weekly muse...
volume 1, issue 19 | 2022-11-09
poetry
meteorological
thunder rumbles closer, lightning cracks gray sky i stand here picking mulberries my wife thinks i like danger she’s wrong i just like mulberries
-- from homebound
praise
even puddles thank the rain they jump at every drop
-- from along the way
porcupine
quills press my tender flesh roots rip from my skin you have no idea how much it hurts when you touch me
-- from everything rhymes
tea leaves
-- on randi scheurer's test results i pick through tea leaves in your cup they read to me sitting on their knees the message clear, you can relax another year, sip another cup of tea
-- from lives of the poets
summer storm
distant thunder rolling in behind a cooling wind misty raindrops tickle my skin another day -- from another day
short stories
wedding plans
…continued
New Year’s Eve 1993, Family Tradition
They glided with gentle effort across the ice. The cold dark night lit up by the occasional back porch light along the shore. Spilling its pale white streak onto the black ice like a glimmering path leading out from the midst of the dark frozen lake. The clicks and scrapes of their steel blades against the ice called out in the silent night. Punctuated now and then by deep emanations of cracking sounds and tectonic gulps and groans in the arctic sheet as it went about settling in for the long winter on this northern lake.
Bob and Marie had skated off alone together, before the rest of the family came out on the lake. They moved side by side at a steady pace. This, in itself, was a rare event. Usually, he would go racing out ahead, leaving her to follow along in his wake. It was her last year of high school, perhaps the last New Year's Eve when everyone would be home. He reached out shyly and took her hand. They skated on with their gloved hands clasped tight. Then he swung her gently around to a waltzing stop. Their eyes briefly met.
“We better head back. It's getting close to midnight.” He let go her hand.
This year, the ice was smooth like glass. Surface conditions varied from year to year. Some years, the patterns of freezing and melt formed frosted ridges on top of the ice and they could only walk on it with their boots. Other years, the ice would be smooth but covered with a fall of snow that would have to be shoveled away to make a skating area. One year, when the kids were all young, they plowed out an intricate system of paths and clearings in the snow and played games chasing each other on skates through the maze of ice canals on the blanketed lake. Though, at some point in each season, the ice would be buried with hard crusty snow and lay waiting another year for the sharp call of their metal blades. The idylls of skating on their little lake were inevitably brief.
They stood in a circle on the ice, talking and waiting for midnight. Two parents and four teenage children. The nuclear family. Held loosely in place by a covalent bond of shared expectations and common habitation. A relatively stable isotope with a half-life of eighteen years. They basked in the warmth of its radioactive decay.
The still night air began ruffling with the muffled sounds of drunken voices filtering through the walls of a neighboring house where another huddled family started shouting the annual countdown. “10, 9, 8...” They joined in the desperate chorus on the ice. “7, 6, 5...” As they counted out the waning seconds of their final year. “4, 3, 2, 1... Happy New Year!” Their bodies drew close in a thermal mass of kisses and hugs before they were spun apart and flung across the frigid surface of ice in disparate orbits like centrifugal sparks of charged particles randomly seeking new bonds.
-- to be continued...
-- from signs & wonders
lucy (losing the light)
…continued
“Miss Lucille.” Alex greeted me as we walked through the big glass doors. “Always a delight.” He clasped my outstretched hand in both his own.
“Mr. Alex.” We had already settled it long ago that I could not call him simply by his first name, since he was my parents’ age, even though ‘Alex’ was the name etched on his tag and everyone else at the Wal-Mart called him that.
“Here are today’s specials.” He peeled a color newsprint flier from the stack on his lap and reached up from his wheelchair to hand it to me. I despised shopping at Wal-Mart. The aisles were both sterile and cluttered, the aura both familiar and cold. It made me feel cheap whenever I came here, and I don’t mean just the low prices or the shoddy merchandise. It was something more. Like I was the grist, and it was the mill.
“Oh, no thanks, Mr. Alex.” I pushed the sheet of paper back. “I’m just here to pick up some laundry baskets.”
“Again?” He marveled. “Didn’t you just get some?”
“That was last month.” My smile slanted in sarcasm.
“What do you do, recycle them?” He chortled at his own joke.
In our house, we go through laundry baskets like plastic milk jugs. The end handles keep breaking off for some reason. After that, they are no longer pleasant to use, even though they can still do the job.
“Well, sort of.” I chuckled along with him. “Anyway, that’s all she wants today.” ‘She,’ meaning my mom.
Mr. Alex shook his head and smiled. I was always so happy to see him, the way he always smiled and reached up to grab our hands. Although he did this with everyone, it still made me feel special, like I was his favorite niece or something. It made shopping at this dreary place somehow more tolerable, more alive.
“Is this your uncle?” He had shifted his smile to Mr. Davidson, trailing by my side with my camera dangling from his hand.
“Mr. Alex, this is Mr. Paul Davidson, the photographer.” Actually, he did look like a family resemblance, now that I noticed it.
“For the studio?” Mr. Alex gave a confused glance toward the open lobby in the photography studio part of the store.
“No. Not that…” I almost called him ‘Alex’ by his first name, like a child. “He’s a famous art photographer.”
“Oh.” His mouth narrowed into his face. “So you take pictures of paintings and things.” He struggled to find a place to tuck this concept in his mind.
I felt really bad. I knew Mr. Alex was different in other ways besides the wheelchair, or he would have some other job. I was about to correct him, when Mr. Davidson answered.
“Yes.” He spoke enthusiastically to Alex, as if to a colleague. “I photograph art, the art all around us.” He swept his hand in a half-circle flourish.
“I see.” Alex slowly nodded. “All around us.” He followed the sweep of Mr. Davidson’s hand with his dark-ringed, pale blue eyes.
“We would like to take a picture of you.” He grinned. “Lucy, that is.” He handed the camera to me and took his place behind my shoulder.
“Oh sure.” Mr. Alex shifted and burrowed in his chair. “Miss Lucille is a famous photographer too.” He settled in and smiled. “She had a show at the library.”
I was already staring through the lens. Mr. Alex had a slight paunch under his open red vest. The temples were slightly depressed on his shaved bald head and gently bellowed in and out like the cheeks of a bird. His own cheeks were slightly gaunt, and this with his domed forehead and deeply lit eyes, made his face like a thin plastic mask stretched over a skull. He sat in his chair like a silver throne or a chariot made of chrome with its large rubber wheels at each side. He draped his hands over the armrests in a regal pose, peering straight at me through the lens. His visage bore a heavy load, I had not seen before. A brooding sorrow lurked in his curled up smile. I finished the shot as quickly as I could. Sometimes, it hurts too much to really see.
“Thank you, Mr. Alex.” Mr. Davidson offered his hand to be swallowed in the clasp of embrace. “You take a great picture.”
“It’s Miss Lucille.” He corrected him. “She takes the picture. I just sit.” He placed a yellow sticker with a smiley face on my camera. “Have a good one now.”
-- to be continued...
-- from summer’s end
microfiction | a history of the world
…continued
debutants (suburban dreams)
My face peered back at me in the mirror. A dubious stare. Skilled fingers daubed and painted, penciled and plucked, with a mind of their own. It was a project. This perfect mask. Red lipstick, the finishing touch.
She cocked her head. What thoughts were hidden behind that mask? Even for me, it was hard to tell. The mask had such allure.
Later, walking the boulevard that afternoon with her friends, she would forget these thoughts. Boys would stare at her. At the mask. Eying her body with their naked pink faces. She would fully inhabit the role she had cast. Bask in her glory. Glide on her breath. Sucking the air from their lungs.
-- to be continued…
-- from a history of the world