November 2011
1 post
need
I need to be alone with my words.
They may come and go, yet I don’t obsess
As they slip away from thoughts.
I know we’re going to last.
I remember when my words made people
See me differently.
Stop.
Reassess.
My words were never dark
But they were unafraid.
October 2011
2 posts
st. vincent
Her music sounds like an anxiety attack. Unsuspecting, it starts. That’s when this happens:
She stands completely still as guitars around her have a meltdown.
They turn to cacophony.
Through all of the screeching, her voice doesn’t give in.
It’s outer calm with an inner panic.
It’s a flushed face.
writer’s block
Here’s a secret - I don’t go to the coffee shop for the coffee.
The doorbell jingles.
The nerdy guy comes in, timid with his backpack.
The couple puts up wall art.
The cat walks by.
The accents twang.
The iPad flips pages.
The girl has wings tattooed on her back.
September 2011
3 posts
defined
“No caffeine or alcohol, what are you Mormon?”
Overheard over coffee - the words that flow in other people’s conversations.
The nuances of speech, how we establish who we are through words.
It’s sharing only what you want them to know, a defining dance as you speak and then don’t.
the watcher
His name is Hector. It’s his job to peruse the property, to check for intruders to his perfect landscape.
He wakes every morning and looks in windows. He must make sure all’s to code, keeping things in order helps him to deal.
He cranes his neck because he’s a crane.
floating
Nick’s got a sort-of girlfriend named Heather that he met at his latest job – Wednesday night stock boy at Books-A-Million.
He’s your standard greasy concert-teed/dirty jeans/bad-attitude guy, living in his childhood room.
Nick’s been perfecting this half-awake, half-life for years, until two bumps on his back changed everything.
July 2011
2 posts
9:31am
Tracks rumble, echo beneath ear buds.
Is it? Could it be? No that’s the escalator, moving no one.
Next to me is graffiti of a man drawn in white-out, with lightning bolts coming out of his head. He’s got bags under his eyes, thick and heavy with memories of sleep.
hoods
“Biker Bible Study.”
“Hookers Car Towing.”
It’s a town in a state with so many towns like this. Small. Confederate flags adorn truck’s back windows. Pro-life billboards dot the expressways, like the many love bugs that swirl onto to cars.
They melt and stick to hoods in Florida July heat.
June 2011
2 posts
windows
I was young when we lived on the farm in Iowa. While I would lay awake some nights, afraid of the dark, the curtains would blow the trees’ smell of warmth and soil across my wood floors.
These are all just memories now, because in space there are no trees.
giving in
I want to be cheesy and write New York a love letter.
Fuck it, I write it mentally anyway.
Babies everywhere. Today I saw a line of tiny kids holding onto a rope wearing art smocks. Growing up here screws you if this is your idea of a normal city.
May 2011
6 posts
little bit
“Aren’t you bored with this routine yet? You do less than my 85 year‐old father when his diabetes act up,” her mom pressed over breakfast.
“You know mom, inactivity works well with my general wardrobe choices,” Jane said.
“Sometimes I wonder about you. Maybe if I’d taken more prenatal vitamins.”
plan a
Waiting at the pharmacy line in CVS, I saw the guy in front of me was pacing around and frowning. He looked like he was have the worst day and it made me curious why.
He mumbled something to the pharmacist, who repeated, “Bambi?”
“Plan B,” he answered coldly.
Oh.
folding
Late afternoon sunlight is coming into Jack’s kitchen. Jack’s folding a piece of origami. It’s the time of day when the sun’s low enough to be seen and felt.
He’s determined, making a perfect tiny blue paper bird. Jack’s surrounded by a rainbow of dead paper cranes, his past attempts.
direction
A man sits outside Starbucks, filling out his postcards.
“You a tourist?”
Then the homeless man starts telling him where he should go in America based on how hot the women are.
“San Diego sucks, Hawaii’s awful, but in Los Angeles a beautiful woman will screw you for five dollars.”
out there
I’ll sip my beer and wait for your reply.
My toes tap and my fingers crack. I notice the dust that collects on sides of the fan blades, spinning around and around but clinging tight.
Check my phone for texts. It always tricks me when the screen catches the light.
andrew
The twin beds are pressed together in my bedroom and I awaken to my mom stroking back my bangs. “Honey, it’s time to move to another room,” she says.
I am five years old and the bathroom tile diamonds make creases on my legs as we wait out the storm.