit on the cold closed toilet seat and tell him stories. On other occasions, when she was unavailable, he would grab the basset Bogart and have him stand watch over the tub. He was also wary of the toilet. .Fear always followed Michael’s curiosity. Later in life he learned to stop asking questions, but at that point he was just a boy who loved books and wanted to learn about the world. He read Garfield and about the dinosaurs. After visiting the Monterey aquarium he read about the ocean. He discovered sharks, and he kept on reading. He knew everything about the bull shark and the hammerhead: where to find them, when they feed, what they eat. Mom was showered with facts of razor sharp skin and sleeping patterns. Two dolphins can overpower a great white. Did she know that? Around his thin neck he wore a polished shark’s tooth on a chain. Michael thought about sharks all the time. These thoughts turned into fears. He started avoiding water parks and the pond near our house. He feared inflatable pools, and real pools, and eventually the hose. At one point he even lost hope in the bathroom. The drain was big enough, he was sure, to fit one, two, five sharks possibly. He never sat on the toilet without checking to make sure he was safe. In the tub he would panic: was the stopper in tight enough to hold against the full force of an attacking shark? He was a victim, their prey. He insisted on company. Maybe if he was charged, Mom could pull him out in time, or maybe Bogart could bark loud enough and get someone’s attention. Unaccompanied baths were not an option—they were inevitable death. Michael understood things far more than I ever could. He was aware of the rules. What happens when you bathe alone? He knew. A tiger shark comes up and bites your naked ass, that’s what.
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I saw her for the first time at a rest stop in Abiquiu, in a black-and-white photograph snapped under a bleached cow skull Her face was like the desert Wrinkles ran across her cheeks like cracks in a canyon wall, as if she were part of the land itself I don’t know how she understood, so perfectly, the rust rocks of these mesas, and the wide desert sky She found beauty in bones, and lush lines in weeds I think maybe she secretly hated New York She painted skyscrapers as if they were traps, narrow walls closing in around her But her canyons, she painted her canyons as if they were as wide and open as the sky
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I look out through the thick rain, and the city still smells grey.
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I walk the streets; walk the concrete. Stretch each stride to step on cracks. Eyes skip from one singular slab to the next, scan back and forth on conquest to discover the latest tones of soiled chewing gum. Fantasize about the hidden dead murdered bodies submerged into the stone below. See the stench squirming up and between the sprawling fractures. Haul my gaze to rise from the subway grating and make out the bridge beyond the stifling steam. Cars scream and people do too. The whole place is running circles around me, but my world is still.
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One day I wrote down all of the true things on a white piece of paper with three different pens because my pens kept dying on me, turning writing from ice-skating with a trail of color to scratching my sign into stubborn stone, forcing me to return again to fill the indentations with small easily-flowing streams of black and blue. Then I lost that piece of paper. These were not the truths of fact, mathematical equations or geometric gymnastics, nor were they the truths of Zen, whose broken-mirror construction and hushed tone made them seem like they actually meant something, but all that they asked you to do was watch the world pass you by the way a rock watches a river part around it, never realizing that that was how the Grand Canyon was created. The truths which I destroyed three pens in the writing and myself in the losing were the truths of what had been and what was, what would be, and what would never ever be. The writing of them seized me with a frenzy, filled my mind with nothing more than the frantic and hurried movements of my hand across the page, forced to be constantly accelerating, the way you practice writing your signature faster and
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faster, the way you take notes as your teacher tosses a new assignment at you after the bell has already rung. Though I rushed to keep pace with the words whirling past me, I’m sure whole universes slipped through my mind the way your memory loses the small details in the overwhelming volume of the rest, like the color of someone’s scarf when they tell you goodbye or the position of the knothole on the tree you loved as a child. The writing, this overwhelming knowledge which my mind in its wandering had discovered like falling through the floor into a volcano, filled me with such purpose as I had never known before. I lived one day with that paper, with all of the truth in the world tucked into my tote bag pocket between my phone and my keys, knowing everything that would happen as though my life was a bad soap opera, checking my piece of paper like a set of cheat codes to a video game. But on that same day I lost the truth, for in my bag I found my phone and my keys and between them a blank piece of paper, no matter all the junk I spilled across my desk or the squirming insistency of my searching hand, and I wondered if the truth had gone. But I wonder, now, if there’s a series of someones out there who will know all of the truth for just one day, and I wonder if he won’t find my handwriting too small or tight, and if she’ll understand the problems with the pens, and if his day will be just as disappointingly normal as mine. Though perhaps it won’t be the same piece of paper at all, perhaps there’s someone out there, right now, with the truth overflowing from their mind, trying to write it all down, unaware that it’s all going to be gone by the time you get home from work.
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Her house rose from the hillside like an open sore, storm gray, puckered, steaming in oil-thick air of early autumn flanked by a barn where three years ago a child with a snapped neck was found shining like porcelain in the stinking light.
On clear days she would sit on the broken jaw of her porch to watch ravens dart from the trees like buckshot, the boys, shirtless, peppered in dirt and torn blisters hurling themselves like salmon through piles of fallen leaves looking for a place to smoke a pack of stolen cigarettes.
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If I trip at the path of righteousness the lions who stalk me day and night will uncoil their ready pounce and offer their assistance in the way of razor teeth and claws until I am left bleeding to the left of the path with my heart next to me barely pumping and quietly screaming for help from the side of the path but the vultures get to me first and eat what’s left of my heart until the lions come to eat the vultures.
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Fear turning to loathing as I look and feel and swerve and become aware, always too late and second rate and never in time to the pace and by the time I look up from the Scantron to the test, I’ve already forgotten Questions that unfold like manila folders of information A nice little challenge takes a second, third and fourth glance Lucas B Awhile to Understood consequences and Where does this place lead full of absolutes and unfocused? Attentions and all is unaware of That teacher with eyes that look with distrust that.
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Laughter, like water, Comes bubbling up, a soft breeze; The voice of the wise.
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One who is saddened, Is one who has learned too much, Yet knows too little. Too eager, some rush, Into fierce competitions; To win, be absent. To follow the way, Abandon Calculations; Let the answer come.
One is shown great lies, To scare him from greater truth, And teach him control.
To be a teacher, Act as the crack in the bowl; Letting thought flow through.
To let the cracks form, Is to let the block remain; Uncarved and flowing.
When deconstructed, Shape is an abstract of form; Thought subdivided.
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Chaos brings aging; Wisdom being wrought from calm, Age is not wisdom. Leading the artist, Art becomes a knowing dance; Joyous and shifting.
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Old teachings bring truth, Like the hand of the master, Guiding the pupil.
In circumventing, There is most often safety, Not resolution.
Knowing too little, Some search the world for meaning, Which lies deep within.
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Speaking will break it, Silence is so delicate; - - - - -.
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Keeping your heart pure; Denying all agendas; Choose a path to walk.
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The wheel spins calmly, Intertwining with the Tao; Crossing ev’ry path.
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The chord resolves and the Girl Removes her headphones, Smiles at a friend—
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About the artist Writing in the midst of A joyful laughing blur, But quiet, with purpose.
French horns, and then Violins, soft and thoughtful.
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Mama kept a closet full of empty boxes. Shoeboxes, cookie boxes, jewelry boxes. But mostly, playing card boxes. There was nothing in that closet but empty space cooped up into small compartments. Our house bubbled up from the vast tabletop of soil and clay, cracked like pieced-together shards of terra cotta. I never saw a raindrop fall onto that roof. Mama talked about rain like it was the juice of all bad things in the world squeezed out and bottled up and forced down our throats. I thought she feared that water would make these adobe walls dissolve and melt back into the earth. Maybe that was why she brought us here, so all the water would evaporate out of us and, like dried chilies, we would become fully concentrated versions of ourselves. But this wasn’t about us. This was Mama’s journey. There she was: in the smoke-filled kitchen, pushing around peppers and onions in a crackling skillet, her long blond hair clinging damply to her pale cheeks. Her watery blue eyes rimmed in red. The first time she made enchiladas, Antonio said they tasted like chicken soup. There she was: dipping skeins of yarn in vats of ochre and burnt sienna dye. The loom she had bought for thirty dollars— lopsided, marred with cigarette burns, missing a leg—put splinters in her pigmented hands. Her eyes locked on a pattern she had torn out of a library book as her fingers forced apart the threads. She wove the same rug seven times. There she was: gardening with paste and paper. She knelt by the yucca and agave with a jar of rubber cement and a pile of playing cards by her side, arms and legs sticking out of her embroidered dress like ropes attached to a billowing sail. A dot of rubber cement glued a card to the tip of each leaf. If she could make them organic, feed them to the landscape, maybe they would stop haunting her.
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Four of diamonds—sweeter than prickly pear fruit. Queen of spades—ruler among saguaro blossoms. Joker—devious as an ocotillo branch. When Mama drove into town, Antonio pried the cards from their spiny leaves. He sorted them by color and number, but didn’t notice the difference between spades and clubs. He shuffled them, stirring the stew of cards and red dust with the flats of his pudgy palms. He stuck them, still gritty with dirt and glue, to his clothes and hair. Mama returned, the truck bed full of boxes. She found Antonio in the kitchen with a jack hanging from each cheek and a king across his forehead. That day, Mama squeezed me and Antonio into the passenger seat and drove until she went cross-eyed. There was nothing left in that house but empty space.
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In between every pause you built up wallpaper, layers and layers of garishly drawn patterns to strain my eyes. But I’d keep peeling through it with my crooked nails just to get closer to the echoes of you poorly reciting all of my favorite songs. I won’t have a seat for you. I’ve combed through every line, unraveled every word, and I can’t find worth in showing our faces only to reflect acts and games. It didn’t take us very long to realize we were mirrors. I know you’d set an avalanche right at my front door, your way of spilling sweet guilt into my arms, but you know I wouldn’t flinch. If you can safely recall her ankles twisted around your frame then there are no vague notes of yours left for me to outline.
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My love for you is like an ionic bond An attraction so strong it can’t be ignored Our relationship is sodium chloride Two very opposite elements that are terrible apart But together form a completely new, beautiful, and amazing lattice, salt When I see you You make my electrons get excited and want to react Ready to form a new molecule A little of you and a little of me You and I can swap properties whenever you want But it goes deeper than the simple heat of the reaction, you and I We have something more than just nuclear attractions or intermolecular forces What we have, baby You and I It goes outside the laws, theories and principles of chemistry You and I have love
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Monotony—swirling around my fuzzed, dulled, beaten-to-death head, in a never-ending spiral of relentless irritation, an eternal damnation without relief—and I stare out of the window. Listless gray clouds, floating dolefully through a white sky, no purpose nor intention, no worry nor care. In moments of complete lucidity, devoid of delusion or a blurring enigma from an outside source, I oftentimes wish, in the most honest way possible, to be a cloud. It may be difficult to think of clouds as a living entity, but in reality, are they not? They move, they Bandi breathe and undulate, they cry in fury, or in sadness, or in joyous ecstasy. Listening closely, and I mean really listening, I swear to God they speak. A soft whisper, no more than a floating effervescence carried on lonely winds, leading to lonely places, so that only lonely people, people who have no other voice for which to listen, can hear them. I must be lonely, then, if such is the case, because clouds talk to me all the time and I find comfort in their soothing, hushed musings. I wish I were a cloud, simply because they never stagnate, always move. They only speak and never listen, and their words are almost always soft and gentle if they but reach the right ears. When a cloud is angry, raging like an over-full witch’s cauldron, black and roiling and tangibly furious, nobody dares stay near it. This anger, this inescapable disappointment, is completely justified; a cloud does nothing but float above the earth, the world and all of her problems, and just like every living being, a cloud can take only so much. The AIDS pandemic in Africa was sighted by clouds before the victims were aware of what was going on amongst them. Racism, prejudice, discrimination, and hate: all witnessed at a bird’s eye view, by eyes that are unable to close to the horrors presented. Murder, rape, theft from those who have nothing to start with, unwillingly watched, unwittingly observed. Nothing happens in secret, for the clouds are omnipresent, always watching, scarcely approving. The sights these clouds are forced to see weigh them down; make them heavy with grief, anger, tears…and then they rain. At first they rain softly, weeping softly like a woman, hurt. Then the tears fall faster, more boisterous, like a child throwing a tantrum. And then the cloud is finished, relieved, for the time being, its discontent and disgruntlement with society vented. But then
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For three weeks in July bees filled our yard with their quiet humming. My father ventured out flyswatter and plastic hose trembling in his hands. When their peach hive refused to budge under such tremendous coils we resigned ourselves to a punctuated coexistence beleaguered swipes the occasional sting itching out of my arms.
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One evening heat unbearable I stuffed stained sheets under my damp armpit and laid out under the porch light to watch them the unhurried jerks of flight brittle bodies glinting like grains of rice against the fleshy dark.
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The sunlight fell in stripes on the hardwood floor through the wooden blinds that cov•• ered the kitchen windows. The beige blinds had been picked by Mira. As had the silk curtains, the oak table, the Venetian glass vases and the very blue-bordered china plate on which he was eating. Not to mention everything in the orangeand-russet-schemed family room (still called that even though there was no family to fill it) from which he was listening to CNN’s morning broadcast. Come to think of it, virtually everything in their—his—apartment had a distinct touch of Mira. When Tristan had gone to fetch the paper earlier (the paper inevitably was subscribed in the name of one Mira L. Wescott), Carla, the teenybopper daughter of the neighbor, was also retrieving the newspaper, presumably for her mother. Carla commented on his newly-acquired tan and he responded vaguely, muttering something about a “holiday to Brazil.” Apparently this was not a detailed enough answer for the energetic teenager who, upon hearing that he had visited the mystical land that produced a disproportionate amount of lingerie models, became even more persistent in striking up a conversation. Tristan was not in the mood for her kind of conversation. He missed the days when teenagers could (or at least could pretend to) carry on a conversation about the theories of Rousseau. Not that he had many adult friends who could. Come
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“That’s all they really want Some fun When the working day is done Oh girls they wanna have fun.” Oh man. “Oh girls just wanna have fun.” Mira quickly silenced the ringtone on her cell phone. Cyndi Lauper’s voice was not something that rang through the hallowed halls of her law firm for a reason. Greg Darby, her rather insufferable colleague, smirked at her. She smiled sardonically back at Greg, who looked the part of the perfect corporate drone lawyer in his perfectly pressed navy blue suit and shoes of Italian origin. She would not have known this last important
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geographical fact had he not made sure to mention it thrice. The cell phone lit up again, signaling a call. In her own defense, Mira had not selected that ‘80s anthem for her cell phone. Rather, it had been Reva, her best friend from college. Reva had taken it upon herself to prevent Mira from, in her words, “becoming a hermit.” Now, the clock finally signaled that it was 6:30 and thus an acceptable (hopefully) time to leave for the day. Reva was waiting for her outside Porch Bar. Reva was perpetually single, but in a cool way. More Sex and the City (if that was still even considered cool) than The Bachelorette. They had met at Brown in a Sanskrit literature class in which Reva had annoyed the professor by making continual references to the lyrics of the latest Hindi pop hit. But then she had produced a term paper that blew the professor away, referencing Kalidasa and A.R. Rahman. Reva was like that: cracking jokes that she herself laughed at even if no one else did and messing around, and studying last minute and acing the exams. Reva, naturally, was eber ••• W texting—probably a “that’s what she said” joke that Mira wouldn’t find funny—but she looked up and smiled when she heard Mira approaching. They made their way to the bartender’s domain, Reva shooting a slight glare at the smoker whose fumes dared to mask her perfume. She didn’t know where Reva found these places; this place was new to her but apparently it was the
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He opened his desk calendar. June 6th. It was Monday and he was back at work, returned by duty to the stifling square office that paralleled the limiting demands of his clients. But today, light filtered through the industrial blinds in a different way, illuminating new colors and lines on the framed typography prints that decorated the white walls. Last year, June 6th had been bordered with pink hearts doodled by Mira so that he wouldn’t forget their anniversary. He had sent her pink peonies, obnoxiously flamboyant blooms that obscured her view of the office door. He hadn’t forgotten, and this year, when it didn’t matter anymore, he didn’t forget either.
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lastest, greatest place to find textbook examples of tall, dark and handsome. She noticed that no tall, dark and handsome citizen bothered to hold open the door. That was something she missed.
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a deer with strong bones and bright eyes and a split stomach boiling on asphalt and she wanted to crawl inside pull it back together around her like a damp blanket she smooth belly child hips would crack like the shells of insects will not make a sound until scraped out like a gourd fingernails falling off ribs softening into sheets of plastic I cannot scoop her up watch her dribble through my arms she left the door open there is a body in her bed She will crack her child hips on it she will not make a sound
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They have lots of names for you, Kayla. Some of them are complimentary, some aren’t, but all of them really say the same thing, and it’s certainly not a compliment. I sat next to you in Biology today, and all period the boys behind us talked about the lacy red straps of your thong, sticking up above Laur your painted-on jeans. Part of me wanted to tell them that you had pulled it up above e the waist of your pants before you’d walked into class, that you’d known it’d be visible from behind your desk, that you wanted them to talk about you. You’ll do anything to make them talk. Too often I’ve overheard another girl, perhaps even a teacher, say something to the approximation of “I didn’t know they made shirts that went that low.” And rumors around the baseball team, football team abound: you are the superstar, the go-to girl. But away from them, away from school and away from the passing stares of giggling classmates, I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you cry, seen misty clouds form in front of your sharp blue eyes, wicking the mascara off your lashes and into your lap. I walked past your house once, heard you scream as someone shattered glass, toppled furniture. I wonder, while the rest of them whisper about you, what goes on in your house behind those closed doors. I’m not like you, Kayla, and I never will be; I hate the feeling of a hundred eyes on me, the half-smirks from boys passing in the hallways. I hate the attention you so crave. But sometimes I wonder how you stay so strong, how you hold your head up high above perfect posture, how you hide the bruises so cleverly with makeup and a perfect lick of hair. It’s interesting, I think, that you can be so open with the way you dress and the way you act, yet there are such great lengths you will go to so that no one will find out what goes on behind your shell.
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Once, when you seemed antsy, stressed, a bit left of your usually perfect show, someone said, “What’s wrong, Kayla?” And you got a look on your face for a moment, startingly surprised when you realized that your cover was down, that you were suddenly the kind of naked you aren’t used to. I wonder why you do it, Kayla. I really do.
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cow, cow, my dear cow i hear you mooing. The sounds that emanate from your mouth hole are like diamond bells made of the purest gold the softest silk. moo. Moo. moo. oh cow, your life is a short lived one for narry a soul knows how long it will be until you are naught more than a hamburger inside me.
maybe you will get lucky, and someone will catch bovine spongiform encephalopathy then no one will want to eat cows for a while. but will this postpone your demise or will it accelerate it? when your farmer shoots you out of fear. left to rot in the hot, hot sun. mr. moocow, oh, how i love thee. mr. moocow, oh, how i want thine meat.
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but until that Day comes mr. moocow, in all of your majestic glory white like the snow black like the night i watch you i love you
i spy another cow coming towards you are you friends? lovers? mere acquaintances? trying to make it in this cold, cold, dark, damp world? will you survive until the end of Your days?
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Sitting On my Floor i spot A cow in the distance Oh, how i wish i was that cow Grazing all day long
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I wish that you could see your smile from here Wrapped up in a moment, absent of fear And the worries of the world are lost deep in your heart Aching to be loved but wondering where to start Could there be any more, could we need any more, than this? ‘Cause when you’re gone I have everything to miss And when the walls start caving in and all that’s left begins to drown Don’t be so quick to walk away ‘cause you get me from deep down And when all the hope’s been spent and there’s nothing left for now Hold on to what we’ve got ‘cause you get me from deep down
And when the walls start caving in and all that’s left begins to drown Don’t be so quick to walk away ‘cause you get me from deep down And when all the hope’s been spent and there’s nothing left for now Hold on to what we’ve got ‘cause you get me from deep down
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When you escape my thoughts you find your way into my heart Searching and searching, just to get out from the dark So shine a light where the restless walk and I’ll join them when they sleep Just to get back to the place where I started, dreaming of you and me In a perfect world things could be better but they’re stuck in reality And the only thing that’s holding me back is sweet gravity
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So now that we’re here, to where will we go? For everything we have and for everything we choose And you play it off simple but I know what it takes Everything I have all for something that breaks And something perfect is just enough for now But anything forever always has its doubts
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I miss you. Flowers on the ground. Every rooftop entrance beckons me to take your hand and spill my heart out to the sky. I can’t wear those shoes anymore. They make me think of bottle soccer and immobility. Why did you have to go? Your brain left askew and me left trailing. I feel that now...you know everything. I played mad world today but I had to stop to cry. So I played guitar instead. And smiling, sung my heart out to the walls. No rooftops here. Just one long night waiting for those hoofbeats. It’s been a long night. He never came. No stockings full of love. No flowers. I burned the cookies.
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When we pulled into the driveway, the moving truck was already there and the burly men with the back braces were carrying furniture into the house. There was a boy riding his bike in the street, and he pulled into the next-door driveway as we made our way to the front door. He stopped and watched us proceed inside, peering under his relatively gargantuan helmet. I soon learned that he was our next-door neighbor, and he was in third grade like me. I saw him again when his parents came over, bearing confections and welcomes to the neighborhood, but he stood behind them the whole time and peered through their legs. Maybe a week went by, and our parents arranged a play date. I went next-door with my mom a little after lunch. My mom was impressed with how clean and orderly the place was, but I was impressed that he had a bunk bed like me, though his was wooden and mine was metal. I told him he could make a fort on
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the top of my bunk bed if I could make one on top of his. He replied that he had an even better place for a fort, perhaps the best place for a fort. He led me out back and into the wooded area beyond, and after a short walk we clambered up into his tree house. All it consisted of was a small wooden platform with short walls, but it was clearly crafted by an expert hand. The floor was completely level with no gaps or protruding nails and the walls were flush with the edges, maximizing the available area. It was roughly three square strides, just enough to lay down without bumping into the walls. I told him it was a great place to make a fort, and we promptly set about gathering blankets and pillows and flashlights and other such fort-making paraphernalia. By dusk we had thoroughly holed up in our little tree fort, encased by blankets and a camping tarp. Though our first fort was short-lived due to maternal attachment to linens, the second was soon to arrive. That weekend we set about making a bigger, better fort, but we found ourselves with only the camping tarp for building material, as his mom had caught us sneaking out with the blankets. Stumped, we sat up in the tree for a while. He suggested that we could make it into a sailboat instead of just a fort. I liked his idea, but thought a pirate ship would be more appropriate, since pirates were certainly the coolest things in existence. He countered that you couldn’t have a pirate ship without pirate attire, and we embarked on our first mission of pillage. We returned with eye patches, capes, parrots, hooks, guns, cannons, and the like. Thus, with a haphazardly hoisted mast and sail and a motley collection of pirated pirating equipment, we set upon the high seas for adventure, treasure, and plunder. I was the captain, in charge of steering and navigating, he was the first mate, in charge of spotting ships and land, as well as keeping the crew in line. He was a whole three months younger than me, and wasn’t as battle-worn and ancient as I was (I had a cane, wooden leg, hook hand, and eye patch). He had an eye patch though, from a fight with an octopus. We spotted our first land after several months of hard sailing, and excitedly hopped into the rowboats to claim it in the name of our glorious ship. But as the first mate prepared to drive our standard into the earth and proclaim that we were its sole and rightful owners, we realized that our ship had no name with which to claim things. Somewhat taken aback by our lack of prescience, we sat down and brainstormed for a bit. Nothing good came up, but then he looked me straight in the eye, and in a somewhat somber manner, suggested that we call it the Friend Ship. It was unanimously decided that we christen our ship the Friend Ship. We then proceeded to plant our standard into the earth, together, thus claiming it for our glorious vessel. We raced back to the ship, hoisted the sails, scrubbed the poop deck, loaded the cannons, and set a course for adventure. Off we went, sailing the Friend Ship across the high seas, terrorizing and pillaging the whole way, both of us glad to have met a villainous sea dog that could be trusted.
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“Ten steps. That’s all it will take. Come on, Alex, you can’t stay this way forever. One. Alright, we’re starting off strong. We can’t give up now. Two. Look at it, sitting there, staring. It thinks it can get away with this, doesn’t it? Three. No more fear, Alex. There’s no invisible vampire sitting in it, no portal to another dimension through the split in the cushion. Four. You’re tensing up, Alex, what are you doing? We’ve gotten this far, don’t give up now! Five. Alex, hey, get yourself together. Hey! Come back! You can’t spend your whole life afraid of this thing! Damn.” “He didn’t buy it?” asked the chair. “No,” I answered, “but we’ll get that little rat next time.” “He’s suspected what happened to his mother and sister?” “Not fully, I don’t think; he just feels there’s something wrong with you. Don’t worry, I’ll keep working on him. I’m his father— he’ll trust me.You’ll see.” “Fine, but hurry,” the chair said. “I’m starting to get hungry.”
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Admirable his lies he weaved them day to day they spread within their guise as strings began to fray he desperately tugged only to release the fragments of the truth which he had hid from week to week.
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1999 Frost glazed her cracking windowpane She gazed longingly through it Watching the autumn leaves, thin with season, showing their skeletons through the dull light of midday. Her home significantly lacked furnishings, save her upholstered armchair And the tapestry she spent each day sewing, sewing, sewing Toiling away on an infinite masterpiece that would ultimately go unnoticed. Her locks shone thick and golden in spite of her weary age Eyebrows furrowed in thought. Her weathered features bearing those halcyon days of youth in their crevices Thin lips quivering, She remembered. The day her life walked out the front door An audible pain left lingering still, Still in the archway. She turned and stared at the doorway It stared back menacingly Reminding her. She smoothed the web of wrinkles that covered her hands And folded them on her lap Waiting.
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1932 Frost glazed his cracking lenses He gazed down the alleyway, cigarette poised gently on his lower lip The day’s absence brought biting temperatures He shoved his young hands in his pockets, a desperate attempt to flee the chill The click-clack of his heels on the pavement echoed abound for miles Eyes cast to the ground, He counted each footstep Aligning right with left, left with right Tearing his thoughts from her beauty A shiver runs through his spine, Generated by the mere idea of her So young were they, and so certain So in love. He scratched the stubble covering his chin Trying to hide the inevitable smile pulling the corners of his mouth to his ears, His cheeks tinged with red A stranger strolls past him He lifted his fedora off his head in courtesy, Quickly putting his hand back in his pocket to finger the seemingly insignificant box That held his future in a single word He heaved a sigh Waiting.
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It makes me wonder. What happens to dormice under pocketholes in dark corners with loved ones when naptime overcomes us with midnight musing of unicorns and coffee. Empty streets hold unfulfilled possibilities that just take fairy dancing and cinnamon to throw into a whirlwind of creation. Reverse pyschology questions reality but you have to wonder what white paws under closed doors are. Quiet. Consistent whispers and dark light. Tack of typewriters and click of photographs. Dead faces encased in wonder. Mismatched absurdities and empty eyes alone on the streets. But climbing moontowers and late nights with coffee correct the sickness. Sad? Look at the flames. Sometimes it’s just an explosion. Sometimes it makes me happy.
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I dream of death and cotton balls of fury and nights with no sky and faceless masses moving in. I dream of death and love and sex and no one there to stop me of someone there to save me and everybody counting. I dream of death not from the past or the present, but of these idle dreams.
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I poured warm water on his crushed joints. When his lips cracked and leaked into his pillow I changed the sheets. The night he grabbed me with his beautiful bony hands and wouldn’t let go I dreamed of drowning him.
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I He rolled in like fog balding twenty pounds lighter with bare fingers that stunk of tobacco and rotting leaves.
II That summer I came back to Georgia where the wives hang bone chimes from their windows. Ditches steaming with roadkill. The peeled trailers of women whose teeth glitter like cheap jewelry, and I felt the dirt under their fingernails heat of their bitter hair. I swallowed swampwater until my stomach crawled with the eggs of mosquito until algae slid out of my throat and I was scraped clean as a body for funeral. Dust curling around me like warm skin.
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