Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Here.

i wish you could see me. here. doing what you told me i could not do. bringing men to their knees with a kiss to their ankle or a breath to the nape of, oh, well, anywhere. from the first time i did it i knew i would be foolish, no, ignorant, no, wrong, to do anything else. he used to be the master, used to be the one i had to beg for food or shelter or relief — just a second outside, just a moment in the bathroom or oh, no, you bitch nigger and the loudest crack i ever heard, right in my ear but strangely distant, i imagine like a cannon boom a few miles away, then mmm warmth, at least blood is warm. but after i let him come into me, his piece like a dead jellyfish, his face like a contorted weasel, after i saw he was just like all the other men in the world and he saw me as i had never seen myself, a treasure, a cleopatra, a vixen, a woman, there were more breaths outside, more breaths inside, too, or behind the barn or sometimes just out in the field just before dinner, less holding the urine till all the insides were up in hell's flames, less blisters and headcracks and more food (just enough so i would know) and sometimes even a kiss, on the lips, like a lttle boy. give your fruit to the world, they say. i do, and mine is the most succulent.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Dog in the closet.

i went down to complain. i didn't have a closet. she'd promised me a closet. she'd said, here's where your room will be, imagine the walls, and there will be a closet, right there. and the price was a bit high, but she said, oh, you're a good girl, i can tell you raised right, just like new roommate Jen, and you deserve it. dark eyes and fat glasses and flyaway hair and mud-colored skin and loose folds on her arms, covered in tiny white hairs, a few on her chin, she was my lebanese grandmother but thinner and with an accent i couldn't identify and without the eight children and the two dead children and the three almost-dead children and the suffering, well maybe not without the suffering but with a different kind of suffering (i'd asked her and she'd had no children). you come home long day at work and relax, and open window and sit on patio and relax and oh, beautiful garden in back, too, down there, flowers and we keep it real nice, real clean for down here in city. can i cook on that grill there? no, that is someone else's, but you buy one, cheap. i would not grill anyway. i took the place. i bought it all. the good girl, the patio, the closet. but when i unlocked the door, there was no closet. so i went down to complain. to yell. she kept the door mostly closed, "sorry, it's messy, it's such a mess," she said, her fat white husband in the background blocking the view, the sound of little dogs yapping and fighting. i told her about the closet, and she denied it. "i never said," she said. "yes, you did," i said. "what you want to do?" she said. "move out?" after loops of logic she wasn't getting through it was hopeless. she'd used the accent and the lebanese grandmother and the messy apartment and the fat husband and glasses to beat me. i lost with light hair, ghost-white skin, blue eyes, a college degree and assumption. one of her dogs slipped out the door (she'd left it cracked). it was bone-thin and one-eyed and the eye it had was glossy with a layer of milk and nearly hairless but the hair it had was mangy, and it had two teeth (i could count them) so it couldn't hold its tongue in so it flopped out, you could touch it (i did) and it wouldn't go back in. he was 18 years old (four years younger than me), she said. "see what time does?" she said. i forgot the closet.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Lying.

she is tired of this hair and this face and these thoughts. why can't she just laugh like they do? pin the hair back, pin the smile back and just laugh, just ha! falling ha! dying ha! shaking ha! spinning ha! ha! all and all of it. it's all over in a minute, dear, they say, so drink and laugh with me. but it is all there is, darling, and i can't feel it with drink, she thinks, and hopes that she is lying.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Contuining The Last Post

i rarely do this, but I was inspired to carry my last post on a bit. this could potentially turn into a longer story. what do you think?


for proof, her name. sam. not samantha, just sam, just big fat sam, blob sam. sam on her birth certificate. sam wilson. no middle name, either, to make it prettier. or less common. there was a boy in her third grade class with the same name, and it embarrassed her when role call came and the ugly "sam wilson" was called and they both stood up. she could not ask her mother to change it. cindy wasn't around much and when she was the conversation went: cindy: "drive me now." (ugly) sam: "but it's late, cindy." cindy: "drive your fucking mother to the damn bar or you'll end up with the tires." father scrapped tires for money, stole them off the bum cars that lined the main drag of mason, indiana, where they lived. the ones that didn't sell or had some defect were burned in a pit in the back yard, which was also home to some kittens that died trying to make it out of the placental bag they came out in. kind of like the people in this town, she thought. dying before they even breathe. she couldn't reach the pedal so she used a broomstick, which was shaky but enough to drive the two required miles. a few hours later, her mother would stumble out of the Mason Jar, usually on the arm of some man sam recognized but couldn't remember his name. "hello, honey," she'd say to sam, then kiss the man for a few seconds. "take me home, dear." as much as sam hated the idea of cindy spending their hard-earned money at the Mason Jar, she did relish this trip a bit. one, she got to sleep in the back seat of the car for a few hours, which was worn and warm and quiet and all her own. two: her mom was always especially nice to her when the deed was done, and would call her nice names like "honey" and "sweetie" and "daughter" and "dear." even if she didn't mean them, they were still nice to hear. and they were better than sam.


i think i need to change part I a bit now that i've decided sam lives in a small town. in the first part, i had her in the city, hence the towers and the girl with the big bug glasses. easy fixes. thoughts?

Squeeze.

she always returns to the same square. on the top of the building, not a fancy building, not the tallest building, but a tall-enough building, where she can see all the towers above her, a few churches below her, and the cars .. she captures one between her thumb and pointer and squeezes it like the pocks she wasn't supposed to squeeze on her face when she was a few years younger, there are still a few now and there is still that temptation to just squeeze them and just let it all come out, all the wonderful warmth on the inside. she does it to some of the people she doesn't like, too. but no warmth comes from them. that girl with the long blond hair and the big sunglasses that make her look like an overly primped dog or an ugly martian, where did she get those and who told her they looked good, who told her she looked good why do i think she looks good and why didn't i get that hair. hers doesn't grow, or not fast enough, and in waiting for it to get there she hacks it off, and smiles to herself as the florets hit the ground like fat brown rain. then she goes home and runs her hands through it, all two inches of it, and prays on stars that it will come back faster this time. stars, yes. god never did much for her.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Google Image Search, First Result.



















cut open veins write.





















write something every day.



































































my favorite writers.














me.

I'll fit in eventually.

Revamp.

I'm a journalist, so of course I write. something. every. day. But I write about bras and panties and fashion shows and CFOs and dollars and cents and nonsense. How often do I write something I want to write? Write something for me? Cut open a vein and write, as they say? (Makes it sound fun.) Rarely. I do try to pour my passion into all of my work but it's indefinitely hard when your work isn't something you're passionate about.

So here's a new attempt at reviving this dead blog. A literal name change that tells all exactly what I'm going to do: Write. something. Before the focus was on actual pieces, but those are hard to whip up on a whim, when you're tired and gross from the humdrum.

I cannot do one of those thematic blogs, where one writes some little quip every day about fashion or design. I was never a person to be so obsessed or passionate about one topic, one thing, besides writing. So that's what you're going to get.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Saxophone.

Again, I don't know what to write about yet, but I've sort of made a promise to myself to write at least something every day. So, again, here we go.

I originally thought I would blog about pop culture, a la Perez Hilton or the guy at Dlisted. I love reading that stuff because it goes down so easy, and, well, it's really juicy. I'm not ashamed of my habit, no, not ashamed that I haven't missed an update from either in probably about a year, or that I can't wait until 1 p.m. at work when I can guiltlessly pull up their bright, obnoxious homepages, but I could never write it. They all write the same thing, and they all write about the people who don't matter, and make them a sort of important. I want to write about the people who matter, and maybe make them important. Some sort of important.

Eh... drawing a blank today. The primaries are on in the background. I want to say that I care, but I don't. No, not really. They all say the same thing, and all the newspapers write the same story, and they are made a sort of important. If the issues were made important instead of the people then I might lift an eyelid, but he-said-this-she-said-this-he's-not-this-enough-she-did-this-enough-or-not-enough-or-what-is-enough-and-storied-family-and-great-American-and-dream-and-revolution-change-and-year-after-year-after-year-after-and I am oh, where are we? Unimportant.

There was a man playing tenor sax between the train tracks today. I don't think I'd ever heard a tenor sax between the trains; it's a sharp sound but also smooth. It was all flourish and upanddown and whirring, like windmills, and his fingers climbed like a spider rushing from a stream of water chasing him down a wall after the rain. He leaned back like it was sucking all the air out of all of him but he still smiled, a confident smile but a humble smile, like I should not be here, playing for your quarters, I know I am too good for them but thank you for them anyway, more please and I will smile bigger. A little girl dropped into the begging case by his feet a handful of change that her dad had handed her, she probably tugged on his shirt and said 'Daddy, what is he doing?' and Daddy didn't have the heart to tell her, sweetie, you don't want to be like him though yes he sounds good or support him though, oh, oh, hear that note, it brings back memories of that time when and don't look at him, he's what I never hope you will be, but please, learn an art, honey, sometime in your life, yes please, find something so beautiful and get lost in it honey, escape, for a minute, this ugly world, but don't get too close, so he put the change in her hand, 'Here, now come back quickly.' Every few measures he would hold out a note and do a little vibrato.. and I hadn't heard a vibrato, the wonderful, slow and painful shakeshakeshake, in a while and I held it on my tongue until the train came.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Hello.

I don't know what to write about yet, but everyone and their mother is blogging--yeah, that's so cliche to say, but it's true--and my other blog is too formal, and, hell, I'm a writer, and every person who thinks they know something about writing says all writers should blog, and I've suppressed that everybody for long enough and here we go, I'm succumbing.

So, what to write about. My cat died this weekend. I didn't cry as much as I thought I would. I think I cried more for my fish, actually, Charlie, who survived when his tank fell on the floor and shattered into thousands of pieces, and who survived when I scooped him into a ladle to clean the pickle jar that replaced that tank and he flopped like a mad(fish) and leaped onto the floor, and his sides went *squish,squish* and his little black eyes bubbled and huff puff and I yelled and I flopped around a bit too, maybe out of sympathy but also out of panic, and my stepdad came and scraped him off the floor. He lived a few more years after that, brave trooper, and that pickle jar took him from Florida to Maryland in a car filled with five annoyed people, two dogs and one (now dead) cat. I had a whole lot of respect for him, but even here I have disrespected him; his full name was Sir Charles II (though the Charles before him was Charlie and not Sir Charles) and that's certainly a more fitting name for such a warrior. Anyhow, Sir Charles II-but-really-I stared at me every day from his spot on my desk through my first year or so of college. When he died, that was the first time I ever experienced and the only time I have ever experienced death alone. Neither of my roommates was home, and his pale red body like all the blood was out was upside down so I ran his pickle jar to the community bathroom and woosh, heaven or sewage or sewage then heaven. Like life is heaven or sewage or sewage then heaven, or if you don't see heaven maybe it's just sewage.

Anyway, the cat was with us 12 years but he was happier alone. My stepdad and one of his coworkers found him as a tiny kitten on the side of the road in a paper bag with his sister, no mother in sight, and his coworker took the sister and his daughter named it Gravy, and we named ours Sonic, after a video game hedgehog. Then we grew up a bit and technology grew up and neither that video game nor that hedgehog was cool, so he was dubbed Max, and I don't know where that one came from. Maybe it was better because it was timeless. Anyway, Max was a loner, and when he wasn't alone he was wild, natural. His idea of a game was chasing me around the house, doing a loop through the kitchen and the living room was his favorite, while making an ungodly brrrr sound, like an ungreased motor, but when he caught me it wasn't a friendly nibble, it wasn't a pat or a paw but claws, right into the flesh. He gave me the only scar on my body, a long one on my hand that I've had for six years. I really think the whole time he was hunting and never playing. Sometime he appeared fallible, perhaps lovable, when he would leap onto our laps and knead our flesh with his paws and claws and suck on our shirts, like he would a mother's teat, but I think that was nature -- that was necessity and that was a fix and that was not love. I do not think he ever shook that paper bag out of him, like a soldier never forgets the foxhole.