the pages of their minds went missing

the pages of their minds went missing today
and wouldn't answer when they tried to call them back.

they went in circles trying to find them
looking in dark closets and under-the-bed spaces.
they thought they found them at first
in cardboard photo boxes
but the pictures were all too yellow
and the laughing faces inside were just as closed
as the glossy shuttered houses they’d never remember
no matter how hard they squinted.

still
until their fingerprints were full of dust,
they traced the shadows
huddled at dusktime with blurry hands plunged deep into jean pockets
and children playing hockey in an empty street and yelling
mouths wide open in some forgotten outrage.

in other pictures they thought they found
themselves
drinking around beach bonfires and holding lost newborns.
but the sand was always too dark
the hallways always too long
the faces all too narrow
and they couldn't remember any of it.

so they pulled away,
threw the photographs down
and opened their front doors to run.

when they looked outside
the houses were all shuttered shut
the pavement was too black
and they saw
everything real was gone.

Cobh

Here's a bit of old writing I did in Ireland, in Cork when I couldn't get my camera working. Hope you like it, but if you don't (or if you do!) totally comment with any advice or criticism you have!

***

I took the train station down the hill from my hostel, and right away things started changing. Right away there were signs of the sea, and a different sort of sea than I was used to. Instead of white sand stranded in the middle of the road or long, pale beach grass swaying by the curb, it looked like the land itself might have once been part of the ocean floor. There were brown sandbars stretched out on either side of the train, all of it reminiscent of a wave. They were made up of eternal ripples, glistening under a sheen of millimeter deep saltwater, etched with thin, deep tide pool streams, curving and rippling this way and that like a brown snake. Or a wave. Even the sea-foam green railings of the bridge we passed over rolled up and down. And then I got to Cobh and it was obvious that the little town, too, was a wave.

The roads, the couple there were, winded gently, and the buildings followed. The houses and pubs and shops traveled in connected, multicolored rows: sky blue, goldenrod, white, salmon, peach, cream, black, brick red, turquoise. They formed the streets, and went up and down, back and forth in little fluttering hills, sometimes even nearly going through each other, like they themselves were made of water.

I went up and down the hill-waves, breathing in the salt and wind and sun and rocks until I got to these dunes that were made out of earth and short grass instead of sand. On one side of the dunes was a make shift door made from tin or some sort of rusty metal, and I thought, here you can live inside the beach.

Dublin

time flies away here.
it darts from your hands
pulled by high-heeled cobblestone roads
murderous taxis
trampled newspaper mush cigarette butts
years of bikes rusting algae in the Liffey
and mute nights where it only rained.

it takes away spinning
midnight pub worlds with their stomping and dancing and hidden corners
in seconds, takes
picnics of wine and tree climbing castle climbing life swirling,
accents that turn talking
into a song,
and the wind that makes you fly into busy anything streets
into leafy iron gated parks sprawling
with all of Ireland on its lunch break except you have all day.

then turns it all into a dream.

Three Poems

LOOK I'M POSTING AGAIN. Weird, right?

Anyway, I wrote these for my creative project for one of my classes. They're all inspired by the Irish Famine, so that means they're really cheerful, obviously.

PS, comments are spectacular and make me really happy. So comment.

***

in the night

she didn’t know it
when his heart stopped
beating. their sleep disappeared that night
and when she woke
he was cold, more stone than infant
than baby, her child. they say,
so early, it’s a blessing. poor thing
didn’t suffer long. look
at them, us, look at you, nothing
but bones, but skin. but
she didn’t know it when
his heart stopped beating and that meant
his heart stopped beating.
his heart stopped beating.

famine house

the house is broken with the rhythm
of the thousand bodies it couldn’t shelter.
it stands there a shattered
bombsite
ticking with every heartbeat
pushed aside
and put out too early.

they were once people
and back then they fought,
protested with fists and guns and tears
until their everyday laughter, everyday hopes switched
and burst
into the stillness of a billion muted bones.

now the house lies starving in Ireland
In Darfur, huddled bloody
and wasting for water in Haiti
sick and dying.
it’s on every street
in every country
beating loudly and helpless
filled with too many ghosts
and a ticking that can never end.

potatoes

she stands in front of the bathroom mirror
clutching windex
kool-aid blue.
no matter how much she scrubs
she can’t change what she sees.

once, in a century forgotten decades ago
half a culture starved
until they were nothing but rib cages.

but she could never eat a potato.
they’re too big and they remind
her too much
of what she sees in the mirror.

Kilmainham Gaol

I've been wicked fail at blogging lately, and it's awful. I mean, I still have to write about Cork! And that was ages ago! And just so many other things have happened, even though I can't blog about all of them. So, pretty much, expect a post about most of that soon. Tomorrow, hopefully!

Anyway, I have a story for now. It's sort of about the famine, so if you're in a really wicked awesome mood and want it to stay that way, you might not want to read it just right now.

***

She would shiver, but she forgot how to do that a lifetime ago. Or maybe it was several lifetimes ago. She didn’t know what time was, anymore. She didn’t think, anymore. Couldn’t think. If you asked her what her name was, she wouldn’t be able to tell you, because the person with that name was gone. The person who laughingly sang and danced and whispered and passionately screamed was missing, or else dead. She was a skeleton now, and her smile fled from her face so long ago, to find food elsewhere.

She would say she missed that one happy lifetime, but she’d forgotten how to do that, too.

So, she leaned, hunched against the freezing stone wall of the gaol. Even the hundreds or dozens of bodies didn’t warm the cell. They were far too close to death to emit any sort of heat. And they were all just angles, anyway, all shells of former people. Their limbs were like paper, and they had no fat or strength to block out the frigid air. The winter wind would rush in and have no problem blowing through their brittle, fast disappearing, bodies.

Once upon a time, she came to the gaol to survive. She’d thought that the gaol, with its regular meals, would save her. But then the meals weren’t regular. But then she forgot what living was. And then she forgot what death was, so she had no reason to fear it.

She saw the ghosts of the dead sometimes. The ashen, unblinking faces she’d once known and once watched grow stiff. Their ghosts were the same as their bodies, saying nothing except in their eyes. Because their eyes told their stories, told of potatoes blackening and laughter falling thousands of feet off a sea cliff, finally shattering. Told of babies growing cold under mounds of soft blankets, songs they tried to sing but ended up not even being able to whisper, the roads they built that went nowhere, just like their weakening, faltering bodies.

Her thoughts had stopped forming words ages ago, but she knew—their eyes told her— life wouldn’t last much longer. She wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful, so she just wasn’t anything.

But she took her last bit of strength and let herself listen to the creakings around her. A child cried, a thin, devastated wail. The emancipated leftovers of a person collapsed to the ground nearly soundlessly, and tried to suck in the dirt floor for food. Another body, one of the few strong enough, rocked back and forth on skin stretched thin and bones, and hummed the same four notes of the same familiar song, over and over again.

She heard all of this, and then she shut her ears, and shut her eyes.

Bee Ee Ell Ell Ee

Okay, well, this isn't the story I was talking about the other day. That'll end up being longer, hopefully, and it's nowhere near done. Still, though, if you have any thoughts, that would be lovely and stuff.

***

Marina held her baby close to her. Her baby. She was never supposed to have her, but she’d loved the baby right away. And when she named her, she knew that whatever name she chose had to shout that. She wanted to name her after the ocean, after flowers and rubies and the sun and the moon. So, she named her Belle, because she found out that it meant, “Beautiful.” Mostly, though, she just called her baby her baby.

Still, she could spell, “Belle.” She couldn’t remember what it looked like on paper, but she remembered the sounds they made when the nurse from the hospital spelt them out loud. Bee ee ell ell ee. She said those sounds to her baby every morning and night, so that her baby would always know what her name was.

Marina shifted in the hard grey folding chair. Her baby didn’t cry. Her baby was being good. She always was. The woman sitting in front of her, behind the grey painted metal desk, didn’t smile, though. “So,” the woman said, tapping her pen against a clipboard, “You want to work here.” She said the words slowly, and looked Marina and the baby up and down.

Marina smiled, so that maybe the woman would smile. The room was so stark, and so was the woman. The woman sat up straight, not slouching at all. Marina knew that was supposed to be a good thing, a healthy thing, but the woman sat as if there was metal-- cold, grey metal-- shooting through her veins. But Marina smiled. “Yes,” she said.

The woman ticked something off on the clipboard. She didn’t smile. “And you are how old?”

“I’m sixteen.” The woman eyed over Marina and her baby a second time.

“Sixteen,” she said, “sixteen.” She raised her eyebrows and her mouth fell into a thin, disapproving line. “We don’t usually hire under-eighteens.”

Marina kept her smile as steady as she could. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve lived a lot longer than just sixteen years,” she offered. She shifted in her seat. It was hard and uncomfortable, but her baby didn’t seem to mind. Her baby was so good.

The woman didn’t care. “But, you haven’t,” she said, still tapping with her pen.

Marina didn’t know what to say. The room was so dark and fluorescent. So metal and grey. It was too big and too concealed. The only pictures anywhere were faced away from Marina. As far as she could tell, maybe they weren't even pictures at all. Just frames. It was nothing like home. Her apartment, the one she shared with her parents and brothers and sisters and grandmother, was tiny but perfect. It was warm and colorful, and there was always laughing. There were never, ever any pens tapping on clipboards.

The woman sighed. “I don’t usually hire anyone under eighteen,” she said, again.

Marina hugged her baby closer to her. “I’m a good worker. Please.”

The woman sighed again, louder this time. “Well,” she said, “Do you have any special skills?”

Marina’s smile faltered before she could stop it. Not really, she didn’t think, but she couldn’t say that. She thought she was good at taking care of her baby, but she knew the woman didn’t care about that. The woman wanted her to say that she was perfect at using the cash register, or counting money, or smiling at customers with rampage in their eyes. So, she said the last one.

“Hmm,” the woman said. She didn’t look impressed. That was probably what everyone said. The woman stopped tapping, though, and rummaged through some papers.

“If you can just fill this out,” she said, “Someone will be able to get back to you in a few days.”

Marina swallowed. She eyed the papers. They had writing on them. She was expected to write on them. The woman put the papers on her lap. Marina stared at the papers, stared at the letters. They were just squiggles and loops and lines. Tiny squiggles and loops and lines. They didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything.

“Oh,” she said.

The woman looked over.

Marina blinked once. “I can’t read,” she said, but her tongue worked slowly, and it took forever to say.

“You can’t read,” the woman said.

Her baby was so good. She fell asleep on the long walk home. Home. Home was safe. No tapping, no needing to know anything. Marina could just stay home always. With her baby. Hold her, play with her, cook for her, teach her. “Bee ee ell ell ee,” she whispered to her baby. She was so good.

Lightning Bugs

I don’t know if you remember but
once we went dancing
in your bumpy green front yard
and laughed at all the passing cars.
They were in such a hurry
and the warm swirling air
couldn’t hold their burning metal as closely as it did us.

We didn’t stop brightlight spinning until the sun
became the moon
even though we knew that the moon was just as beautiful.
Next time, we said, and under it whispered
secret silences
and questions we knew could only be true.

The grass tickled our faces
and the moon had never shown so bright.
We took its glow as a promise
that life might stand still, just for a few more years.
It didn’t, but that night
we watched the white moths flutter in slow motion
and were sure our hearts stopped beating.

I don’t want to add you to my list
of all I’ve lost.
If I could,
I would race for a plane so I could paint the sky
a fluorescent pink lightning cloud sunset,
all so that I could run back to your house and point,
say, “look. The moon’s almost out.
Let’s go dancing.”

Annie

Whenever she could, Annie did something dangerous. At nighttime, she liked to wander down the sketchiest alleyways, the ones where all the windows were shattered, where the street lamps were always too broken to give out more than the dimmest yellow flickers, if even that. Other times, on the rainiest, windiest days, she’d go outside, close her eyes, and dash into the middle of the street, easily ignoring the cars that angrily honked and skidded.

No matter what she did, no matter how reckless she was, somehow, nothing awful ever happened to her because of it. Even the time she went swimming in the big thunderstorm, and swam further out than she’d ever been before, she emerged from the ocean covered in seaweed and more than alive. She liked that day. She liked all of those days. In a way, she figured, they made her basically invincible, and proved everyone who tried to lecture her wrong. Sometimes, though, it made her sort of disappointed. If nothing ever happened to her, she thought, then where was her proof that she’d just done something spectacular? She worried about that; she wanted-- needed, she thought-- there to be proof that she led a different sort of life from everyone else. That idea was everything to her.

Normal life both bored and terrified Annie. Just living wasn’t enough to make her happy, wasn’t enough to keep her feeling alive, not really. In a weird way, she didn’t even feel safe when she tried to live normally. And it’d been like this for as long as she could remember. It started, she thought, when she was little, back when she used to purposely get lost in the mall. She would sneak away from her parents and just run through isles and isles of dresses, sweaters, nightgowns, letting the warm wools and cool silks breeze past her tiny hands, and imagine that she must be some sort of brave adventurer, forcing her way through uncharted land. She pictured herself getting captured, or kidnapped, fighting to get free, and was thrilled. For years, that sort of adventuring mostly satisfied her. As she got older, she would sneak away at night, instead, but the rest of everything stayed almost the same. But, then, just like that, it wasn’t enough.

When she turned thirteen, she tried something new; she stopped eating. Not for the usual reasons most girls give, but just to see what would happen. To see who would notice, to see what would change. As it was, she only lasted four and a half days before she cracked and feasted on Oreos and macaroni n’ cheese. But, no one noticed, and nothing changed. The world didn’t collapse, and it didn’t get any better. She still didn’t feel whole. If anything, it all just made her feel emptier, fragmented. Helpless. It made her hands shake, as if her arms were controlled by some furious puppeteer. She never tried that again.

Now, though, she was seventeen and figuring out how the world worked, and how it didn’t work. She was figuring out how she worked, too, more and more, and she thought she had a pretty good grasp on both. She was pretty sure she knew how she needed to live. She sighed and flipped onto her back, lounging on the roof of her house and watching the sun set bright pink and tangerine. Beneath her, in the living room, someone on TV said something clever and started to laugh. Next door, the neighbors were grilling hamburgers. They talked loudly about when their kids were kids, and the best way to properly grill anything. Across the street, a baby squealed happily. More voices echoed it. Annie twirled a long strand of hair and thought about what she would do next. What she would do that night. It would be big. It would mean something. Maybe, she hoped, as she hoped every night, it would make her what she knew she was meant to be. And if it didn’t, well, there were worse things.

Lifetime Movies They Need To Make

I should be packing, but as it happens, procrastinating's one of my talents. Actually, I'm so good at procrastinating that I've almost forgotten how not to procrastinate. Yay me. Anyway, yesterday I decided that watching a bunch of Lifetime movies was infinitely preferable to being productive. Yay me again. It was fun. And it got me thinking about Lifetime movies that I don't think exist (but, I'm not double checking. If they do exist, that obviously just means that I have a very rich future ahead of me making fantastically shitty movies) but should.

Here's what I have so far.

STD School

There's this kid at this school who comes from a broken home. So, in an effort to push away the pain, he starts seeing a lot of prostitutes, and before long (like, after a week or something. Yup. A week sounds good) he's contracted every STD, ever. When he finds this out, he's all like, "I don't want anymore STDS!" and swears off all sex with prostitutes, and starts having sex with his classmates instead. All of them. So, all of the kids in school end up with with every STD ever, too. And the girls all end up pregnant, and some of the boys, too, and when the babies are born, they also all have STDs. And it's a big news story, too. And lessons are learned on every side.

She Was Only Seven-- Ye Olde Lifetimee Speciale

Harken back to the days of olde. The 1800s or something. Before the days of pollution (except for coal. And the tears of small children slaving away in the coal mines), loose women (well, they were killed by Jack the Ripper), and everything else bad, there was the man who started it all. (Ignore the fact that that statement doesn't make sense.) And his niece. Pretty, seven year old Sarah. Her parents are dead. Of Black Plague. Luckily, her uncle takes her in. Unluckily, however, he is also an opium dealer, and he shows her his wicked world. Before long, little Sarah becomes an addict, spending all of her time in opium dens. And drugs aren't her only vice. She also gambles with the Pokemon cards her uncles gets with the opium. And then she dies. Of an excessively sinful life at such a young age. But, her death is a turning point for her uncle, and he vows to never have anything to do with opium or weird little animated things ever again. But then he dies. Of Black Plague. And grief.

Do You Know The Ripper Man?-- Ye Olde Lifetime Speciale

There's this woman, and she actually isn't a prostitute-- I mean, Lifetime never starts out with those types of women-- but she is dressing in more revealing clothes then she would usually. You see, her husband just died-- he choked on his priest collar-- and this is the form her grief has taken. But, when Jack the Ripper sees her wandering the dark London alleyways, he doesn't doesn't know this. So he stabs her. She takes a while to die, but she's conscious throughout. She whispers to Jack the Ripper that she wasn't really a prostitute and, overcome with guilt, he stays with her till the end. As she dies in his arms, they whisper to each other all of their deepest secrets and heartaches. Also, I think Jack the Ripper should be a pirate. So he can thoughtfully mutter, "arrr," whenever the woman says anything particularly deep.

Tell My Mother I Loved Her-- A Lifetime Movie and Ghost Adventures Joint Production

There was once a little girl, but she was killed by some really awful person. Now, she haunts some house by the sea, crying all the time. Because of her, no one ever wants to move there. They hear her ghostly wailing as they check out the house, and then they flee. But now, Zak Bagans is moving in, and he won't rest until he finds out why this little ghost girl is so upset. He threatens other ghosts, takes his steroids, flexes his muscles, gasps over scratches, and calls every female he comes across, "sweetie." And the ghost stops crying, because, really, this is all she ever wanted.

Ian Somerhalder Is Pretty.

The plot of this? Doesn't matter. Ian Somerhalder just needs to be in it. All of it. Because he's pretty.

Gretel

I have some questions about this one. Mostly, is it good? Also, is it too dramatic? Do you think the first half of the third stanza is okay? I'm thinking of changing it, but I haven't decided what I would change it to even if I do. Anyway, the more advice, the better!

***

She gasps in gusts of damp pine needle air
for breakfast.
She says, reciting on a static loop,
It’s better this way.
This way, she can only taste the Earth,
the soft, sopping, cradling, zero calorie zero fat sky and trees and dirt.
She says that that's enough but her eyes

don't agree.

And she falls,
she crumbles, flutters whenever

an attack of cooking wind blows near her.
Gingerbread houses, she thinks,
and fights to keep her breath from leaving her throat.

She can’t stop her hands from shaking

or her mind.
At night she quivers delicious nightmares.
Her heart wanders dreams to cushiony bread soaked in olive oil
and zesty garlic. Bowls of pink
and chocolate ice cream. Cheese sliced so
thin it melts over her tongue in seconds.

Artichoke Hearts
PeanutButter WhippedCream
BreadSticksFriedDoughTubsOf

FrostingDon’tEvenBotherWithACakeGiveMeAFuckingSpoon.

She says indulge is the most terrifying word
the one that makes her fists pound,
beat at her mirror.

Exhale

New Poem!

Really, though, I'm probably way to sleep deprived to post this. I was probably too sleep deprived to even write it. And I'm definitely too sleep deprived to write this-- I just made about 11 hundred typos. Like slepp. And splep. And a bunch of others that you're probably just not interested in. You probably weren't interested in slepp or splep, either, and you're probably not finding this funny. But I have had basically no sleep in the last two days, and tonight isn't looking that good either, and this is entertaining me, dammit.

For serious, though (for serious..) what do you guys think? Do you like it? What do you get from it, if anything? How could I make it better? And stuff like that.

***

there’s a place
that exists only in the deepest corners of your sighs,
and in the flexings of your breath.

the people there,
or whatever they are,
sail through the rippling currents of your exhales
over and over again
and they never leave you.

they whisper memories when you need them
your favorites
hiding in the tiny pockets of air they find in your chest
as you wait to be shipwrecked.

you’ll never know them
so you'll never be able to see

them breathing, just sometimes, air into their own stories

hidden in blurry blue flecks of beach glass.

Our House Bistro

This is from about a month ago. It's a restaurant review of Our House Bistro, in Winooski, near Spinner Place. Yay. (Maybe. You guys get to decide that.)

***

Our House Bistro was tiny, wooden, and cozy. It was warm in the way a small house, its fireplace blazing softly, might be. It had the welcoming atmosphere of a place that had been there for decades, comfortable in its own existence. It didn’t feel like it was just opened last May. It may have helped that the owners, Matthew Pearsall and Maggie Barch, have been cooking for years. Their catering company, The Spice of Life, is not only number one in Vermont, but also specializes in the same sort of, “twisted comfort food,” that Our House is steadily becoming known for.

Still, the little restaurant was almost empty. It was early. Out of the eight or so tables, only one was occupied. Four people sat around their tall round table in their tall wood chairs. In front of them sat glistening glasses of maroon wine and plates of colorful food— red and green salads, crusty golden sandwiches, and creamy, creamy yellow ravioli. My mouth watered.

Amber and I were led to our table quickly by a friendly waitress who smiled. The table was big enough for more than just the two of us; we each had an entire booth to lounge on. The waitress left, and when she came back she was holding two sparkling glasses of ice water, and one big jar of it for refilling. After handing us menus, she left once again.

We were spellbound, staring at the menus. Visually, there wasn’t anything particularly special about them—there were no bright, impeccably arranged photographs of food, but the descriptions sounded voluptuous. We were silent, running our eyes down the choices. I imagined the grilled cheese— inches of gooey white Vermont cheddar enveloped by crunchy golden brown bread, dipped into startlingly red homemade tomato soup. I pictured the Caesar salad— crisp, juicy green lettuce coated in everything cheesy and garlicky and wonderful. I wondered what the butternut squash ravioli could possibly taste like.

In the end, I decided on the Twisted Macaroni and Cheese. A friend had personally recommended it and, as far as comfort food goes, nothing can ever beat a steaming bowl of mac n’ cheese. Amber chose a plain hamburger, medium rare, with fries. And with that, our food was ordered and we were waiting. We took the time to really look at our surroundings.

Another couple had made their way into the restaurant, but it was still largely empty. On the walls, shelves, and tables were black and white photographs of babies, weddings, family reunions, and first days of school. Their faces smiled and laughed from Fifty-Years-Ago. Across from us was a small but, we were told, quite popular bar, its wall filled with assortments of wines, gins, vodkas, and rums. If only we were 21.

Our food came about fifteen minutes later. Mine was in a little black skillet, probably the same one it was made in. Amber’s burger was on a plate, but her French fries were wrapped in newspaper, just like in Angela’s Ashes, the grease already starting to soak through. We started eating, ravenously.

The noodles were cavatappi. They were longish, squiggly, fun, and coated in the pale, pale off-yellow cheese sauce. Most of the yellow was from the butter, which pooled in shiny gold puddles wherever they would fit. I’m not a butter person, but it looked delicious, if terrifyingly artery clogging. I quickly speared a noodle with my fork, and as I brought it up to me, gloopy, shiny strings of cheese followed. I spun the cheese—it had to have been mostly mozzarella—around and around. I must have spun it fifty thousand times before the final thread of cheese broke and my noodle was covered. There was no doubt; this cheese was real.

As Sean Michael Gallagher, a kitchen manager, said, Our House Bistro doesn’t use tons of crazy ingredients; they use high quality, simple ones, and then they use them right. “We put a lot of love in everything,” he added. All of this together, he said, separates Our House from other local restaurants. It is also what scored them a glowing review in Seven Days. Gallagher said that that review was the best compliment the restaurant could have hoped for.

I tried not to think of the calories as I ate. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help shoving in the warm comfort food. I grabbed noodle after noodle with my silver fork, spun the cheese around like never ending spaghetti, and gobbled it up. At the same time, it wasn’t the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had. Not according to my taste buds, at least. I’m one of those people who buy the sharpest cheddar in the store, and then eat half the brick in one sitting. (I can’t let myself buy cheese too often). So, perhaps it was just that the cheese was very mild, but I thought that, somehow, it actually didn’t taste cheesy enough. It looked cheesier than I would have thought possible, but the warm butter almost overtook it. But, I can’t complain. All in all, it was delicious, addictive, and I adored the long stringiness of the cheese.

It has to be said, though, that the price was up there. The macaroni and cheese was twelve dollars, which is far more than I, as a fairly broke college student, want to spend on any sort of meal. I had a lot of fun eating out with Amber, and I enjoyed the food, but I don’t see myself coming back any time soon— at least not while I’m paying.

As we got up to leave the tiny restaurant, I noticed for the first time that it was completely full. All around me, people sat at their tables, eating, waiting, and laughing. As we walked out, a couple was waiting, ready to take our spot.

A poem with no name. Yet.

she was born beside graves of crisp white sheets
bleached too many times to count,
and beds that could never stay warm long.

she learned to talk listening to footsteps that couldn’t remember
how to hold onto the floor,
under lights that blinked in urgent red whispers.

there were never any songs sung, not
to her, but as she got older
she learned to make her own,
molded from the smiles that echoed out of her scratchy TV.

she swirled words under her tongue
and hid them there,
waited for the day They would come one last time,
wearing cartoon scrub shirts and sudden, sudden smiles--
take out her tubes and wires
take off her bandages
and say, Be Free.

she saved her songs for running in the bright yellow
leaves she could see falling from her window.

but, whenever They came, Their palms
clutched no key, no quick happy chance
of a drifting cloud dancing dream, just rain,
coloring books stained with fingerprints, and I’m Sorry.

Italian Sandwiches

This is actually something I did for homework. It's for my class on food writing. But I just finished it and think it came out kind of okay. Tell me what you think!

***

It was a tradition when I was a kid-- my dad standing in the kitchen, hovering over the cutting board. He would slide his bread knife with the black wooden handle sideways through a loaf of golden Italian bread, halving it lengthwise. He would turn the top half around, so that the bread-y sides of both faced up. He would sprinkle the bread with his simplest homemade salad dressing-- just olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. “Put on more!” I would say. I loved salad dressing, and I ate it on everything, but especially on bread (and spaghetti.) In Ashley Land, the world I made up when I was six, perhaps hoping to influence parental meal choices, you drank salad dressing with supper instead of milk.

My dad would slap on slices of Genoa salami, ham, hot capicola, provolone cheese, and leaves and leaves of lettuce. On one half of the loaf, he would add tomatoes, onions, and peppers, because my mom and dad liked that kind of stuff. The pickles were always popped on last, so that the juice seeped into the bread. Then, my dad would put the loaf back together and cut it into five, one cut for each of us, and stuff those sandwiches into ziplock bags.

Then, we’d go somewhere.

In the summer, we would go to the beach. My brothers and I would play in the water. Adam and I would go in as deep as we could manage. We’d go in over our heads, and when mom would make us prove that we could still stand and thus were in no danger of drowning, we’d fake it, treading water with only our feet so that our shoulders stood still above the ocean’s rim. Matthew, five years younger, would watch from the shallows, making drippy castles and catching hermit crabs with his tiny, chubby hands. We’d get hungry pretty quickly; swallowed salt water only goes so far. So, we would race to the shore, showing off how fast we could swim underwater. We’d dash to the beach blanket that was really just a towel and soak it with dripping sea water and sand. We’d beg to please please have our sandwiches now, please.

The sea salt of the air would intermingle perfectly with the vinegar salt of the sandwiches. I would take little bites and run my tongue against the soft, salad dressing soaked insides of the bread. I would chomp on the cheese. I would crunch on the lettuce. I would lick my lips. After a few bites, each breath of air tasted like Italian bread and salami.

Matthew would start to tear off bits of his sandwich, throwing them to the seagulls that were slowly surrounding us. They would lunge for the bits of food as if, instead of just coming back from stealing potato chips from some now crying toddler, they hadn’t eaten for weeks. And Matthew would lunge for them, joyfully yelling, “Duck!”

Other, colder days, we’d go on hikes, bringing our sandwiches along. My dad would shove them into his backpack, and I’d stuff the pockets of my overalls with chocolate kisses. We would walk past scenic salt marshes and trees with soft pine needles. My mom would remind us to be careful not to trip over the roots that scattered throughout the paths like funhouse stairs. My dad would warn us to beware the Clamaconda and the Giant Tick, monsters of his invention that always made us roll our eyes. Adam and I would pick up kindling for later, and fight to find the best walking stick. We would snack on chocolate.

After a while, we’d stop. On all of our walks, we had a favorite stopping point-- the wooden tipi forts of the South Trail, “the pit,” of Indian Lands, and Doane Rock by the Salt Pond Visitor Center. Doane Rock was our favorite. Adam and I had finally learned to climb it when we were six, and thought that by then, we were pretty much experts. Even though Matthew was little, he could still climb some of it. We thought it was the tallest thing in the world, and we always wanted to eat our sandwiches at the top. Our parents never let us, though. They always made us eat at the picnic bench five feet away.

The sandwiches always seemed to taste different away from the beach. The air wasn’t salty; it was crisp and tasted like leaves, earth, and pocket-melted chocolate. The sandwiches were of more of an unexpected taste, foreign to the woods, though definitely welcome. The pickles were more noticeable. They turned the insides of the bread into lime green mushy salty goodness. Adam thought it made the bread look like alien’s skin, but I didn’t because I never really liked aliens, and that matters when you’re eight or so. I adored nature, even then, but I was still a girly-girl. I would ignore all mentions of aliens and, as I sat at the picnic table eating, I would pretend to be an Indian princess, the Pocahontas of Cape Cod, instead. I knew that Indians probably didn’t eat Italian sandwiches back then, but that was one of the sorts of things that don’t matter when you’re about eight. And, anyway, I loved those sandwiches. I loved the salty taste of the Italian spices, and the chewiness of the bread. I loved sitting outside with my parents and brothers, laughing and eating the same beautiful thing.

I can’t remember the last time my dad made an Italian sandwich on a family loaf. Adam and I are away at college, and when we are home, we’re working. Matthew’s a teenager in high school. Quite naturally, he’d rather play video games or go to the movies. When I go to the beach, it’s with my friends. When I go on walks, it’s almost always just with just one of my parents. When I go with my dad, we don’t bring food. Sometimes we’ll stop at a store afterwards. With my mom, we bring chocolate from Trader Joe’s. We talk about when we were little, when everything was as simple as cutting a loaf of Italian bread into five.

The Warlock

So, there’s this movie that you guys all need to see. It’s called, “Warlock,” made in 1989, and it’s even more amazing and terrible than its name suggests.

It deals with three characters: Kassandra-with-a-K, Giles Redferne, and a warlock.

According to IMDB, the warlock doesn’t have a name. He isn’t special enough. You see, Kassandra-with-a-K is wicked special. You can tell because of her name. The writers used the same technique when they named her that Stephenie Meyers used with Bella Swan. You know how Bella’s always like, “Oh my gosh, you guys! Everyone here calls me Isabella! ANGST!” and then when Edward calls her Bella for the first time, she’s all, “Oh my gosh, you guys! HOW DID HE KNOW MY TRUE IDENTITY?” Well, it’s the same deal here, except even more so. Kassandra-with-a-K derives all meaning in life from the fact that her name starts with a K. At least Bella has a couple other aspects to her personality. Like the fact that she’s so super mature that she likes Jane Austen, because obviously no other teenage girl ever likes her. And the fact that she doesn't like rain, and she really really doesn't like snow. Well, with Kassandra-with-a-K, though, the K is all she's got. She is that K-- lives, breathes that K. Someone could walk up to her and be all, like, “HA! I’m gonna call you Cassandra! WITH A C!” And she’d be all, “Noooooooooo.” She'd be devastated. She'd be nothing. It'd be legit.

Except no one in the movie would say legit, because "Warlock" takes place in the 1980s. I don't know what the '80s equivalent would be, but it'd probably be pretty lame.

Anyhoo, here's a synopsis of the first thirty minutes, give or take. You'll probably have to actually watch the movie to find out the rest. My words can't give it adequate justice, anyway.

***

The movie starts out in 17th century Plymouth Plantation. It's supposed to be Boston, but it's totes not. The warlock is locked away in a tower, shackled by his toes. Seriously. My guess is that he has really oddly shaped toes, where the tips are giant and the beginning bits are teeny. Which leads me to wonder why he didn't just use his magic to make his toes normal. Probably, that's just part of the movie's mystery.

Anyway, the warlock's just chillin' in his toe shackles when a bunch of these pilgrim dudes climb up and are all like,"You trafficked with the Divvil! Also, we have, like, scottish-ish accents. Yeah, we don't know why, either."

Then, this dude, Redferne, comes up, and he's wearing a shit ton of furs for some reason, and has this long mullet that probably hadn't been washed in a couple years.

He's totally Scottish and stuff. And he hates the warlock. They're totally enemies. Not even frenemy enemies. Legit enemies. So, they yell at each other for a while, and Redferne tells the pilgrim dudes to keep the toe shackles on the warlock for, like, infinity. But as he says this, the warlock does his magic and in a flurry of graphics probably done on Microsoft Paint, the warlock escapes and it's suddenly 1989 California. Which brings us to Kassandra-with-a-K. Hells yes.

Kassandra-with-a-K has really bad fashion taste and lives with her gay roommate, Chas, who also has a really bad sense in fashion. Kassandra-with-a-K has diabeetus, too. And she doesn't like old people because they walk too slowly and totally take away from the gravitas of her pleather windbreaker, giant globe earrings, and awful driving.

Anyway, Kassandra-with-a-K and Chas are sleeping when, what do you know, the warlock crashes through the window into their house. Even though the warlock's wicked creepy and cult-y looking and, I don't know, just flew through their window, they don't seem to find terribly much odd about this. They even let him sleep in Kassandra-with-a-K's bed. How sweet.

The warlock's awake by next morning, and the roomies are all, "OMG! He's British! That automatically makes him safe and totes awesome! Here, have some tea and crumpets!" But he's really not safe because when he wants Chas' heirloom ring, he totally cuts his finger off to get it. Then, he uses his magic to totally kill Chas. It's gross.

The police come to tell Kassandra-with-a-K all about her poor roomies' death while she's at work, about a half hour later. I'm not really sure how they found out, since Chas and the warlock were the only ones home, and the doors were locked, but I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation. Maybe the warlock was so wracked with guilt that he had to call them. For his conscience. I mean, it's not possible for a British person, witch or not, to be completely evil, right?

Anyway, the po-po start talking to Kassandra-with-a-K, and there is this little gem of a conversation:

Coppehs: Did [Chas] frequent public parks?

K-with-a-K: He didn't dick little boys from bathroom walls, ok?

Coppehs: You said your roommate was gay.

K-with-a-K: Not queer! Big difference!

There's really not much you can say about that (other than, maybe, holy shit! Homophobia, much????) so I'm just gonna leave that blank.

The next scene takes place in this hippie psychic store, run by this hippie psychic with a man-face and feathered hair. The warlock's there because he wants her to, "channel me a spirit!" And she wants to say no, because it's after hours, but she totally has the hots for this pony-tailed creeper, and agrees. So he tricks her into channeling the Divvil, saying that the Divvil's his daddy.

When the Divvil talks through her, he's all like, "YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES, JACK! YOU HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE ISLAND!" and the warlock starts crying and saying, "HOW MUCH DID YOU DRINK, DAD?" but then he remembers that his name isn't Jack! It's The Warlock! So, he tells the Divvil that, and the Divvil's all, "My bad, son," and tells him to, "bring together my Bible." Apparently the Bible in question, the Grand Grimoire, is separated into a bunch of pieces, and once they're all brought together it will, "thwart creation itself." Which would really suck, apparently.

Oh, and then the hippie psychic with a man-face and feathered hair dies. It's not particularly sad, really.

Anyway, meanwhile Kassandra-with-a-K is understandably pretty freaked out by everything, so she goes home to pack. And while she's stuffing ugly '80s clothes into her ugly '80s suitcase, she hears glass breaking. (I'm pretty sure that all of the windows in the house are broken by now). This time, at least, though, it is not the warlock. It is Redferne!

Redferne totally thinks that Kassandra-with-a-K is a whore, but that's okay because I think everyone does, what with her silver pleather ensemble and everything. But then he hits her and gets her in a chokehold, which is really just douchey. As he has her in the stranglehold, he's all, "WHERE IS THE WARLOCK, HARLOT!" and she's totally freaking out. But then Redferne explains that the warlock's a warlock, and she's pretty much totally cool with it. Until the warlock comes over to her and utters what is pretty much the worst spell ever written: "Tout, tout. Through and about. Your callow life in dismay. [plus a bunch of latin]"which makes it so that she gets 20 years older each day.

Oh, and Redferne totally gets tazed, bro, by the police and realizes that it's the 1980's.

And the warlock finds a bit of the Grand Grimoire inside the dining room table.

Once Kassandra-with-a-K wakes up at forty-- and she did not age well, believe me-- she busts Redferne out of jail. The two then decide to team together and become a merry duo and stop the evil warlock.

2:22 AM

Okay, so I need help on this one! Do the stanzas work? I mean they all take place in different places, with different people, but does that work? And is it obvious that the stanzas are still all about the same subject? And, any advice for anything?


***

2:22 rushed in through the window shades
with sirens and lights flashing hollow, urgent ribbons.
A girl sat quiet on the bed.
She’d been trying too long for dreams
and she couldn’t shut her ears
even after the jumbled life cries flew away.

Cars drove by the twisted, sprained metal,
headlights stared at it, a gallery,
engines wondered.
Blinking night owls murmured curious sympathies,
knowing the rain will fall soon enough.

The kids laughed together in their hoodied huddle,
clinging to their Dunkin’ Donuts cups against
frosty sunrise air. They whispered flickers
of this time and that time
and hanging on rollercoasters one last time,
before winter suspended all life in the air.
They didn’t know, yet.

Almost

Sun
beating down heavy
light. Tropical sugar sunscreen seeped

into the poetry of air.

We could be at the beach,
our feet buried in sand.
Warm, soft.
A thousand beads of sunshine,
freezing waves lapping close,
and we can feel the ocean
currents swaying inside our skin.

We aren’t. But the passing cars
roaring beside us
and the people
tossing and turning together
remember the sea
rolling back and forth
endlessly.

telephone lines

she followed the lines,
the sunset sepia ghost roads
for hours
counting the telephone poles:
one one hundred two hundred.

infinity.

names and tones thunder leapt from the wires
into her throat.
they cried out conversations
secreted away like lies
years ago.

they marked her like a bruise,
the truths,
the panics and the cries.

she walked that long road
to the sea.
the last pole was just
an indented slice of drift wood
shifting inwardly between the surf

and the blinking highway.

the sky stretched
aimlessly, rusted
with cracked mascara and dew.

she turned around before her heels could sink
into the shore.

the sun rose and set
and she walked back.
the historic static heaved
away from her with each step,
each gust.

only a few buzzing fragments stayed, still
piercing her eyes
with barbed wire and muttered
moments.

Fog and Pirates. Arrr.

When it’s foggy and windy, it feels like you’re in the ocean. You can smell the sea water, and you can feel the churning of the waves. You know that even after the fog goes away, there will probably be a storm, and it's exciting. You long to hear the wind howl, and those very howls bring you back to a time when you didn’t exist, when there were wooden ships and storms constantly meeting as they fought to cross the sea. You’re a sailor, or a pirate, or even just another passenger, trying to sooth your crying baby as everything, including you, is tossed around by the wind and waves. Or you’re a lighthouse keeper, squinting out at the viciousness of the saltwater with the help of the lighthouse’s slight glow. You wonder who it will grab this time.

Sometimes when I think of fog, I think of pirate ships, lost forever in the middle of the blurry whiteness of the churning.

I thought I saw a pirate ship when I was six. I was at the beach-- Cold Storage, I think, in Dennis-- and it was nighttime. It was clear and the sky was starry and dark. And far out, where the night sky met the water, there was a ship. It was big, but didn’t look like a ferry or anything like that. It didn’t look modern. I was sure that it must be the old and wooden kind pirates always captained. Squinting, I was sure that I could make out the knobby, freshly swabbed rails and steering wheel. I didn’t see a flag with a skull and cross bones, but I could explain that. I figured that pirates were probably simply less likely to fly it at night, when everything’s so much harder to see. No; they would fly it when everyone could see it, and wonder at it and be afraid. Either that, or it’s just the sort of thing the pirates don’t want you to see until it’s all too late.

I wondered if it was a ghost ship or the kind where everyone’s still alive. Both seemed pretty likely.

I squinted out to the sea, trying to see if I could make out any moving shapes or shadows. It seemed like a good way to see if the ships’ crew was living or not. Basically, my theory went that if the figures were sort of see-through and had long, floaty tails, then they were probably ghosts. If they were solid, without long, floaty tails, and really looked like people, then chances were that they were probably still alive. Both ideas were equally exciting.

The waves were tiny, but they still crashed against the shore with little white bubbles of surf. I imagined that they were much bigger the farther you get out to sea, and they jostled and threw the pirate ship around. The entire crew would have to be on deck, swabbing it and steering and climbing the tall yellowing ropes that blew in the wind. They would shout things about the, “starboard side!” and, “Iceberg at four o’clock!” even though this was Cape Cod in the summertime, so ice was an impossibility. And, of course, throughout it all there would be plenty of, “arrrs,” and, “ahoy maties,” mixed in, and they all would sing, “yo ho, yo ho; it’s a pirate’s life for me,” in the perfect pirate fashion. I decided that all pirates must love being pirates, because otherwise they wouldn’t sing that song.

I also decided that the fact that it was a clear night must have been an anomaly for the pirates. Pirates are supposed to love cloudy, foggy nights, because it makes it easier for them to sneak up on other ships and take their treasure.

Fog's different for everyone else. It mystifies the world. It makes everything new and makes you helpless. It’s beautifully thrilling, but to anyone who isn’t a pirate or playing hide-and-go-seek, the fog is not so much an ally. When the fog is so thick that you have only the slightest guess as to what’s in front of you, you have to rely on your deepest instincts to get you home*. You have to rely on your deepest instincts to get you anywhere at all.

It’s easy to imagine the fog as a giant body of spirits or ghosts. Fog is aimless and almost seems sad. It almost seems alive, too, as it flows on and blocks everything, but still not quite. It just goes through the motions, not really caring about the outcome. When fog comes, it doesn’t mean to hide everything. It doesn’t mean to create fun and laughter, either. Just as a ghost ship is forced to wonder forever, no matter what, the fog doesn’t stop. It just goes.


*Of course, when you have my sense of direction, it really doesn't make that much of a difference.

The Haunted House Mystery (or, I still couldn't write)

I have another terrible story from my childhood. This one's from third grade, when I was eight. I'm sure you guys are all wicked stoked.

Oh, and for some reason, I'm reading Emily as having a really masculine voice. Like, one of a forty year old man. Or Patrick from Sponge Bob. I really don't know.

*

"Once there was a little girl named Polly who was 5, and a little girl named Emily who was 8. One morning they went to an old haunted house. But they didn't know it was haunted. Then, they saw a ghost. They ran to their older sister, Lily, who was 15. She said it used to be a school house, but it had fallen down on the kids so it was haunted. Polly got really scared and cried. But Emily said "I will go to the haunted house."

Soon Emily came back and said "I think I found something. Will you come with me?" Polly said no, but Lily made her go. So Polly went with Lily and Emily. They looked and looked and while they were looking they saw some ghosts. Some were boys and some were girls. But all of the ghosts were bad. Emily and Polly screamed. It was a very scary sight.

Just then Polly yelled, "I found something." Emily and Polly found a secret passageway. All of a sudden there was a bump. Emily asked, "Did you feel that bump?" "Yes" replied Polly. "What made that bump?" asked Emily. All day they looked for clues. But then, suddenly, they knew. The ghosts had made that bump."