nearly

this is 

organic 

organ's seismic wave

repercussions 

are heavy lidded

clouds of thin remorse cast

shifting shade 

creeps in accomplice 

to

lips bite in acute 

after shock 

earthquakes devour

ed in haste 

vivid visions

mimick memory 

then 

fade 

a numb husk 

desire a destined 

empty nest 

nesting muse 

pushed out 

forays of glory 

that teeter 

at the top 

but     never 

tempest din

music notes floated out as smoke 

into the cold sharp air 

hands wove around waists in and out of grasp 

knees and hips jumped onto the swell of sound

ravaging pulse, greedy fingertips gnawed

so many bodies drowned under the foaming beat 

dizzy-headed stalks swirling in wind tunnels 

clodding feet gave in to the heavy sway of wine laden lids

turning mouths curled into themselves in rapture

and memory drifted out of minds until 

slowly elbows fell over wooden shoulders 

and instruments came down like 

tired leaves

missing parts

It's true, i'll make a mess of things

that's my specialty

baking arsenic into apple pies

things are messy and i get distant 

things are broken parts are missing from both ends

the clock on the wall is ticking the seconds 

until i can get straightened out  

until i can get clean and dry and soft and still

any day now i'll clear the air  

absolve

my history in the book stacks

thick with dust 

 I'm not expecting to make sense of this

because my senses mix and blend the colors muddy 

maybe i've only learned how to stain the surfaces i touch 

but i know i've learned to love

i'm full of it 

sometimes swollen shut like a black eye i failed to ice

i'm my own silly victim of clumsy trying

trying to catch clouds of thought in jars 

to spill out on the page

trying to make my dark places

feel nice

with flimsy blinking strings of light 

and temporary tattoos 

and by crowding comfort 

into bottles of booze

the train lurches on through the night and into early morning

eventually i'll get off 

when i find out how and where to stop

or,

stop trying to find out 

things are messy and i get distant 

things are broken parts are missing

 from both ends

longevity of cash

He didn't look homeless. His pants and jacket were clean if worn and loose. He looked like someone you might see on your way to work stiffly bending on his front step picking up the paper with a tired groan. I couldn't read emotion on his face as he stepped and shuddered slowly past. I noticed his mouth. The deep creases hugging as he chewed out words to the ground. I had the urge to roll down the window to catch what he was saying. Then I saw what he was holding and understood. He was selling socks. At this causal fact I broke in half, my blood spilling invisible. If only I had some cash I would jump out quick. The bank was ten paces away, I could run in again, take out a bit of the check I had just deposited. He wouldn't make it far I'd easily catch up. I would give it to him and then-


then what?

The question punctured an artery, in an instant my chest drained.
My fingers fell from the door handle.
The idea was flopping in my belly like a dying fish. I could buy a pair of socks. Do something small.

 I didn't act.

 
Grasping to empty my pockets that night at home a twenty dollar bill fell onto the table folded into a shrugging rectangle.

 It stared up at me crisp, dead.

the waiting is over

He stands up, opening his mouth, but it just hangs like some half-deflated balloon.

Her hands are clenched, arms straight and shaking slightly.

They both feel the sickness creeping in, into the stark blue room with the cold plastic chairs.

The obviousness of the box of tissues pisses her off. She slept here the past two nights and that little box had taunted her

soft white sheet peeking out its neck

waiting to be wrung


now it was over 
but she wasn't looking at the little box
the sky instead now mocked her 
blue and open 
despite the cramped darkness all around her
the sickness climbing up into her throat


they didn't speak
couldn't


just walked out of the cold room down the sterile linoleum halls and out 
into to the parking lot past the car
down streets past houses and kids on bikes and people eating 


to the pier where they sat and watched the water 
sway 
it slowly lulled their trembling and soothed their tired eyes 


numbness was a solid wall 
they would have to wait to climb 


for now their two hearts thumped
in answer to each other
close and somehow 

alive 

Flash Fiction

These are two pieces I wrote for a flash fiction class. The assignment was to write 250 word micro-stories.

#1

The train rattled and pulled, suddenly feeling like a flimsy metal sardine box. It was hot and beads of sweat dripped down my neck and clung to the hair on my chest. Of course there wouldn't be working AC in August. Fucking Perfect. The shit-for-brains transit employee had asked me to "please sit down sir, we are sorry the inconvenience, but there is nothing we can do at this time." God knows why I agreed to do this. I hadn't seen Tommy in more than a decade, since the house was sold and I helped him move in with that crazy bitch he was seeing. The day after the funeral, while loading boxes with what looked like dirty clothes, she had asked me if I'd dreamt of my father yet. She said it casually, leaning again the truck smoking a joint. I swear if she hadn't been a female I woulda decked her. I'd done my best to forget that town, and everyone in it. But when I got a phone call at five thirty am yesterday and Tommy was on the other line crying and begging me to come I just agreed. His trial is first thing in the morning and I'm wearing dad's watch. Possibly out of spite. I don't know what he expects me to do for him. They arrested him fucked up and making a scene in a laundry mat downtown, with ten grams of cocaine on him. Fucking Perfect.

#2

Drops of rain slid down the windowpane in a kamikaze plummet. There wouldn't be any visitors until the hurricane subsided. The car had finally died, and at 83, Isabel wasn't anxious about the ordeal of getting a new one. Her son had asked on the phone "How will you get groceries?" Not - however, "What will you do all day in that rotting house?" She didn't much care for Jenny, her daughter's old high school friend who came by twice a week to check on her. To see if I'm still alive, thought Isabel. Jenny had such a big mouth always tastelessly gossiping about the parents of her bratty ten-year-old's friends. With the kids in Seattle and Florida and Joe dead three years in November, Isabel had no interest in socializing with the people who came to visit. They always feigned concern for her obvious reclusive behavior and then asked for updates on her kids and grandkids lives, which she could not give.

The last time her daughter Missy had come, alone, and tried to convince her it was time to sell the house and move into a "community." Isabel threw her glass of gin at the wall, prompting Missy to make up an excuse about an early meeting and quickly drive back to Washington.

Rubbing "Cherry Candy Red" lipstick over her crackled lips, a delightfully wretched thought entered Isabel's mind. I wish I could see Jenny's face when she finds me in my pretty white wedding dress.

AM

Mornings after

fever dreams

Sunrise steals night's eager air

Reality an opaque tapestry

Memory a lost affair

Dawn's light lifts

the sea-grean veil

and i am left feeling greedy

for gambles won,

roads abandoned

Hungry Noise

Surround me in the water

with electric air
breathe a beat
straight to my veins
Sharp
Edges that fray to string
Toxic sound
so nourishing

The bass sinks
into this hungry noise

Cymbal up-and-down and up-and
Smashing me alive

Shackle lost
Abandon claimed

Sway onto fearless planes
that low tones discover

Gathering

Now that we've sobered up

we grab our keys and drive.

Hit these headlight parades

as if we have somewhere better to go

we stop and fill up where little hitchhikers, scurrying, chase

after the vacancy signs

duct-taped to our license plates

we won't keep

these crumpled receipts

The gathering road becomes a yellow blur of fickle faces,

dotted lines

to nowhere

everywhere

I think I had better slow down. Sometimes my mind races into a whirling hurricane and I'm powerless to stop it. I want to just feel life, I want a break from the judgments worries memories associated with everything I experience. I want to be completely present. At the same time my body wants to move me into the present- wants to devour action, gorge on forward motion like a crazed pac-man- and it's always the thinking that holds me back. My impulse regulator is on overdrive, so that when I feel something in my gut I hold back from doing, but never from thinking on and on until the urge has rotted and my body has long since surrendered.

I have meditated in the past and that has always worked, but I think it is more than that. I don't allow (force?) my mind to slow down enough to get into that quiet space. Even before sleep I plow through a wall of speeding thought straight into vivid uncontrollable fantasy. I feel the dream taking me in, pulling me down this or that corridor, yet all I want is rest. Quiet. A dark place to learn to feel again- to relearn what a little baby does- to feel life, instead of thinking all the way through. Until it has passed you by and all your thoughts seem like a leash upon your neck that led you carefully, around the present. Around the places you wanted to see- so fast all you got was a glimpse out the window. Around the people you love, or wanted to love, where all you can remember are a few stray words, the way she laughed. Not the person just the 'specs'.

I have reached that quiet place before; I know that it is really there, and ever since I have longed to return. I think I need to get off this ceaseless subway and hike through those mountains again until I find it.

-Penny

Recording a fall

There is an emptiness inside me

a hunger for a different kind of sustenance

I'm sick of sweets and processed meat, I want clarity, water and wheat

I'm sifting the flour for specks of power the

truth is a burning building and water pours from the veins of those who came to watch it fall

Sometimes I feel like a sore thumb stuck out on the side of the road but no cars come to pass the mass of sheep bray and shove me the wrong way back onto the plastic grass
politicians roaming past with mouths foaming greedy devils in mardi gras masks
selling fear out of shopping bags like doomsayers
to numb dumb humans with tv fumes useless celebrity ‘news’
but when it starts when the oil rigs fall apart it’s all profit and no heart

I can’t close my eyes or my ears or my fists

scribbling on for every son and daughter they shot down told to submit to the draught when they could have taught thirst –
So
I wrote hope onto the faces of little kids disguised as butterflies sneaked it into the water supply and defaced the crumbling structure with my dissent the design
Now it climbs like iron vines over this corporate castle wall and I can’t stop
till I record it all

to hear

after I lost my voice

I started listening

to the upstairs neighbor's woody tenor

a deep echo under water

and the jazzy raspy pitch of the lady at the bar

that sweetly chirping flute- small children in the park

and on the crowded subway car

(yet in such solitary stifle)

I prayed that people speak!

I longed to know the texture of so many strangers' souls

from the way their words dripped, oozed, burst~

escaped as breathy whispers in the cold

but behind my desperate thirst,

the strange and sorry truth

that in exchange for this new faculty

(oh, suddenly to hear!)

the fiat- to be mute

At the Carnival

Big fake eyelashes

up close like spider legs

curled and glued

and forced in place

a scavenging seagull in the distance

my grief, strung on telephone wires

my flippant mind
straps me on this Coney Island roller-coaster ride
 Thud- thud- thudding up with
Erratic heartbeat joy

At the top, tipping
gravity compels this urge
to fall

it might hurt
or feel like freedom

but when it’s over
I’ll be back to street level

a rush of blood,
and empty pockets

surface

In a past life I must have been some aquatic entity. Ever since I can remember- say about three years old running naked on the beach, the sound and the smell and the giddy feel of the lapping water on my ankles has stirred me like nothing else. Perhaps it’s some subconscious womb-safety instinct, or even a memory of amoebic evolution, but the sea is my soul-mate. I have always believed that mother earth and father sky are marvels of divine wonder. I am in awe of mighty still mountains, the wild free beasts and watercolor washed sunsets that burn away the day.

Yet, nothing heals me like floating out beyond the waves.

The idea of this tiny fleck of being that is me- suspended on the wet surface of the earth- is enchanting. I breathe slowly and just listen, imagining the wind that blows a visitor from far-off places tirelessly continuing on its antediluvian course.

21 gears

fold me into leaves and grass
run rivers over land
dry and cracked
fill the sea with sounds of play
grow roots deep till mountains break
I'll take flight on dusty pave
dancing into the desert grave
roll past cities of smooth glass
shattering their filthy masks
plant instead resistant vines
to nurture the nature of creative minds
21 gears and years in stow,

Chase time
to find your way

Deciding

Well, it's time I stopped talking about writing.



She walks down the Brooklyn avenue doing her best impression of someone who isn't worried about how to look confident without the pinched step of uppity gentry or the slow swagger of street pomposity. And, after finding a sort of strained middle ground, she rushes on past casual stoop and consignment shop toward the elementary school.
Smile in greeting and how was your day?- later, everything is different. The skipping sloping stroll of hand holding and the confidence is effortlessly there. Somehow just the presence of that little person magically brings forth all of the answers.

whew, it's something. and that's enough


-Penny