Monday, October 19, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
No More the 4th
He had known Shannon for a few years in school, but their private lives had only just begun to intertwine: they had exchanged phone numbers. Smiling, shaky-handed, written on paper just-before they were out-for-the-summer.
They would find love in those hot months; in that sweltering, free limbo of pollen, grass clipping cloud dreams, soccer, and drifting dogs from other-towns, they would make sense of their bodies and hearts in ways that had not, before, been formed into questions.
June had come and gone with beady sweat joy from running shins, and now the fourth of July was upon them. The delighted days of bursting fire-crackers and screeching Penny-Whistle Chinese-Towers with Neapolitan sparks from all the cardboard gilding; the spires and fountains and torpedo mortar shells of sparkle-flame not only reflected, but amplified the whimsy of their palpating desires and their illusions.
Red, white and blue in the face, the ladies ran to and from the stores with chain links-of-meat and prime cuts of watermelon. They watched from the curb with bare skinned knees, bottles of soda and cheap sun glasses, glinting the men’s trucks, blazing in the parking lots, with school-mates peering out of the passenger windows, excited for explosives and killer bees with candied-apple smiles.
They had spent all their lemonade change, lit all the fuzzes and blistered a few fingers, and now dusk was cooling the vigor of their bodies; the night, like a creek from the horizon, adored the coursing torrents in their veins, but welcomed them to gentleness on their backs, in the bluff park, near Tommie’s house.
People collected. Magnetized to any patch of lawn, swirling around them, splaying out blankets, spreading bread and beer and cherries on plastic sheets, unfurling rusty lawn chairs, kissing and laughing, they swirled around them, on their backs, drinking in the shadows, and exhaling a calm contented anticipation for the pitch that would break open in blooms of star-light and soon-shatter with booming accomplishments of splendid, elegant destruction, and then: the seductively choking smell of sulfur-clouds, glowing in the street lamps.
From their dusky perch they could see men duck under orange ribbons of warning tape and stand, professionally teetering around boxes of dangerous magic. Waste high cannons were erected to the swallows and bats who devoured mosquitoes, gnats and June bugs in hungry, oblivious summersaults and curly-cue-swoops. For the two youths the world had already begun to dissolve: their parents long forgotten, now even the friends-by-their-side and the warm earth faded away like hamburgers digesting in their bellies; another hunger evolved. Their arms lightly touching, stuck stronger than a band aide and their fingers timidly fidgeting as though each were searching for something in the slow reading of the other’s palm.
Time fell away and the blackness just rolled over, enveloping their indifference, it was all they could both want, and have. A sound like crickets, the chuckles and whispers of people beside them on the earth, the stereo music and potato chip crunching under feet, running-of-screeching-children, dogs panting on juice, poured into glasses, clinked, silenced, by the booming-roar of patriot-bombs, bursting bubbles of sparks, shuddering the bay windows, mighty, exploding war-on-heaven, celebrating cheers for being in command of this piece of earth: all of it, washed-out under the straining, of their ears, to hear the other breath more quickly at the stroke of a finger, over a wrist. These flowers, falling through space, above their shining eyes, meant nothing about The Presidents they had learned of, so long ago, in school; had nothing to-do-with any declaration ever written about anyone’s independence; there was no connection to the crossing of the Delaware, and the synchronizations of red, white and blue were nothing but a pretty combination to celebrate the splendor of the two-of-them being together, at last.
How had they done it for so long?
There was no line drawn from this point in time to-the-war that grandfather had fought in.
How could they have ever not been like this?
There was no thought of the-current-war, which had only just begun to infiltrate their occupied ears.
Why had they waited for-so-long to say the things they had said?
There was no desire to make this event into anything more than the feeling of the arm beside them, the hope of lips, or, the longing for something more, something that yet had no words, but surely would come, even better than this. Surely things would only get better, but when, oh God when, would they say the things they longed to say?
They would find love in those hot months; in that sweltering, free limbo of pollen, grass clipping cloud dreams, soccer, and drifting dogs from other-towns, they would make sense of their bodies and hearts in ways that had not, before, been formed into questions.
June had come and gone with beady sweat joy from running shins, and now the fourth of July was upon them. The delighted days of bursting fire-crackers and screeching Penny-Whistle Chinese-Towers with Neapolitan sparks from all the cardboard gilding; the spires and fountains and torpedo mortar shells of sparkle-flame not only reflected, but amplified the whimsy of their palpating desires and their illusions.
Red, white and blue in the face, the ladies ran to and from the stores with chain links-of-meat and prime cuts of watermelon. They watched from the curb with bare skinned knees, bottles of soda and cheap sun glasses, glinting the men’s trucks, blazing in the parking lots, with school-mates peering out of the passenger windows, excited for explosives and killer bees with candied-apple smiles.
They had spent all their lemonade change, lit all the fuzzes and blistered a few fingers, and now dusk was cooling the vigor of their bodies; the night, like a creek from the horizon, adored the coursing torrents in their veins, but welcomed them to gentleness on their backs, in the bluff park, near Tommie’s house.
People collected. Magnetized to any patch of lawn, swirling around them, splaying out blankets, spreading bread and beer and cherries on plastic sheets, unfurling rusty lawn chairs, kissing and laughing, they swirled around them, on their backs, drinking in the shadows, and exhaling a calm contented anticipation for the pitch that would break open in blooms of star-light and soon-shatter with booming accomplishments of splendid, elegant destruction, and then: the seductively choking smell of sulfur-clouds, glowing in the street lamps.
From their dusky perch they could see men duck under orange ribbons of warning tape and stand, professionally teetering around boxes of dangerous magic. Waste high cannons were erected to the swallows and bats who devoured mosquitoes, gnats and June bugs in hungry, oblivious summersaults and curly-cue-swoops. For the two youths the world had already begun to dissolve: their parents long forgotten, now even the friends-by-their-side and the warm earth faded away like hamburgers digesting in their bellies; another hunger evolved. Their arms lightly touching, stuck stronger than a band aide and their fingers timidly fidgeting as though each were searching for something in the slow reading of the other’s palm.
Time fell away and the blackness just rolled over, enveloping their indifference, it was all they could both want, and have. A sound like crickets, the chuckles and whispers of people beside them on the earth, the stereo music and potato chip crunching under feet, running-of-screeching-children, dogs panting on juice, poured into glasses, clinked, silenced, by the booming-roar of patriot-bombs, bursting bubbles of sparks, shuddering the bay windows, mighty, exploding war-on-heaven, celebrating cheers for being in command of this piece of earth: all of it, washed-out under the straining, of their ears, to hear the other breath more quickly at the stroke of a finger, over a wrist. These flowers, falling through space, above their shining eyes, meant nothing about The Presidents they had learned of, so long ago, in school; had nothing to-do-with any declaration ever written about anyone’s independence; there was no connection to the crossing of the Delaware, and the synchronizations of red, white and blue were nothing but a pretty combination to celebrate the splendor of the two-of-them being together, at last.
How had they done it for so long?
There was no line drawn from this point in time to-the-war that grandfather had fought in.
How could they have ever not been like this?
There was no thought of the-current-war, which had only just begun to infiltrate their occupied ears.
Why had they waited for-so-long to say the things they had said?
There was no desire to make this event into anything more than the feeling of the arm beside them, the hope of lips, or, the longing for something more, something that yet had no words, but surely would come, even better than this. Surely things would only get better, but when, oh God when, would they say the things they longed to say?
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Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Shoalman
A tiny rock stabs out of the rolling glass. They bark at our tiny boat as we close the distance. A few scuffle and leap to the tide in search of scraps and, as we grow closer, we see him: in the midst of them, crouched, huddled, enmeshed in oil-slicked fur coats, rising out of the blubber and the flippers and the barking, a cloaked figure, his garb black as their pelts, but dull as ore.
He turns his head to us as we approach, dark, obscured by the setting sun behind and the philosophic, crashing waves. His beard, from his hood, we could see, twisted in the wind, algae and barnacles. We all swayed, enthralled, our boat now idling along side, the sun no longer in align with his perch we stare into his eyes, like the gaze of a tempest, grey-blue and ancient, holding it, as long as we could, at bay. His head follows us, his comrades still barking or plunging into the water.
Another wave struck the island as we reach his back and he seemed to vanish, like a needle bird, into the crest, but as the spray cleared, we saw him, shot up from the rock as a geyser, his cloak having shed in his wake, we now perceived his full form and in that same instant realized with horror that all of his company had scattered from the rock to converge on our vessel, and he remained, a column of indignation. They began to strike blows to the hull with the crowns of head, seeking weak planks. Our ship shook violently in the placid, dead wind waters and still, he had us mesmerized: where feet should have supported him, he balanced on a silky tail of supple muscle and ragged fur and above the ripples of his stomach, two full breasts hung like the sea had filled him up and bloomed there and in his vein twined fist he brandished a triton. This was like no pitchfork for throwing hay, it seemed the moon and sun had shaved off splinters and fashioned this harpoon. His eyes were still, soft, and gentle as the silent lightening on the horizon and they seemed to span ages.
After what must have been the better part of the season all wrapped into a single breath of salt, one of the locals we hired on as extra hand screamed a single word over the thunder beneath the waves, which now shook the nails from our deck. I looked to Roman as he, clutching my shoulder in passing to go support the men below, defending against the lions that leaped up from the sea, told me it was the name given one of the lesser gods said to preserve this coast; I would later learn that once a servant of Poseidon, now having forsaken that order, he was beyond even pagan prayers.
We knew now, as he raised his glimmering triton to the sky, that the sea lions had never intended only scraps, and we understood that, the native superstition, which had long kept out commercial operations such as ours, was in fact, wisdom.
Those of us who survived with only bruises and cuts from the sea lions dragging us to shore have no delusions that this was not a rescue for our sakes, but for the life of our story.
He turns his head to us as we approach, dark, obscured by the setting sun behind and the philosophic, crashing waves. His beard, from his hood, we could see, twisted in the wind, algae and barnacles. We all swayed, enthralled, our boat now idling along side, the sun no longer in align with his perch we stare into his eyes, like the gaze of a tempest, grey-blue and ancient, holding it, as long as we could, at bay. His head follows us, his comrades still barking or plunging into the water.
Another wave struck the island as we reach his back and he seemed to vanish, like a needle bird, into the crest, but as the spray cleared, we saw him, shot up from the rock as a geyser, his cloak having shed in his wake, we now perceived his full form and in that same instant realized with horror that all of his company had scattered from the rock to converge on our vessel, and he remained, a column of indignation. They began to strike blows to the hull with the crowns of head, seeking weak planks. Our ship shook violently in the placid, dead wind waters and still, he had us mesmerized: where feet should have supported him, he balanced on a silky tail of supple muscle and ragged fur and above the ripples of his stomach, two full breasts hung like the sea had filled him up and bloomed there and in his vein twined fist he brandished a triton. This was like no pitchfork for throwing hay, it seemed the moon and sun had shaved off splinters and fashioned this harpoon. His eyes were still, soft, and gentle as the silent lightening on the horizon and they seemed to span ages.
After what must have been the better part of the season all wrapped into a single breath of salt, one of the locals we hired on as extra hand screamed a single word over the thunder beneath the waves, which now shook the nails from our deck. I looked to Roman as he, clutching my shoulder in passing to go support the men below, defending against the lions that leaped up from the sea, told me it was the name given one of the lesser gods said to preserve this coast; I would later learn that once a servant of Poseidon, now having forsaken that order, he was beyond even pagan prayers.
We knew now, as he raised his glimmering triton to the sky, that the sea lions had never intended only scraps, and we understood that, the native superstition, which had long kept out commercial operations such as ours, was in fact, wisdom.
Those of us who survived with only bruises and cuts from the sea lions dragging us to shore have no delusions that this was not a rescue for our sakes, but for the life of our story.
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