At fifteen we walked the streets. The middle of dark streets where no cars drove because everyone else was tucked up in bed. We swaggered, laughed, smashed bottles. We sat in concrete pipes, smoked. Tobacco or weed. None of it legal at fifteen. The streets were ours.
Until they weren’t. One of us knew him, nobody knew his mates. Drunk and filthy. Louder. Bigger.
Bigger fists.
Except for John D. He was seventeen but hung with us. He knew how to fight.
Ooh, Sarah, there's such music to this piece. It's percussive. Insistent. Your sentences accomplish a rhythm to this. I love how the opening paragraph gives way to those single sentences set off on their own. All those hard A sounds: swaggered, laughed, smashed. Once "he" enters the picture, the music changes. YOu give us fragments like quick punches. Well, actually, I'm looking at your sentences there. You vary the sentence length. I did this thing where I made noises for your syllables and sentences and interestly it sounded like a fight! This is so well placed, rhythm-wise: "Heads sound like watermelon smashing on bitumen." I love the echo of melon and bitumen. Smashed is such an excellent title for this. Great work.
There is a beat, a rhythm, a pounding to this piece that we can hear. Concrete pipes, bigger fists, drunk and filthy, watermelon smashing on bitumen - all so, so good!
Not only do you use staccato wording & sentences, but you do the same with your paragraphing. Those short, one line paragraphs are exclamations, increasing the action. You tell a compelling story in this short word count with description and heat--very well done. One line I don't understand, "He was one of theirs."
Yes, Debi, maybe not quite clear, but I thought it meant that the one with his head cracked open (absolutely horrible but efffective simile there and one I can't get out of my head) was one of an opposing gang whom John F had killed? No doubt Sarah will let us know!
Every day, my father picked me up from school. He drove in silence, eyes fixed on the road. Every evening, driving home in a stream of metal – brash, electric, screeching of brakes, braying of horn, every evening competing with the racket of the rush hour traffic, every evening, desperate to hold him steady, I sweated an endless stream of words.
That particular evening, his knuckles turning pale as he gripped the wheel,
'For God’s sake, why will you never shut up?'
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he dropped into second gear, indicated left, turned the wheel to mount the kerb, and drove slowly enough into a puzzled lamppost to scarcely dent the bonnet, softly, tenderly, as if rehearsing the crash which, two years later, would prove my failure to give him enough to live for.
He moved the gear stick into neutral and switched off the ignition. Neither of us spoke. The engine ticked as the metal cooled.
I suspect that this only has aspects of the music, Kathy talks about, so any suggestions to improve it would be welcomed.
Wow, Lindy. Such a powerful, evocative, strange scene. You know what I'd love for you to do? I'd love to see you "slow down where it hurts." Take the moment of the father "rehearsing for a suicide" and just expand it. It speaks volumes. Let us right into this through the daughter's eyes. I think then you might be able to take away the idea of "rehearsing"...at least taking it off the page and out of the title (though it's a compelling title) and let us fully experience this without being served the metaphor so directly. I see a jump cut to "Two years later my father drove himself into a .....for real and died." That's flatfooted, of course, but the reader will feel all of what you want us to feel, make all the connections you want us to make, without assistance. But I'd really sit with that moment of gently driving into the lamppost, mine that moment for everything you can (again, without analysis), followed then by the short, sharp paragraph of what happened two years later. I thin you'll find your music there, in the slowing down. I found your first paragraph really effective. You made us feel what t he father surely must have, via the assaults to the senses of driving in rush hour traffic every day. See there? As a reader, I felt the metaphor in my bones. Anxiety. Pressure. No escape. A sort of jangled inner world. It's all there in the reader's subconscious. Do this with the lamppost scene and we'll feel it entirely. Fantastic, hugely compelling draft here.
Really helpful, Kathy. Thanks you so much. I'm going to have a go tomorrow and read more of other people's pieces and comments. All adds up to an education about the craft. Loving it!
Lindy, if this story is your lived reality, if this really happened to you and your father, it may be that "slowing down where it hurts" isn't available to you right now. I have "gone there" with some of the harder events of my life, and I realize that it takes vast amounts of strength and presence to, in a sense, relive such events deeply. So be kind to yourself if that's the case, for sure. I keep thinking of this piece of yours. Whether fiction or nonfiction, it's very powerful.
Kathy, how kind of you to make sure that I feel safe here. The truth is that the car incident is completely true, and my father did several similar things. For example, he would take my siblings out in the car and encourage them not to wear seat belts then speed. I labelled this behaviour as "practice" as he used to say he'd be better off without us.
He was bi-polar. and unpredictable. My mother tried to stop him having any of us in the car with him when it felt dangerous, but wasn't always capable.
However, he didn't kill himself in a car crash, though I think he did kill himself. It just took longer than a crash. He smoked 60+ a day and died of lung cancer.
Oh, Lindy, it sounds like you have more personal essays you could write about growing up with a bi-polar father. And I well understand the idea of a "slow suicide." My own father was an alcoholic, I guess a high functioning one? But drinking changed his personality and made him unpredictable as well. I do think that effects the way children grow up to approach their world and relationships. I hope you continue to use your writing to process and explore all of this. I often wonder how people who aren't writers actually manage!
Yes, I think you and I were dealt a good hand for writing if not for working out how to best live in the world.
Hope you have a safe flight to England. Shame I can't get to Bristol. If ever you are over in the North West, let me know. That would be Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Lancaster or York ...
Loved this , Lindy! Really fast paced with the pulsating imagery of the traffic and the desperation of the daughter - desperate to hold him steady - and then the crash scene taking us into the future of what happened .You took us from the past into the present with the accident and then the future of the suicide. Loved, loved it! The title did gave away a lot right at the beginning because the suicide is such a jolt that perhaps you can keep it only in the piece.
I love Kathy’s feedback and agree that it would add to the richness and sadness that you’ve already set up so brilliantly here. The title gave me chills before I even started reading. Wonderful, poignant exploration of a difficult topic that desperately deserves more attention and discussion.
Hi Lindy, this is such a strong scene to highlight in a flash where it is so focused and intense. Your set up is so good. The brangling sense of the traffic and the girl's attempts to mitigate the tension by "sweating words" is so well done, and then that first turn where he breaks and tells her to shut up. I'm there! I agree with Kathy about leaning into the turn into the pole and that whole awful moment afterwards n the car. What a good piece.
it was a breeze of wet salt propelling our soft growing bodies as we tussled in the cool sand, grabbing blue plastic pails and running into the shallow waves, feet stomping, hands splashing, toes clutching, waves hitting, bellies tightening against the shocking cold, eyes squinting against the startling light, sand and sea and your voice rising and falling with each wave like the ocean breathing like you breathing into my face, your eyes next to my eyes, lips to lips, our first kiss.
She heard it before she saw it
that sound of knowing but not wanting to believe, that sound, that whack, the car whacking something. Something that was moving. Something that was living. That sound of ending something that was moving, that was living. The not wanting to see it, the wanting to drive away, the wanting it never to have happened. The wanting to go back in time and slow below the speed limit, see the small fur body risking everything to cross the road, see it make its journey to the other side. Safe. Not slammed by the vehicle of moving death.
She pulls over. She stops the cars swerving to pass her on the curving back road. She lifts the body, the size of a small dog. She cries.
Oh, Vati, you nailed this exercise. Both ways. I read the first one silently, then out loud. So many soft sounds: the "s" sounds, salt, soft, sand, shallow, splashing, shocking, squinting, startling, sand, sea, (voice, eyes, lips, kiss). It's one lilting sentence that keeps showing us things, giving us things to feel, breathless and breathing. I felt right there. It's as if there's no demarcation between the ocean and this couple. The long sentence and your sensory details and your attention to sound in this piece accomplishes this. Gorgeous
The second piece, though similar in form, is quite different in sound. Here, the punctuating words land hard with consonants: whack, back. And now we have the short, quick sentences. This piece is every bit as immersive as the first, but evokes a different felt experience. I love the sentences, two in a row, that begin with "the" ...the not wanting, the wanting. And the two that begin with "something" as well. I like the white space that leads us then to the second paragraph: she pulls over, she stops, she lifts, she cries. Very effectively rendered. Great job with this!
. I loved this exercise. I often have the experience of feeling the rhythm of a piece before I write the words or as I’m writing the words. And then I try to find words that fulfill the music that I’m hearing in my head or in my body. I feel like this month, I’ve learned to trust myself and not overthink things so much, just to write with a kind of flow, an intuitive rhythm, like hearing the music all around me and grabbing the stories that meld with those sounds.
I love the way you articulated this, Vati! It is very much the same for me. Sometimes I think the biggest hurdle we writers need to leap over is believing in ourselves. Trusting our intuition.
Beautiful! I love the gentle, musical images in the first piece—soft growing bodies, plastic pails, splashing, shocking cold—this story feels like a watercolor painting.
Love the contrast of the pieces which demonstrates the prompt so well. The first story just exudes joy. The language in the second piece sets the tone for tragic the ending. Amazing work!
I like the use of the repetition of present participles: living, moving, ending, wanting, which then morph into present tense and all those one syllable words which land the emotion really strongly esp. in comtrast with the two syllable participles.
I'm not sure why, but I responded better to the first piece than the second. Maybe it's just the difference between a beautiful moment and a horrible one. In both, you give us a single momentous moment with high emotion & repercussions. I was surprised by the first kiss at the ending of #1 because the "soft growing bodies" and "blue plastic pails" and "shallow waves" all read as young, elementary age characters. The one long sentence works, flows all the activity & sensations into one long, continuous moment. Love it
I did see them as young, and as it’s a first draft I would probably go back and make a decision about how old I would want them to be. I meant for it to be an innocent, childlike first kiss . thanks for the feedback.
Loved the first scene , the long breathless paragraph , it felt like the rise and fall of the waves! The second one was a nice contrast to the first, the small sentences and the whack, whacking, slammed giving us the violence, the death of the animal.
At Night in Our Cells We Share Pig Tales (inspired by prompt #1)
We pig-whisper gossip overheard from the operators during our force-feeding and sucking-out procedures. They stuff carbohydrate-heavy grains down our throats and siphon out every drop of pig shit. At night in our cells we share pig tales.
Sow #362 told us her great-grandmother lived in a shed with a tin roof where her piglets were pulled out and disappeared so fast she never knew how many. They laid her on her side in a cell, pushed her nipples through the bars, and latched some pig's piglet to each teat to suckle. It didn't sound so bad to us.
Sow #119 said her great-great-grandmother lived in a barn that smelled like hay, walked outside on real dirt in fresh air with sun shining and ate vegetables, gravy and corn on the cob, sometimes watermelon rinds and bruised apples. We would doze off smiling and shaking our heads over her wild imagination.
Inspiration is everywhere! Sounds like “woo” and I’m not a woo person, but I do believe when we’re open and receptive, we’re subconsciously drawn to things that tap into the deepest parts of us and lead us to our art and our stories.
What a title! You grabbed me right away with that, Jill. I had no idea what I was getting into with this story, but I want you to know in the space of three paragraphs you horrified me and moved me very deeply. The contrast between the second and third paragraph is so powerful. You're such a good writer. You paid attention to the diction of this piece and wielded it masterfully. You capture so well the feelings of imprisonment and horror ("our cells") The surprise of "It didn't sound so bad to us." And then the lovely imagery of the last paragraph. "her wild imagination" meaning they don't quite believe in such an existence. This piece made me cry. Pigs are such beautiful creatures.
Ouch. Such a political piece with no proselytising at all, leaving the reader to join up the dots. I've been reading James Baldwin recently and John Gardner, and both men ask the writer to be a moral agent. Here, slantwise, you are. Gave me some ideas of my own, so thanks!
I tried alarming and lyric in a long sentence. It was fun.
Metamorphosis
despite what the pornographers say, being a nymph is over-rated. i waited years for flight, half-drowned in the bottom of a lake, eating my own siblings, trying on new skin as i grew but always the same Catholic girl back-to-school clothes, pleated skirts and sweaters, over and over until i sick enough to rise to the shore where i lay like flotsam, like childhood, letting the sky fill me learning to breathe, shedding those parochial clothes for this designer dress shimmering and fine, and now i glide, i hover, i shift direction like a helicopter mid-flight with no one at the controls but me, tasting air and sunlight, skimming the lake that buried me, glimmering and bejeweled, snatching prey mid-air, i eat the body and let the lesser wings fall while my wings roar like stained glass angels against the azure sky and still I rise, I rise.
Ah, love the approach here, Susan. It's indeed a lyrical, musical extended metaphor for transformation. Good, Catholic girl nearly drowns, but rises again in a new form "tasting air and sunlight, skimming the lake that buried me, glimmering and bejeweled..." Within the metaphor are similes: "where I lay like flotsam, like childhood" and "i shift direction like a helicopter mid-flight" and "my wings roar like stained glass angels." I like this form for this. You take the reader along as the metamorphosis occurs and it's breathtaking, dreamlike, and beautifully strange. Well done.
Your first sentence & last five words grab the readers' attention. What a wonderful way to bookend your story. It is a strange story where I empathize with the killer nymph and wonder if I'm supposed to. But the descriptions, the play of words, pulls me into her orbit: "like flotsam, like childhood, letting the sky fill me, learning to breathe" and especially "tasting air and sunlight"; I love the creativity & tension in your piece
Thanks, Debi. I'm on the killer nymph's side, too. I was reading about dragonflies the other day and this is basically what they do -- there's the nymph stage at the bottom of a body of water and the dragonfly stage. And I sort of mixed it up with women and girls in fairy tales.
Your smash up worked. Towards the end of summer, we have orange dragonflies hanging out above the creek--their acrobatics & coloration are wonderful. But I knew nothing about their different stages, thanks
I liked the symbolism of the nymph and childhood and the same sameness and then transforming into this shimmering person, glide, hover, shift , rise. The metaphor of the helicopter works well as you rise, shift direction. Lovely!
Some great sound patterns here. II, flight, trying, rise, like child etc. That I sound emphasises the personla nature of this, and is a long sound too, so holds the reader with the nymph. Shades of myth, rather than fairy tale, but solid factual base. Good stuff.
The sun lit Sally’s face as she smiled up at Gramps, his face shadowed by his straw hat, yet she knew his eyes crinkled as he stood proud with his hoe. “See here.” He knelt and tenderly fanned out the leaves of the new bean plants. Sally sat next to him, her bottom snug in the mucky soil, and she reached out to follow his lead, stroking the soft flesh of the plant. Gramps pointed to the long straight rows of green, brown, green, brown, and Sally salivated at the thought of Grandma’s ratatouille and piccalilli, decided she wanted nothing more than the sun, the new leaves, the pattern, and the impending harvest, over and over again. “This here is the last year, Peanut. The house has been sold. No land where we’re going.” Sally almost thought she saw a tear hidden in the shadow of Gramps’ hat.
A heartbreaking piece, Luanne. I love moments like this shown through the eyes of a child. It gives us a different perspective. An adult hearing this news would be able to supply background, lead-up, possible reasons, etc. Not this child, who only takes in her grandfather's clear pride and joy: the land he owns and farms. The child loves through her senses. She knows how the plants looks and feel, the rows of vegetation Grandma will put into her delicious food. She sees her grandfather's tear. In this way, we're able to engage directly with the emotion of the piece. Feel what your characters feel. A powerful piece.
Good title as far as I'm concerned. You have the pattern of family, harvest and the rows of beans and then it's over. I just got brought up short by "tear" as I read it as meaning a rent or hole at first, but it was momentary. Sad. And I liked "snug in mucky" but I'm a sucker for assonance which I tyhink adds a lot to prose, especially short pieces. Like Kathy said, rhythm and music is important.
Luanne, the physicality of this is wonderful to me, your use of touch starting at "her bottom snug in the mucky soil" going to the flesh of the plant and the rhythms then of the colors.
She lightly wraps the apron around my small waist, nimble fingers creating a pretty bow. She understands things, like the reason certain ingredients and disagreements should be kept room temperature. She explains why you avoid overworking, the dough. Placing her soft hands on mine shaping and forming. She makes me whole, wheat bread as if it’s not something to simply consume. Sometimes we slather thick pieces with butter and honey. Grandma watches me eat, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes, never mind the fact that she has not yet sampled it herself.
Seize Her
Tonic clonic jerk. Lillian Mae is seizing. Rigid then slack jawed. Uncontrollable fit, choking on her own saliva. I am flipping her to the side, letting it slide out. Damn degree on the wall, does nothing to stop the shaking. Her delicate body quakes, eyes stare at nothing. This is what breaks me, takes me to the darkest places. Waiting for the resolution of these horrific convulsions. My soul, on sale for her sake. I would take it from her. I would shake instead of her. I am broken.
Oh, Jane, you did an amazing job of creating two very contrasting pieces via the music of your prose. Is Lillian Mae also Grandma or someone else? No matter. Both pieces are so powerful. The first, evocative, lilting. The second, compelling, sharp. There's a lingering quality to the first piece. As if we're inside a moment. Your details put us there, but it's also in the flow of the sentences. There's a delicate touch to the writing that echoes the grandmother's own delicate touch. That dough is not overworked and neither is the prose. I found this so lovely: "She understands things, like the reason certain ingredients and disagreements should be kept room temperature."
"Seize Her" is a fabulous title and play on words. My son was given to febrile seizures when he was a toddler and I felt every word of this through the eyes of someone who feels helpless in this moment. I'm looking at the word choices: tonic clonic jerk / slack jawed / choking / quakes / breaks / takes. How they sound, their percussiveness. This moment is everything the other moment is not. Harsh, scary, violent even. And then how you land it on "I am broken." So many "k" sounds in this that serve the discordant feel of this paragraph's music. Very well done.
Kathy, thanks for the in depth comment! I love playing with sound as poetry is probably more my in my comfort zone. I appreciate you sharing about your son, as “seize her” is about my young daughter. One always hopes they grow out of such things. So, together, the poems are about feeling loved as a child, and in return loving fiercely as an adult.
My son did grow out of his once he started school. So scary, right? I think those two work so well in conversation with each other, yes! Beautiful work.
Wonderful, contrasting pieces! I loved ' she makes me whole' and ' ingredients and disagreements should be kept at room temperature' , I felt as if the narrator was learning so much from the grandma which went beyond making bread. And then the sensory ' we slather thick pieces' almost made my mouth water! Your second piece takes us right into the scene, there is so much action, doing, seizing, choking and feeling. I can feel the pain the author is going through, helpless - damn degree on the wall, does nothing. Loved it! Thanks for sharing this.
Wonderful, heartfelt responses to both prompts, Jane. I heard lyrical music in Grandma's story, pleasing consonant chords. In Seize Her I was struck by the dissonance, frantic tempo, sharp repetitive music. I felt the characters were a mother and child.
These are fabulous and so different. I, too, love the line about ingredients and disagreements at room temperature, and your piece made me remember being taught to bake bread as a girl and then being able to eat it just from the oven with butter and honey. The second piece is wow and I'm there caught up in that frightening moment.
I loved painting days when Grandma and I slopped color on the ceiling and walls of their newly remodeled house. She didn’t care how we were supposed to apply paint, letting the music of big band, Elvis, the Kingston Trio, whatever floated from the radio inspire a swipe here, a circle there, and finally a crescendo filling in between the strokes, scribbles, and spatters.
Dancing with a roller, flinging blue or beige on the wall, plus a glow of drops saturated the drop cloth but for a tall and a short white space. We dressed for bombardment, handkerchiefs covering my dark curls and Grandma’s beautiful blonde hair fresh from the beauty parlor. I wore her shirt, shimmery with a bouquet of flowers, as my knee-length Mumu, and we Vaselined every uncovered spot, so easy to slough off our new skin of colored speckles with a shower.
Debi, all I could think of as I read this is how incredibly LUCKY you were to have a grandma like this. She nurtured your creative spirit! She made you love art. So many times, children are made to feel they are making messes as they play and create. They're punished for it. This is such a lovely rendering of a beautiful moment and you use sound, images, and flow to immerse us into the moment and feel all you felt, then. Love that you listened to music while painting! And great music, at that. I could hear the music of this sentence: "She didn’t care how we were supposed to apply paint, letting the music of big band, Elvis, the Kingston Trio, whatever floated from the radio inspire a swipe here, a circle there, and finally a crescendo filling in between the strokes, scribbles, and spatters."
"We dressed for bombardment." Love that. You land on such a musical sentence (I read it out loud a few times): "I wore her shirt, shimmery with a bouquet of flowers, as my knee-length Mumu, and we Vaselined every uncovered spot, so easy to slough off our new skin of colored speckles with a shower." (shirt/ shimmery / skin / speckles / shower) Lovely work!
Thank you Kathy for this & all of your feedback. My grandparents are always the subject of my happy childhood memories. I'm glad I conveyed the joy of being with her
Grandma envy here! What a wonderful scene that you make come alive with the music and the color and the dancing and the slopping. I love, too, the line "we dressed for bombardment."
Does that ever sound fun!!!!! I love it. The shirt mumu hah! Thank you for reminding me of a memory, Debi. My grandma had a little wooden chair and whenever one of her kids would get on her nerves she would put it outside, give them a paintbrush and paint and have them paint it. She did the same thing with me, and I have a pic of me in the long shirt (my grandpa's) painting that ugly chair.
Loved this! I could easily imagine the author and grandma dancing, painting, laughing! Such a happy childhood memory. Strokes, scribbles and spatters and then the ending with skin of colored speckles stood out.
Such a colourful, happy piece! I especially liked all those s and sh sounds in the final sentence, picking up on the way a snake sheds its skin and the way you all danced ( made me think of shimmy esp when you used shimmery to describe the shirt.
We steal Gerald’s wig, ride our bikes from corner store to corner store. ‘It’s sweaty,’ you say. ‘It’s falling off my face.’ In the Valero we believe in life after love. In 7-Eleven with the broken slurpy machine we hit babies one more time. ‘Is that your real hair?’ the attendant asks. No one will sell us cigarettes, so we ask the lonely man pumping gas at Chervon. ‘He has nobody,’ you say and we take off down dark alleys, making jokes about Gerald and Elvis, in ecstasy about the tobacco. I hold the cigarette to my lips and pretend it’s our first kiss. We go to the unfinished houses. Upstairs I wear the wig. ‘And his mama cries,’ I sing. ‘In the ghetto.’ You tell me to stop, you hear someone coming. We dissolve into each other’s shadow. Your breath is everywhere like a love song.
I love this, Nicholas. It reads like a swirl of music and images. The writing is so alive. It captures the feeling of being young, being reckless, wanting so much without knowing exactly what it is one wants, just this diffuse feeling of longing. I love this wig they've stolen. At first I thought stealing the wig was an act of meanness, but I don't think it is. I don't know who Gerald is in this story or what he means to them, but it feels like a totem almost. Is Gerald an Elvis impersonator? I love how Elvis is woven in. We had the 45 of In the Ghetto when I was a kid and you brought that song back for me. "I hold the cigarette to my lips and pretend it's our first kiss. I'm going to go back at some point and read all the stories you've written during this extravaganza. A treat to myself. I hope you're building a collection. I love the last three lines of this. Big fan of your writing, Nicholas.
Thanks so much! Very kind of you to say. Obviously a big fan of your writing, it's been a huge inspiration to me for so long. :)
Yes, Gerald is an Elvis impersonator. He's Jesse's (the narrator) mother's boyfriend. He's in a story on Day 11 that I like which also features the wig (and the you in this story as Manny). As well as Day 4, 5, and 14. I've been working with these characters for a long time and had a novella at one point (2019!) but wasn't happy with it. Still trying to find the arc.
Thanks again for your kindness, reading, the Extravaganza, etc. <3
you leave so much for the reader to guess, but land it clear with those two simple sentences which stand in opposition to "He has nobody" earlier on. There's a lot here and more on a second and third reading.
I went for the cacophony of an “alarming action” here. Also this is my first time commenting! I’ve been following along silently!
Something smacked the back of my head. A hot liquid ooze. Drenching my locks. Covering my shoulder blades. Dripping onto my back.
It was piss.
Sticky, stinky piss.
The piss of infection.
Poison.
He chucked his piss and his bedpan at my head.
That goddamn bastard.
Ungrateful son of a gun.
He yowled at me. The strange, unearthly, piercing squall of an addict. Not his voice. Purple veins. Blood-red eyes. Baptizing me “monster.” Me. The only one left to care. This bedpan slinging voice, vitriolic.
To think I had kept up hope.
To think this voice came from the same boy who crept on tip toe to whisper in the night, “Mama, I wet the bed.” All apology.
Of the precocious potty-trainer, standing to aim at the toilet bowl, “Mama, does pee have more viscosity than water?” Or of the soft babbling I warmed to hear form the word, “Mama,” for the first time, as I changed his 537th diaper. Innocence and love. Admiration.
A nurse, trained in diaper changing and swaddling, handed him to me, mortified me, after he squirted pee all over her face. And with him, handed me my first lesson in mothering, “We’re meant to love them unconditionally. They’re meant to give us conditions.”
Hi Christina! I think you captured well, via your prose, a sense of cacophony. Your sentences and fragments are short and sharp. I was taken by your diction in this piece as well, the word choices. The verbs: smacked / drenching / dripping / chucked / yowled / BAPTIZING
Every line is like a blow. "That goddamn bastard." and "Ungrateful son of a gun." This is a powerful single-scene flash that employs a bit of flashback to lend context and layers to the story in progress. The penultimate paragraph is a half scene of flashback and so well placed. Now we know more about this bedpan flinging addict and it engages us more deeply with him and his mother's plight. A hard landing, too, with that last line. Great job with making your prose heighten the feeling of the piece for the reader.
*Sorry if this is a repeat. Thought I posted it , but then I didn't see it?
War Cry
Shoshanna On Camera
Legs stretched way out. Face, exotic as an avocado, ethnic. Hipster ballet slippers, elbow on cement, leaning way, way back. Eyes dark as oil, mouth like Mona Lisa.
Kodak at summer camp. Frisbee seesaw dinner rolls Dr. Scholl’s. Friday night dance, the jukebox fixed no one had to pay, put on Donna Summer dance the night away.
Shoshanna In Stereo
Mouth wide. The Cars on 8 track, pumping, pump, pump. Waiting for the chorus. “Bye Bye Love” drifts among the dusky trees. Her energy makes it hard to sleep.
Kodak at summer camp. Kids in the courtyard, playground merry-go-round, rickety spin. One girl looked like Suzi Quatro, the one who sang “Stumblin’ In.”
Shoshanna On Stage
Last night, the counselors’ talent show. Shoshanna, metallic green kerchief in her hair, her spoken word performance. “Gertrude Stein is a pig!” Stunning us into stillness.
Kodak at summer camp. Only one of Shoshanna, except memory ones, a shutter, “Ko-dak.” A shudder, war cry. Summer breeze, the sting of melancholy.
just playing with language and sound. didn't follow the prompt choices. my goal is to go back and somehow turn this into a story of sorts . . .
JAZZ TRIO ON A SLOW WEDNESDAY NIGHT
The guitarist nods at the bassist, the drummer, and says, “Here we go!” And oh! Hot potato bounce and pounce, salty slick rolls, soft-trodden shoals, mystery pancakes, kiss-laced honey bakes, soft-serve ice cream boats, crepe paper dandelion floats, daydreaming apple tree, honeysuckle bumble bee. The guitarist looks at the audience and counts three.
Poised on my window sill, a ruffle of cold air quickens my heartbeat, pinks my cheeks. The updraft swirls around my legs, under my outstretched arms, and I lift off smooth as a meadowlark.
Trailing a medley of crackling leaves, I soar above our house, the tumbledown barn with its rusty weathercock. I'm lithe as the willow switch Ma flicks when I don't mind her. She can't reach me here, and when Pa yells, "Missy, you better do your chores," I won't listen. Junior and Bubba moved away and left me two old parents, but I ain't farming. I'm flying! 100 words
words, like colors, swirl within the heart and gut, through the bloodstream, into the fingers. Your words dangle down the page, then flutter down into the dust. Your vacant chair is blue fading to violet then to grey until, at last, it is colorless. But bare winter branches are bursting into flower all around me, the Japanese Magnolia reaching its tender pink blooms to the sky. And so I stretch skyward my winter fingers too, knowing that light is always within reach.
Zamboni, macaroni, macarena. Gliding on ice, swishing scarves flying, sisters’ hands hanging on hands, ringing the rink, under the sun on a Sunday afternoon, whipping wind behind us. Tugging, lagging, thumping then sliding, mittens scattering. Pulled up, pushed into line. Chant with me, dance with me, dale alegria. Skates off, shoes on, macaroni for dinner tonight!
Pointy stilettos tick-tock, tick-tock on the wooden floor, the red matching her gossamer silk scarf scooping tightly around her neck, the white pantsuit perfectly fitting her lean body. Tick-tock and the heads turn, tick-tock and people strain to see her walk, to take the vision of her. They yearn, wanting to touch, to feel , anything, of her, from her. She glides as if walking on air and every look, stare and smile is controlled, carefully rehearsed, the hall growing silent as she swoops in, her moves transcending the tempo of the quiet room as she tick-tocks, tall, slender, towering. She takes the stage to face the thousands of them, peering, watching, staring at her, her words that are booming, bossy, boisterous. She stops looking behind and stretches herself to the unseen future where she would be taking charge, leading, deciding, taking the throngs and the multitudes with her into the most powerful future that they had not even begun to imagine.
SMASHED
At fifteen we walked the streets. The middle of dark streets where no cars drove because everyone else was tucked up in bed. We swaggered, laughed, smashed bottles. We sat in concrete pipes, smoked. Tobacco or weed. None of it legal at fifteen. The streets were ours.
Until they weren’t. One of us knew him, nobody knew his mates. Drunk and filthy. Louder. Bigger.
Bigger fists.
Except for John D. He was seventeen but hung with us. He knew how to fight.
Heads sound like watermelon smashing on bitumen.
He was one of theirs.
We sobered quick, ran fast, left them huddled.
I didn’t hear a siren.
I never forgot that sound.
Ooh, Sarah, there's such music to this piece. It's percussive. Insistent. Your sentences accomplish a rhythm to this. I love how the opening paragraph gives way to those single sentences set off on their own. All those hard A sounds: swaggered, laughed, smashed. Once "he" enters the picture, the music changes. YOu give us fragments like quick punches. Well, actually, I'm looking at your sentences there. You vary the sentence length. I did this thing where I made noises for your syllables and sentences and interestly it sounded like a fight! This is so well placed, rhythm-wise: "Heads sound like watermelon smashing on bitumen." I love the echo of melon and bitumen. Smashed is such an excellent title for this. Great work.
Thankyou Kathy! I hadn’t realised all the A sounds until you pointed them out!
Love the musicality of this. I was discussing “The Outsiders” with my teen recently, and this reminds me of it. A great story in a small piece.
basically what everybody said. Great peace. Hard, harsh, clear, insistent, musical, just a really great piece.
Thankyou!
There is a beat, a rhythm, a pounding to this piece that we can hear. Concrete pipes, bigger fists, drunk and filthy, watermelon smashing on bitumen - all so, so good!
Thankyou!
This has so much energy and you both capture the moment with these punchy sentences and the way the memory lingers, punching through time in a sense.
🙏🏻
"Heads sound like watermelon smashing on bitumen." Ewwww, really gets the idea across well! Great job!
Not only do you use staccato wording & sentences, but you do the same with your paragraphing. Those short, one line paragraphs are exclamations, increasing the action. You tell a compelling story in this short word count with description and heat--very well done. One line I don't understand, "He was one of theirs."
Yes, Debi, maybe not quite clear, but I thought it meant that the one with his head cracked open (absolutely horrible but efffective simile there and one I can't get out of my head) was one of an opposing gang whom John F had killed? No doubt Sarah will let us know!
Sorry - “He” was the one whose head got smashed! John D was the one who hit him.
Rehearsal for a Suicide
Every day, my father picked me up from school. He drove in silence, eyes fixed on the road. Every evening, driving home in a stream of metal – brash, electric, screeching of brakes, braying of horn, every evening competing with the racket of the rush hour traffic, every evening, desperate to hold him steady, I sweated an endless stream of words.
That particular evening, his knuckles turning pale as he gripped the wheel,
'For God’s sake, why will you never shut up?'
Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he dropped into second gear, indicated left, turned the wheel to mount the kerb, and drove slowly enough into a puzzled lamppost to scarcely dent the bonnet, softly, tenderly, as if rehearsing the crash which, two years later, would prove my failure to give him enough to live for.
He moved the gear stick into neutral and switched off the ignition. Neither of us spoke. The engine ticked as the metal cooled.
I suspect that this only has aspects of the music, Kathy talks about, so any suggestions to improve it would be welcomed.
Wow, Lindy. Such a powerful, evocative, strange scene. You know what I'd love for you to do? I'd love to see you "slow down where it hurts." Take the moment of the father "rehearsing for a suicide" and just expand it. It speaks volumes. Let us right into this through the daughter's eyes. I think then you might be able to take away the idea of "rehearsing"...at least taking it off the page and out of the title (though it's a compelling title) and let us fully experience this without being served the metaphor so directly. I see a jump cut to "Two years later my father drove himself into a .....for real and died." That's flatfooted, of course, but the reader will feel all of what you want us to feel, make all the connections you want us to make, without assistance. But I'd really sit with that moment of gently driving into the lamppost, mine that moment for everything you can (again, without analysis), followed then by the short, sharp paragraph of what happened two years later. I thin you'll find your music there, in the slowing down. I found your first paragraph really effective. You made us feel what t he father surely must have, via the assaults to the senses of driving in rush hour traffic every day. See there? As a reader, I felt the metaphor in my bones. Anxiety. Pressure. No escape. A sort of jangled inner world. It's all there in the reader's subconscious. Do this with the lamppost scene and we'll feel it entirely. Fantastic, hugely compelling draft here.
Really helpful, Kathy. Thanks you so much. I'm going to have a go tomorrow and read more of other people's pieces and comments. All adds up to an education about the craft. Loving it!
Lindy, if this story is your lived reality, if this really happened to you and your father, it may be that "slowing down where it hurts" isn't available to you right now. I have "gone there" with some of the harder events of my life, and I realize that it takes vast amounts of strength and presence to, in a sense, relive such events deeply. So be kind to yourself if that's the case, for sure. I keep thinking of this piece of yours. Whether fiction or nonfiction, it's very powerful.
Kathy, how kind of you to make sure that I feel safe here. The truth is that the car incident is completely true, and my father did several similar things. For example, he would take my siblings out in the car and encourage them not to wear seat belts then speed. I labelled this behaviour as "practice" as he used to say he'd be better off without us.
He was bi-polar. and unpredictable. My mother tried to stop him having any of us in the car with him when it felt dangerous, but wasn't always capable.
However, he didn't kill himself in a car crash, though I think he did kill himself. It just took longer than a crash. He smoked 60+ a day and died of lung cancer.
Oh, Lindy, it sounds like you have more personal essays you could write about growing up with a bi-polar father. And I well understand the idea of a "slow suicide." My own father was an alcoholic, I guess a high functioning one? But drinking changed his personality and made him unpredictable as well. I do think that effects the way children grow up to approach their world and relationships. I hope you continue to use your writing to process and explore all of this. I often wonder how people who aren't writers actually manage!
Yes, I think you and I were dealt a good hand for writing if not for working out how to best live in the world.
Hope you have a safe flight to England. Shame I can't get to Bristol. If ever you are over in the North West, let me know. That would be Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Lancaster or York ...
Loved this , Lindy! Really fast paced with the pulsating imagery of the traffic and the desperation of the daughter - desperate to hold him steady - and then the crash scene taking us into the future of what happened .You took us from the past into the present with the accident and then the future of the suicide. Loved, loved it! The title did gave away a lot right at the beginning because the suicide is such a jolt that perhaps you can keep it only in the piece.
I love Kathy’s feedback and agree that it would add to the richness and sadness that you’ve already set up so brilliantly here. The title gave me chills before I even started reading. Wonderful, poignant exploration of a difficult topic that desperately deserves more attention and discussion.
Hi Lindy, this is such a strong scene to highlight in a flash where it is so focused and intense. Your set up is so good. The brangling sense of the traffic and the girl's attempts to mitigate the tension by "sweating words" is so well done, and then that first turn where he breaks and tells her to shut up. I'm there! I agree with Kathy about leaning into the turn into the pole and that whole awful moment afterwards n the car. What a good piece.
Love "brangling!"
great excercise. my two pieces
It was a morning of startling light,
it was a breeze of wet salt propelling our soft growing bodies as we tussled in the cool sand, grabbing blue plastic pails and running into the shallow waves, feet stomping, hands splashing, toes clutching, waves hitting, bellies tightening against the shocking cold, eyes squinting against the startling light, sand and sea and your voice rising and falling with each wave like the ocean breathing like you breathing into my face, your eyes next to my eyes, lips to lips, our first kiss.
She heard it before she saw it
that sound of knowing but not wanting to believe, that sound, that whack, the car whacking something. Something that was moving. Something that was living. That sound of ending something that was moving, that was living. The not wanting to see it, the wanting to drive away, the wanting it never to have happened. The wanting to go back in time and slow below the speed limit, see the small fur body risking everything to cross the road, see it make its journey to the other side. Safe. Not slammed by the vehicle of moving death.
She pulls over. She stops the cars swerving to pass her on the curving back road. She lifts the body, the size of a small dog. She cries.
Oh, Vati, you nailed this exercise. Both ways. I read the first one silently, then out loud. So many soft sounds: the "s" sounds, salt, soft, sand, shallow, splashing, shocking, squinting, startling, sand, sea, (voice, eyes, lips, kiss). It's one lilting sentence that keeps showing us things, giving us things to feel, breathless and breathing. I felt right there. It's as if there's no demarcation between the ocean and this couple. The long sentence and your sensory details and your attention to sound in this piece accomplishes this. Gorgeous
The second piece, though similar in form, is quite different in sound. Here, the punctuating words land hard with consonants: whack, back. And now we have the short, quick sentences. This piece is every bit as immersive as the first, but evokes a different felt experience. I love the sentences, two in a row, that begin with "the" ...the not wanting, the wanting. And the two that begin with "something" as well. I like the white space that leads us then to the second paragraph: she pulls over, she stops, she lifts, she cries. Very effectively rendered. Great job with this!
. I loved this exercise. I often have the experience of feeling the rhythm of a piece before I write the words or as I’m writing the words. And then I try to find words that fulfill the music that I’m hearing in my head or in my body. I feel like this month, I’ve learned to trust myself and not overthink things so much, just to write with a kind of flow, an intuitive rhythm, like hearing the music all around me and grabbing the stories that meld with those sounds.
I love the way you articulated this, Vati! It is very much the same for me. Sometimes I think the biggest hurdle we writers need to leap over is believing in ourselves. Trusting our intuition.
Beautiful! I love the gentle, musical images in the first piece—soft growing bodies, plastic pails, splashing, shocking cold—this story feels like a watercolor painting.
I really like the way your titles pull me into these two distinct moment. The rhythms of both carried me.
Love the contrast of the pieces which demonstrates the prompt so well. The first story just exudes joy. The language in the second piece sets the tone for tragic the ending. Amazing work!
I like the use of the repetition of present participles: living, moving, ending, wanting, which then morph into present tense and all those one syllable words which land the emotion really strongly esp. in comtrast with the two syllable participles.
I'm not sure why, but I responded better to the first piece than the second. Maybe it's just the difference between a beautiful moment and a horrible one. In both, you give us a single momentous moment with high emotion & repercussions. I was surprised by the first kiss at the ending of #1 because the "soft growing bodies" and "blue plastic pails" and "shallow waves" all read as young, elementary age characters. The one long sentence works, flows all the activity & sensations into one long, continuous moment. Love it
I did see them as young, and as it’s a first draft I would probably go back and make a decision about how old I would want them to be. I meant for it to be an innocent, childlike first kiss . thanks for the feedback.
Loved the first scene , the long breathless paragraph , it felt like the rise and fall of the waves! The second one was a nice contrast to the first, the small sentences and the whack, whacking, slammed giving us the violence, the death of the animal.
At Night in Our Cells We Share Pig Tales (inspired by prompt #1)
We pig-whisper gossip overheard from the operators during our force-feeding and sucking-out procedures. They stuff carbohydrate-heavy grains down our throats and siphon out every drop of pig shit. At night in our cells we share pig tales.
Sow #362 told us her great-grandmother lived in a shed with a tin roof where her piglets were pulled out and disappeared so fast she never knew how many. They laid her on her side in a cell, pushed her nipples through the bars, and latched some pig's piglet to each teat to suckle. It didn't sound so bad to us.
Sow #119 said her great-great-grandmother lived in a barn that smelled like hay, walked outside on real dirt in fresh air with sun shining and ate vegetables, gravy and corn on the cob, sometimes watermelon rinds and bruised apples. We would doze off smiling and shaking our heads over her wild imagination.
Many thanks, Kathy. Surprising how an article about industrial hog farming drew me in and inspired this flash. I got teary writing it.
Inspiration is everywhere! Sounds like “woo” and I’m not a woo person, but I do believe when we’re open and receptive, we’re subconsciously drawn to things that tap into the deepest parts of us and lead us to our art and our stories.
What a title! You grabbed me right away with that, Jill. I had no idea what I was getting into with this story, but I want you to know in the space of three paragraphs you horrified me and moved me very deeply. The contrast between the second and third paragraph is so powerful. You're such a good writer. You paid attention to the diction of this piece and wielded it masterfully. You capture so well the feelings of imprisonment and horror ("our cells") The surprise of "It didn't sound so bad to us." And then the lovely imagery of the last paragraph. "her wild imagination" meaning they don't quite believe in such an existence. This piece made me cry. Pigs are such beautiful creatures.
Ouch. Such a political piece with no proselytising at all, leaving the reader to join up the dots. I've been reading James Baldwin recently and John Gardner, and both men ask the writer to be a moral agent. Here, slantwise, you are. Gave me some ideas of my own, so thanks!
Thanks, Lindy. This sort of wrote itself. Glad if it gave you new ideas!
Jill, your voice always comes through so strong! Such a unique concept.
Thank you, Jane. I enjoy reading yours!
I tried alarming and lyric in a long sentence. It was fun.
Metamorphosis
despite what the pornographers say, being a nymph is over-rated. i waited years for flight, half-drowned in the bottom of a lake, eating my own siblings, trying on new skin as i grew but always the same Catholic girl back-to-school clothes, pleated skirts and sweaters, over and over until i sick enough to rise to the shore where i lay like flotsam, like childhood, letting the sky fill me learning to breathe, shedding those parochial clothes for this designer dress shimmering and fine, and now i glide, i hover, i shift direction like a helicopter mid-flight with no one at the controls but me, tasting air and sunlight, skimming the lake that buried me, glimmering and bejeweled, snatching prey mid-air, i eat the body and let the lesser wings fall while my wings roar like stained glass angels against the azure sky and still I rise, I rise.
Ah, love the approach here, Susan. It's indeed a lyrical, musical extended metaphor for transformation. Good, Catholic girl nearly drowns, but rises again in a new form "tasting air and sunlight, skimming the lake that buried me, glimmering and bejeweled..." Within the metaphor are similes: "where I lay like flotsam, like childhood" and "i shift direction like a helicopter mid-flight" and "my wings roar like stained glass angels." I like this form for this. You take the reader along as the metamorphosis occurs and it's breathtaking, dreamlike, and beautifully strange. Well done.
Your first sentence & last five words grab the readers' attention. What a wonderful way to bookend your story. It is a strange story where I empathize with the killer nymph and wonder if I'm supposed to. But the descriptions, the play of words, pulls me into her orbit: "like flotsam, like childhood, letting the sky fill me, learning to breathe" and especially "tasting air and sunlight"; I love the creativity & tension in your piece
Thanks, Debi. I'm on the killer nymph's side, too. I was reading about dragonflies the other day and this is basically what they do -- there's the nymph stage at the bottom of a body of water and the dragonfly stage. And I sort of mixed it up with women and girls in fairy tales.
Your smash up worked. Towards the end of summer, we have orange dragonflies hanging out above the creek--their acrobatics & coloration are wonderful. But I knew nothing about their different stages, thanks
I can for sure see the mix of Lyric and alarming in this! Fun title.
I liked the symbolism of the nymph and childhood and the same sameness and then transforming into this shimmering person, glide, hover, shift , rise. The metaphor of the helicopter works well as you rise, shift direction. Lovely!
Some great sound patterns here. II, flight, trying, rise, like child etc. That I sound emphasises the personla nature of this, and is a long sound too, so holds the reader with the nymph. Shades of myth, rather than fairy tale, but solid factual base. Good stuff.
Broken Pattern
The sun lit Sally’s face as she smiled up at Gramps, his face shadowed by his straw hat, yet she knew his eyes crinkled as he stood proud with his hoe. “See here.” He knelt and tenderly fanned out the leaves of the new bean plants. Sally sat next to him, her bottom snug in the mucky soil, and she reached out to follow his lead, stroking the soft flesh of the plant. Gramps pointed to the long straight rows of green, brown, green, brown, and Sally salivated at the thought of Grandma’s ratatouille and piccalilli, decided she wanted nothing more than the sun, the new leaves, the pattern, and the impending harvest, over and over again. “This here is the last year, Peanut. The house has been sold. No land where we’re going.” Sally almost thought she saw a tear hidden in the shadow of Gramps’ hat.
A heartbreaking piece, Luanne. I love moments like this shown through the eyes of a child. It gives us a different perspective. An adult hearing this news would be able to supply background, lead-up, possible reasons, etc. Not this child, who only takes in her grandfather's clear pride and joy: the land he owns and farms. The child loves through her senses. She knows how the plants looks and feel, the rows of vegetation Grandma will put into her delicious food. She sees her grandfather's tear. In this way, we're able to engage directly with the emotion of the piece. Feel what your characters feel. A powerful piece.
Good title as far as I'm concerned. You have the pattern of family, harvest and the rows of beans and then it's over. I just got brought up short by "tear" as I read it as meaning a rent or hole at first, but it was momentary. Sad. And I liked "snug in mucky" but I'm a sucker for assonance which I tyhink adds a lot to prose, especially short pieces. Like Kathy said, rhythm and music is important.
Thank you so much, Lindy! So appreciate you.
Luanne, the physicality of this is wonderful to me, your use of touch starting at "her bottom snug in the mucky soil" going to the flesh of the plant and the rhythms then of the colors.
Susan, thank you so much!
Luanne, this is a lovely piece! Bittersweet at the end.
Thank you so much, Jane!
Such a lovely moment captured in this flash, Luanne!
A Taste of Her
She lightly wraps the apron around my small waist, nimble fingers creating a pretty bow. She understands things, like the reason certain ingredients and disagreements should be kept room temperature. She explains why you avoid overworking, the dough. Placing her soft hands on mine shaping and forming. She makes me whole, wheat bread as if it’s not something to simply consume. Sometimes we slather thick pieces with butter and honey. Grandma watches me eat, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes, never mind the fact that she has not yet sampled it herself.
Seize Her
Tonic clonic jerk. Lillian Mae is seizing. Rigid then slack jawed. Uncontrollable fit, choking on her own saliva. I am flipping her to the side, letting it slide out. Damn degree on the wall, does nothing to stop the shaking. Her delicate body quakes, eyes stare at nothing. This is what breaks me, takes me to the darkest places. Waiting for the resolution of these horrific convulsions. My soul, on sale for her sake. I would take it from her. I would shake instead of her. I am broken.
Oh, Jane, you did an amazing job of creating two very contrasting pieces via the music of your prose. Is Lillian Mae also Grandma or someone else? No matter. Both pieces are so powerful. The first, evocative, lilting. The second, compelling, sharp. There's a lingering quality to the first piece. As if we're inside a moment. Your details put us there, but it's also in the flow of the sentences. There's a delicate touch to the writing that echoes the grandmother's own delicate touch. That dough is not overworked and neither is the prose. I found this so lovely: "She understands things, like the reason certain ingredients and disagreements should be kept room temperature."
"Seize Her" is a fabulous title and play on words. My son was given to febrile seizures when he was a toddler and I felt every word of this through the eyes of someone who feels helpless in this moment. I'm looking at the word choices: tonic clonic jerk / slack jawed / choking / quakes / breaks / takes. How they sound, their percussiveness. This moment is everything the other moment is not. Harsh, scary, violent even. And then how you land it on "I am broken." So many "k" sounds in this that serve the discordant feel of this paragraph's music. Very well done.
Kathy, thanks for the in depth comment! I love playing with sound as poetry is probably more my in my comfort zone. I appreciate you sharing about your son, as “seize her” is about my young daughter. One always hopes they grow out of such things. So, together, the poems are about feeling loved as a child, and in return loving fiercely as an adult.
My son did grow out of his once he started school. So scary, right? I think those two work so well in conversation with each other, yes! Beautiful work.
Wonderful, contrasting pieces! I loved ' she makes me whole' and ' ingredients and disagreements should be kept at room temperature' , I felt as if the narrator was learning so much from the grandma which went beyond making bread. And then the sensory ' we slather thick pieces' almost made my mouth water! Your second piece takes us right into the scene, there is so much action, doing, seizing, choking and feeling. I can feel the pain the author is going through, helpless - damn degree on the wall, does nothing. Loved it! Thanks for sharing this.
Meghana, thanks for all the lovely feedback! I can tell you took the time to really consider my pieces. Thanks again!!
Wonderful, heartfelt responses to both prompts, Jane. I heard lyrical music in Grandma's story, pleasing consonant chords. In Seize Her I was struck by the dissonance, frantic tempo, sharp repetitive music. I felt the characters were a mother and child.
Jill, thanks for your thoughts on the pieces. Playing with sound is something I really love.
These are fabulous and so different. I, too, love the line about ingredients and disagreements at room temperature, and your piece made me remember being taught to bake bread as a girl and then being able to eat it just from the oven with butter and honey. The second piece is wow and I'm there caught up in that frightening moment.
Susan, thanks for taking the time to read! It’s fun to work on two totally different moods. Also, homemade bread is one of life’s great joys!
Wow, you did both. Each one wonderful and so different. I can taste that bread with butter and honey.
Thanks Luanne! If this were an in person gathering, I’d make grandma’s recipe for everyone and pass it around.
Mmmm, I would definitely partake!
Coloring My World
I loved painting days when Grandma and I slopped color on the ceiling and walls of their newly remodeled house. She didn’t care how we were supposed to apply paint, letting the music of big band, Elvis, the Kingston Trio, whatever floated from the radio inspire a swipe here, a circle there, and finally a crescendo filling in between the strokes, scribbles, and spatters.
Dancing with a roller, flinging blue or beige on the wall, plus a glow of drops saturated the drop cloth but for a tall and a short white space. We dressed for bombardment, handkerchiefs covering my dark curls and Grandma’s beautiful blonde hair fresh from the beauty parlor. I wore her shirt, shimmery with a bouquet of flowers, as my knee-length Mumu, and we Vaselined every uncovered spot, so easy to slough off our new skin of colored speckles with a shower.
Debi, all I could think of as I read this is how incredibly LUCKY you were to have a grandma like this. She nurtured your creative spirit! She made you love art. So many times, children are made to feel they are making messes as they play and create. They're punished for it. This is such a lovely rendering of a beautiful moment and you use sound, images, and flow to immerse us into the moment and feel all you felt, then. Love that you listened to music while painting! And great music, at that. I could hear the music of this sentence: "She didn’t care how we were supposed to apply paint, letting the music of big band, Elvis, the Kingston Trio, whatever floated from the radio inspire a swipe here, a circle there, and finally a crescendo filling in between the strokes, scribbles, and spatters."
"We dressed for bombardment." Love that. You land on such a musical sentence (I read it out loud a few times): "I wore her shirt, shimmery with a bouquet of flowers, as my knee-length Mumu, and we Vaselined every uncovered spot, so easy to slough off our new skin of colored speckles with a shower." (shirt/ shimmery / skin / speckles / shower) Lovely work!
Thank you Kathy for this & all of your feedback. My grandparents are always the subject of my happy childhood memories. I'm glad I conveyed the joy of being with her
We dressed for bombardment, handkerchiefs covering my dark curls and Grandma’s beautiful blonde hair fresh from the beauty parlor.
This is such a great image!
Grandma envy here! What a wonderful scene that you make come alive with the music and the color and the dancing and the slopping. I love, too, the line "we dressed for bombardment."
Thanks Susan. Glad you enjoyed this piece
Does that ever sound fun!!!!! I love it. The shirt mumu hah! Thank you for reminding me of a memory, Debi. My grandma had a little wooden chair and whenever one of her kids would get on her nerves she would put it outside, give them a paintbrush and paint and have them paint it. She did the same thing with me, and I have a pic of me in the long shirt (my grandpa's) painting that ugly chair.
Funny how much overlap there is between our experiences. Glad you too had a creative Gma
They are the best!
Loved this! I could easily imagine the author and grandma dancing, painting, laughing! Such a happy childhood memory. Strokes, scribbles and spatters and then the ending with skin of colored speckles stood out.
Such a colourful, happy piece! I especially liked all those s and sh sounds in the final sentence, picking up on the way a snake sheds its skin and the way you all danced ( made me think of shimmy esp when you used shimmery to describe the shirt.
NIGHTTIME ELVIS
We steal Gerald’s wig, ride our bikes from corner store to corner store. ‘It’s sweaty,’ you say. ‘It’s falling off my face.’ In the Valero we believe in life after love. In 7-Eleven with the broken slurpy machine we hit babies one more time. ‘Is that your real hair?’ the attendant asks. No one will sell us cigarettes, so we ask the lonely man pumping gas at Chervon. ‘He has nobody,’ you say and we take off down dark alleys, making jokes about Gerald and Elvis, in ecstasy about the tobacco. I hold the cigarette to my lips and pretend it’s our first kiss. We go to the unfinished houses. Upstairs I wear the wig. ‘And his mama cries,’ I sing. ‘In the ghetto.’ You tell me to stop, you hear someone coming. We dissolve into each other’s shadow. Your breath is everywhere like a love song.
I love this, Nicholas. It reads like a swirl of music and images. The writing is so alive. It captures the feeling of being young, being reckless, wanting so much without knowing exactly what it is one wants, just this diffuse feeling of longing. I love this wig they've stolen. At first I thought stealing the wig was an act of meanness, but I don't think it is. I don't know who Gerald is in this story or what he means to them, but it feels like a totem almost. Is Gerald an Elvis impersonator? I love how Elvis is woven in. We had the 45 of In the Ghetto when I was a kid and you brought that song back for me. "I hold the cigarette to my lips and pretend it's our first kiss. I'm going to go back at some point and read all the stories you've written during this extravaganza. A treat to myself. I hope you're building a collection. I love the last three lines of this. Big fan of your writing, Nicholas.
Thanks so much! Very kind of you to say. Obviously a big fan of your writing, it's been a huge inspiration to me for so long. :)
Yes, Gerald is an Elvis impersonator. He's Jesse's (the narrator) mother's boyfriend. He's in a story on Day 11 that I like which also features the wig (and the you in this story as Manny). As well as Day 4, 5, and 14. I've been working with these characters for a long time and had a novella at one point (2019!) but wasn't happy with it. Still trying to find the arc.
Thanks again for your kindness, reading, the Extravaganza, etc. <3
The arc will reveal itself to you eventually. This is all amazing. Keep at it!
you leave so much for the reader to guess, but land it clear with those two simple sentences which stand in opposition to "He has nobody" earlier on. There's a lot here and more on a second and third reading.
Nicholas, I knew I’d be amused when you started with, “we steal Gerald’s wig.” Nice job. I am however, now worried about Gerald.
Gerald always gets the wig back.
I went for the cacophony of an “alarming action” here. Also this is my first time commenting! I’ve been following along silently!
Something smacked the back of my head. A hot liquid ooze. Drenching my locks. Covering my shoulder blades. Dripping onto my back.
It was piss.
Sticky, stinky piss.
The piss of infection.
Poison.
He chucked his piss and his bedpan at my head.
That goddamn bastard.
Ungrateful son of a gun.
He yowled at me. The strange, unearthly, piercing squall of an addict. Not his voice. Purple veins. Blood-red eyes. Baptizing me “monster.” Me. The only one left to care. This bedpan slinging voice, vitriolic.
To think I had kept up hope.
To think this voice came from the same boy who crept on tip toe to whisper in the night, “Mama, I wet the bed.” All apology.
Of the precocious potty-trainer, standing to aim at the toilet bowl, “Mama, does pee have more viscosity than water?” Or of the soft babbling I warmed to hear form the word, “Mama,” for the first time, as I changed his 537th diaper. Innocence and love. Admiration.
A nurse, trained in diaper changing and swaddling, handed him to me, mortified me, after he squirted pee all over her face. And with him, handed me my first lesson in mothering, “We’re meant to love them unconditionally. They’re meant to give us conditions.”
Hi Christina! I think you captured well, via your prose, a sense of cacophony. Your sentences and fragments are short and sharp. I was taken by your diction in this piece as well, the word choices. The verbs: smacked / drenching / dripping / chucked / yowled / BAPTIZING
Every line is like a blow. "That goddamn bastard." and "Ungrateful son of a gun." This is a powerful single-scene flash that employs a bit of flashback to lend context and layers to the story in progress. The penultimate paragraph is a half scene of flashback and so well placed. Now we know more about this bedpan flinging addict and it engages us more deeply with him and his mother's plight. A hard landing, too, with that last line. Great job with making your prose heighten the feeling of the piece for the reader.
Good lead up to that simple sentence which is the point of this story and I like the way it is made up of so many little vignettes.
Christina, this is very visceral. I want more backstory as this piece reeled me in.
*Sorry if this is a repeat. Thought I posted it , but then I didn't see it?
War Cry
Shoshanna On Camera
Legs stretched way out. Face, exotic as an avocado, ethnic. Hipster ballet slippers, elbow on cement, leaning way, way back. Eyes dark as oil, mouth like Mona Lisa.
Kodak at summer camp. Frisbee seesaw dinner rolls Dr. Scholl’s. Friday night dance, the jukebox fixed no one had to pay, put on Donna Summer dance the night away.
Shoshanna In Stereo
Mouth wide. The Cars on 8 track, pumping, pump, pump. Waiting for the chorus. “Bye Bye Love” drifts among the dusky trees. Her energy makes it hard to sleep.
Kodak at summer camp. Kids in the courtyard, playground merry-go-round, rickety spin. One girl looked like Suzi Quatro, the one who sang “Stumblin’ In.”
Shoshanna On Stage
Last night, the counselors’ talent show. Shoshanna, metallic green kerchief in her hair, her spoken word performance. “Gertrude Stein is a pig!” Stunning us into stillness.
Kodak at summer camp. Only one of Shoshanna, except memory ones, a shutter, “Ko-dak.” A shudder, war cry. Summer breeze, the sting of melancholy.
just playing with language and sound. didn't follow the prompt choices. my goal is to go back and somehow turn this into a story of sorts . . .
JAZZ TRIO ON A SLOW WEDNESDAY NIGHT
The guitarist nods at the bassist, the drummer, and says, “Here we go!” And oh! Hot potato bounce and pounce, salty slick rolls, soft-trodden shoals, mystery pancakes, kiss-laced honey bakes, soft-serve ice cream boats, crepe paper dandelion floats, daydreaming apple tree, honeysuckle bumble bee. The guitarist looks at the audience and counts three.
Lift Off (second try at musical flash)
Poised on my window sill, a ruffle of cold air quickens my heartbeat, pinks my cheeks. The updraft swirls around my legs, under my outstretched arms, and I lift off smooth as a meadowlark.
Trailing a medley of crackling leaves, I soar above our house, the tumbledown barn with its rusty weathercock. I'm lithe as the willow switch Ma flicks when I don't mind her. She can't reach me here, and when Pa yells, "Missy, you better do your chores," I won't listen. Junior and Bubba moved away and left me two old parents, but I ain't farming. I'm flying! 100 words
In the Moment I Realize
words, like colors, swirl within the heart and gut, through the bloodstream, into the fingers. Your words dangle down the page, then flutter down into the dust. Your vacant chair is blue fading to violet then to grey until, at last, it is colorless. But bare winter branches are bursting into flower all around me, the Japanese Magnolia reaching its tender pink blooms to the sky. And so I stretch skyward my winter fingers too, knowing that light is always within reach.
WINTER
Zamboni, macaroni, macarena. Gliding on ice, swishing scarves flying, sisters’ hands hanging on hands, ringing the rink, under the sun on a Sunday afternoon, whipping wind behind us. Tugging, lagging, thumping then sliding, mittens scattering. Pulled up, pushed into line. Chant with me, dance with me, dale alegria. Skates off, shoes on, macaroni for dinner tonight!
BOOM
Pointy stilettos tick-tock, tick-tock on the wooden floor, the red matching her gossamer silk scarf scooping tightly around her neck, the white pantsuit perfectly fitting her lean body. Tick-tock and the heads turn, tick-tock and people strain to see her walk, to take the vision of her. They yearn, wanting to touch, to feel , anything, of her, from her. She glides as if walking on air and every look, stare and smile is controlled, carefully rehearsed, the hall growing silent as she swoops in, her moves transcending the tempo of the quiet room as she tick-tocks, tall, slender, towering. She takes the stage to face the thousands of them, peering, watching, staring at her, her words that are booming, bossy, boisterous. She stops looking behind and stretches herself to the unseen future where she would be taking charge, leading, deciding, taking the throngs and the multitudes with her into the most powerful future that they had not even begun to imagine.