Yours words did not give me wingsbut leaden feet to walk beside you
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Name: S & L, or L & S
Gender: Female


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Member Since: 9/29/2004

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Friday, October 20, 2006

Sarah's long time coming update!

Grandma was a WWII army wife, clinging to my grandpa’s green uniform as they walked through the streets in the swarming cities of Japan. Ask what her middle name is, and you get a blank expression quickly followed by the familiar smile of bashful doubt. She doesn’t know. But she can still warble out the Japanese version of “Friar Jack.” Her frame is small and slight, and while she used to have impeccable taste in fashion, everyday her appearance looks more haphazard. She often puts her left shoe on her right, and buttons her shirts on the second button, if at all. She used to be so queenly aloof, now she laughs at everything we say. I have my suspicions that she hides liquor in her makeup bag, because though she’s forsaken the use of lipstick, she keeps it under her pillow and raises cane if it gets put in the bathroom cabinet.
Her mind is like a pinball machine, and the ball of memory never rests. It runs up through her childhood, ricochets to the present, and then bounces off her maternity leave with my Dad or the year she and Grandpa started a Christmas tree farm. Last year I turned twenty-one. Last Christmas her gift to my sister and me was the cartoon version of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’s endearing plight. We offered our artificial gratitude and she worriedly asked, “Do you girls already have this?”
She always begs me to take her shopping, claiming that her shirts are old and worn, but my Mom and I have become wary of her loss of morality when walking through a department store. I try to keep her on my arm, but she tugs away to look at a bracelet or scarf. These things capture her interest not because they are beautiful or match her outfit, but because they are small enough to fit into her handbag. She takes them in her hands, gazing lustfully with one eye and cautiously at the salespeople with the other. When the coast is clear, she casually slips them in next to her makeup bag and identification card holder. My mother and I have developed a loss-prevention system. We guide her to the bathroom, where we graciously offer to hold her purse while she relieves herself. I keep watch on her stall while my Mom rifles through the items and promptly takes them to the cashier. “Someone left these in the bathroom,” she says, painfully enduring the looks of suspicion from the other customers. Finally, when we are safely in the car, my grandmother sighs heavily after examining her empty purse, asking us snidely, “Did we forget anything?”
Not only does she steal apparel, she hides food on her person at all times. My father tells me she has always firmly believed in saving up in the face of hard times. In her old befuddled age she translates this philosophy into stuffing olives in her pockets and whole oranges in her bra, causing her appear to have ironically placed tumors. The worst is the melted chocolate in her panties, causing large, mysterious brown stains for my mother to remove in the wash.

***work in progress; more to come!***

Laura: tell me what you thinkie winkie.


Thursday, October 19, 2006

::Confessions of a Fruit Clerk::

We spent much of early June

cutting up radishes.

In one sweeping motion

each pungent head rolled

into one mass appointed grave.

Our hands sorted through

rotten cucumbers and

our thumbs slipped through

waxed green skin, punctured like a drum

the flesh seeping out like dying sound.

The cantaloupe were discussed inappropriately

as women with large hands

measured each against its neighbor.

Many of the cherries were eaten

(unpaid for)

and the watermelon only layed

against the wall, heavy and bloated.

This was also the summer

our bodies had filled

with the ethereal joy of health.

The year we hid ourselves

between the pages of dog-eared,

leaf-worn books, and read

new worlds into being.

If I had to choose a season

it would be this one to share with you-

the summer we spent eating nectarines

with W.H. Auden,

as the sun tea cooled the porch

between drinkings.

-L

 

 

 


Lunar

Last night two golden moths

lighted on my window, pressing

thin cold wings against its glow.

I was folded up in quilt when they

were caught off by the breeze

thinking about my grandmother

whose closets always smelled like

antiquated mothballs-

stuff to still their wings.

Back then my sister and I were

small frames of ourselves, just

a few pencil scratches on a page.

On cold afternoons we tiptoed

over the wrinkled carpet

and dragged our hands across

yellowed hallway walls.

We opened doors, hunting old things

in a house that seemed Eternal.

Moths were only beggars, warming

their hands on the porch light

cotton mouths searching for

a bite of winter coat.

Tonight one danced a lunatic circle

around a small lamp in someone’s window

and I wondered at it, knowing I’d caught

its black, shining eyes.

-L


"Sometimes I think I hear them roar."

The night sky

is a dark, blue palm

that covers our dreams

while we rest- a sort of

canopy for the wistful.

Tonight I drive over

country hills

the car murmuring as

the heater thrusts out air.

Behind, road stretches

like some model of

three-point perspective-

the world blurring image

against my window.

My heart lives in

these early morning hours

Above, stars burn, quietly

whispering dark, silvery

tones of home.

 

-L


Thursday, September 14, 2006

We stood in the room

together, we stood before a

silent procession saying nothing

the silence did not already say

Afraid to touch the face of

our own soundless aching, we stood

each of us alone

in his and her own casket

beautiful and broken, and

so much at stake- each of us children

spreading outselves into a large world

to grapple with syntax and the inevitable loneliness of adult lite.

Oh! to reach out and touch one another

To watch the silence gush open before us

To feel redemption rising in our bones

pulling us from the grave

the sound of our Maker calling.

L.



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