Ravenwood

Running Past Normal

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 05:00:00 +0000

Fifty miles west of Bloomington lies Hillsboro, a monument to middle-class malaise. Fern covered front porches with white picket fences settle impervious to everything, but flags, harvests and lemonade stands. A sense of yesterday lingers in each neighborhood where attics house button downed memories folded away in massive trunks. Children laugh on summer afternoons and winter mornings, as school bells and church bells peal.

That morning she decided to go for a run. It was not her typical decision. Usually, after she had gotten both husband and children off to their various destinations, she would sit down for another cup of coffee, a peek at Dr. Phil or a long drag on a pencil she pretended was a cigarette holder.

Today was different. Today she had glanced at something that encapsulated every lost dream and every lost desire sacrificed on the altar constructed by teenagers and maintained by adults. It was just something written by an unknown name, but just the same, it struck her and echoed throughout the washing of dishes and folding of clothes.

Somewhere right now, in the heartland of America, in the subterranean reaches of a city, a man is running.

She searched like a mad man for her old pair of sneakers. She didn’t have running shoes, but decided that tomorrow she would splurge. But for now, what she had would have to do. One of the laces snapped in half when she pulled her bow tight. Yesterday that would have been enough to stop her, but today she ran into her son’s room, pulled the lace off of one of his shoes and laced her own.

There was a list of errands waiting to be completed hanging on the corkboard by the door, when she stepped outside into the morning sun and exhaled the air with the same joy as someone who had been confined for years. Every care dissipated while one remained:

“Only a thin veil separates me from everything and everyone I love or have ever loved.”

She stepped onto the pavement feeling its hardness beneath her feet, while knowing that beneath her and through the grass, dirt and rock, was another woman, on the other side of the world, going to bed at the end of the day sighing as dreams blossomed from nothingness, only to die with the sun.

Bending down to touch the earth, she believed, even for that moment, that she could touch the face of that sleeping woman to let her know that she was not alone.

Her first steps were awkward. She hadn’t run in years and soon realized that her body had lost the ease of youth. As she bent down to stretch and feel the groan of unused muscles, she knew that this dream would take every bit of her strength to breathe.

“It’s almost like giving birth,” she thought, as one again, she began.

This time her steps felt more assured of their placement, one behind the other with a quick gait that became more powerful with each movement. She quickened her pace.

She was running.

Her feet thumped the pavement like worries. She ran though no one was in pursuit. An echo from some past dream had awakened an urgency that dragged her from the subterranean reaches of complacency to frenzy.

Her heart pounded, though not so much out of exhaustion, as joy.

She ran like an outcast from some forgotten place. The sky was yellow when she’d begun and red by the time she realized that the landscape of her life had changed from poised and positioned to free.

Fifty miles east of Bloomington is Normal, a straitjacket to conformity, where everything and nothing is what it is to those who live there. As she approached it boundary, she wondered if she should return. Her husband needed her. Her children needed her.

“No, I’m going to run past Normal,” she thought after taking a break to eat a lunch of sweet cakes, honey and black olives before returning to the road.

Manna never tasted so sweet.

She had found her stride and whooshed past blurs of people, houses, life as one border zoomed into another.

There was an undertow of exigency like a nagging pulse forcing lifeblood itself through her tired veins. She was not adroit at running; tripping on rocks and troubles with equal clumsiness. But she always righted herself before tramping on. There was a candle in the window of a curious little house that she passed along the Cape Fear Coast.

She smiled at the odd symmetry of running in circles, though the earth is a circle so we are all running.

There were many who came and went along the way. She had slowed down for some and hurried past for others. Others waved or winked, while others frowned and threw stones. It would be a lie to say she had not lost her step on occasion, but she redeemed herself from the sins of imperfection and returned to her former course, wiser and well trod. She had d loved and been loved though she could not stay put. Chased by monkeys at a temple in India where the moss grew high among darkened trees, she laughed as she remembered that just yesterday she had been bored.

The faces of her husband and children appeared and disappeared in storefronts and horizons. Longitudinally speaking, she was usually silent except for the huffs and puffs of air she released unconsciously.

An old woman gave her orange slices that were dripping with juice. She ran through terrain familiar to both the Jewish and the Gentile troubling ancient dust with peaceful steps. There were children laughing in Gaza and children laughing in the heartland of America. Effigies of forgotten political figures hung from pole to pole with no one lifting up a gun or setting off a bomb in retaliation.

The world revolved as it always had been since before the beginning.

Yet she continued to run past and through consciousness amid cavalcades of recklessness and ruin. She had begun her passage with carelessness as her mapmaker and knew that she wouldn’t end it until oblivion closed her eyes. But that wouldn’t be for years yet. Now there was only the road before and after her with nothing between them but eternity, and the smiles of children playing in the dirt.

8:15 and 2:02

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 03:43:00 +0000

Red oleander blossoms, Hiroshima’s fruit after devastation burns shadows into stone. Petals eradicate hopelessness amid heaps of charred obliteration. Mercenary fingers pushed down the button sending Little Boy to do the work of playground bullies. Three days later Fat Man would send the message that war isn’t for the squeamish, and children must burn. Today, it is the same. Children die faceless and unknown. Pawns and prey are preyed upon and prayed upon. Babies suckled with blood and tears. Remnants remain forever scarred. Ghostly figures limp. Breathe. Howl. Agonies erupt on blistered skin. A blue hole where a mouth should be begs for soup. Sockets, which once housed eyes, envision untouched landscapes. While ears ring with the echo of Enola Gay as she streaked the cloudless sky.

Garden Grow

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 04:03:00 +0000

Blossoms of the living and dying flooded the forest floor threatening to overtake this territory of trees, which had long stood master above everything below. Now, instead she had removed wildflowers, mosses and roots of never-born vegetation to decorate her surroundings as she pleased without knowledge or care of the lives she ended with a yank from her indelicate hands.

Today and today and today; her raspy voice repeated a chronic repetition of commands, lists, errands, and multitudes of nothings soon to be left unaccomplished in rummage heaps of mental debris. The floorboards squeaked beneath her unsteady steps providing replies to the weight of unheard conversations.

Remembering this or that from when or where would cause sudden smiles to surface on life furrowed skin, providing glimpses of the bright shining hopefulness of possibility which had faded, bit-by-bit, with age. Then, still smiling, she would scratch her head, until the smile and all it had brought with it quickly vanished into obscurity.

“So much to do and not enough time. So much to do and not enough time,” her words, almost a song while hammering a nail on the grey-faded woodwork of the little house in the woods that was her home. Like its occupant, long overtaken with age, it stood seemingly abandoned and waiting to fall. Rarely seen cars lost on roads would find it accidentally, with owners assuming they had found some forgotten make shift place soon to be completely enveloped by the landscape. Seeing their headlights floating across her walls like specters jarred her back to the consciousness that there were others in the world besides her with lives to live, things to do and time to waste until it ended.

He had seen her on one of her rare visits to town to buy supplies. He knew she always followed the same pattern of appearing every three months or so, and amid stories of her strange ways and odd appearance. Talk about the crazy old coot who lived in the woods had embellished his childhood with imaginings of who she was, where she had come from and what she would do to any foolish enough to come within her grasp. There was other talk; talk about money hidden in floorboards or secreted away somewhere in the ramshackle walls of her home. He watched her unsteady steps and flicked a foraged booger onto the pavement, and then slicked back his hair, pulled up his collar and smiled, as wicked imaginings trailed and spiraled from a long drag of his cigarette.

She took no note of him as she labored past on the way to the fulfillment of copious misspelled lists of items and inclinations soon to be crossed off in a hurried swirl. Shop owners and children pestered her with insults or offers of sticky-fingered accusations or hugs. She abhorred them all and comforted herself with the knowledge that while necessity had forced her journey here, soon she would return to the comfortable darkness of her home with its walls lined with homages of dead ones now turned to dirt, and ash.

Hours later, he stood behind a tree surveying her movements as she traveled back and forth from the corroded car parked nearby. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the ever-present darkness to pale from grey to black, he blamed her for the sunset’s slowness, vowing to take it out on her after its surrender.

This would be an easy job. Soon he would have everything he had always wanted, and more. Soon he could stare directly in the eye of every snooty girl who had ever turned him down. He would make them beg, and then kick them away like so much trash. Every wish, every dream lay just a few feet away, teasing him, forging hatred upon hate from every person who had ever wronged him to hover, and land squarely on her shoulders. By the time he came up behind her, he had thoroughly convinced himself of her guilt in all the hurts that had culminated with him being here in this moment, about to strike.

It happened so quickly; at least that’s how it seemed, until now, too weakened and unable to move he became aware that she was dragging him very slowly across the ground to a freshly cleared place covered in flowers not usually found in forests. What had happened? How had it happened? Memory, his memory, which had always been keen, failed him.

“Very pretty, isn’t it?” she said noticing the jagged back and forth movement of his eyes. “Did it m’self. All of it. I love that patch over there of clamshell pink flowers you’re lying on…” Then, trailing off forgetting herself and then remembering, “I had absolutely no idea I’d have c’mpany so soon. You’ll like it here. All the others do. Have a good sleep, I’ll be back out in the morning to take your picture and sow the lime. I used to slake, but it doesn’t do anything for the slugs, don’t ya know? Read that somewhere in a science book.”

He wanted to scream, but blood had sealed his lips into a tight red smile; besides, he knew there was no one but her who would hear him. In time, exhaustion overtook his all thoughts of escape, even as crows came to feast on his neighbors in the wood. There was nothing now, but the reckoning that some children’s stories do come true and that happily ever after had always been the lie.

Days, weeks, months went by and seasons changed. Time continued to pass as it always had and ever would, as she watched her garden of the living and the dead blossom upon the forest floor.

Boots

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 31 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Pulling off her boots and kicking each one to polar points across the floor, she sunk back on the couch and began to devour a bowl of potato chips. There was nothing worth her attention on the television, but between the chips and the remote, she disappeared into the blankness of repetitive activity until sleep overtook her.

She awoke some hours later and stumbled into her bedroom, and sleeved herself between sheets. Hers were not pleasant dreams, but rainbow-twisted journeys to unknown places where she jumped from one figure, one existence, one realm to another, without rest.

There were no great revelations, no truths detailed in dream speak, only the sallow sheen of ancient juxtapositions of memory; old loves, fears and wisps of forgotten conversations, commingled into a waltz of swirling metaphors. Nonexistent languages echoed from vested tongues until morning light broke through, leaving nothing of the nearly targeted bull’s eye of surprise.

She had almost grasped it. It had been that close. But now, it was time to wake up and pull her boots back on and face the day and the many delusions which harried her.

Diane

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 19:12:00 +0000

Image by Kathy Liao

She is a creature behind bars where there were no bars. Eyes peering back and forth, navigating the parameters of the room she refused to walk. Her legs would not let her. Trapped within her body, her mind, nothing moved except pulse points and eyes, even as long strings of saliva decorated her hospital gown.

“Momma” hadn’t wanted her, hadn’t held her, hadn’t cried as she was taken away; only eighteen months old, tossed from one home to another, until finally, now, here, in a place of long corridors of jammed rooms with empty souls housed within, she resided.

In dreams, she walked down tree-lined streets back, back, back to where Momma sat staring with clenched hands. No, she mustn’t return, though she always did, to this, her happy place, her escape from beatings, rapes and bad food.

Sometimes a nurse or doctor would come to examine her seeing a spark of light flash and then diminish into her deadened eyes. She was there, screaming, inaudible, but there. Howling, “yes, see me,” as they walked away; their shoes echoing on cold tiles.

An inner voice takes over as she watches them walk away.

Run, run, run, you must find a way though there is no way to make your body oblige you. He is coming again and there is no way to fight him. He, like so many others before, will take, take, take without a thought about the pain or the shame or anything else. You cannot scream. You cannot cry.

I dare you. I dare you to try.

You cannot do anything but remain still and trapped within a cage of skin and bone.

This is how it is. This is how it is, as she remembers reaching out with her eyes to “Momma,” and she turned away from her without even giving her a name. She has one now. They were up to the “D’s” that day, and so here she is. Here she is, outside of herself again, eyes darting back and forth; revealing nothing of her turmoil or terror, until another tick of the clock and time has its way with her once again.

(This story is based on a former student of mine. She was only seven when I taught her, but had the mental and emotional age of someone much younger. She was already caught in the system, going from foster home to foster home. I loved her dearly and she knew it. She used to love to sit in my lap and notice all of my jewelry. I hold her even though she was heavy, because I knew that she hadn;. It's one of the great heartbreaks in my life, that one day when I went to work she wasn't there. She had been transferred to another foster home over the weekend. There was no way for me to find out where she was, because I was only her teacher. Just the same, she continues to be in my thoughts even now, all these years later.)

Hopscotch

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:00:00 +0000

She hadn’t felt like herself for quite some time after the surgery. She wasn’t in pain, that had subsided after the first few weeks, and her healing was “going along nicely,” according to her doctor. Still, there was something holding her back from normality; a sense of slowly sliding through life that countermanded her need to reclaim the time before.

“Hysterectomy” was not a word she ever thought would have been used in regard to her, and yet, there it was, written across her life with thick, black strokes. True, she felt better with the tumor gone, yet her surgeon had taken something more. No, not her womanhood; she didn’t define herself in that way, even though society had made that attempt on all young girls of her generation. Her childhood room had been littered with baby dolls and miniature versions of motherhood until the first drips of blood came signaling that true motherhood was on the horizon. Yet, it had never come, but neither had a mourning for it come. There had been no inward itch towards motherhood, even as the years flew past. She blamed the fact that she had spent her early youth tending babies and toddlers by the dozens; being elbow deep in dirty diapers, vomit, tears and hugs. Still, she wasn’t certain if that was true.

Looking out of her study window, she saw a group of young girls chalking a sidewalk and remembered doing the same herself. Those rituals of games and chants that ended with how many children you would have, as a curse for your skill at hopping across chalk lines or jumping a rope. “Little boys did not/do not play games that define them by breeding,” she murmured to herself, before loudly saying, “enough,” and stomping out into the street.

She marched past the girls and their games as echoes of niceties from well-meaning friends pulsed through her temples. Not even one tear streaked her face as she padded the pavement in determined steps. She had not been beaten down nor did she accept the role of prune or parched desert. She knew she was vital, as every woman everywhere is vital whether she is a mother, a wife or not. Yet, since the surgery, there was a sense of being sucked into that particular attitude.

“I’ll have some apple pie a la mode, please,” she responded to the waitress who had asked for her order in the restaurant she found herself in after walking past exhaustion.

“You’re gonna love it. Our pie is the best in town and you’re lucky, because the cook just made a fresh batch. Nothing better than just out of the oven apple pie a la mode, in my book,” said the waitress almost skipping across the floor.

“Lucky me,” she replied back, a smile spreading across her face. “Yes, lucky me,” and she reasons to feel lucky. The doctor had removed a fast-growing soccer ball-size tumor, which had grown through her uterus, and it hadn’t been cancerous. She would no longer feel the constancy of it growing and pushing inside or ever hemorrhage because of it again. Nor would she ever have to deal with her ex-fiancé who had already named their children and beaten down any of her attempts to grow into her own skin.

It was the first time she’d remembered him and how bad health had played a role in setting her free. Still, everything didn’t come together in that moment, but it was a start. She could feel it, even as she savored the pie and nodded her thanks to the waitress. She had looked at herself in a mirror of her own design and returned with a triumphant smile that continued as she walked home past the rain that hurried the little girls into their homes, and washed away all the hopscotch boards in the city.

Romper Stomper

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 02:38:00 +0000

To hear me read "Romper Stomper" click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

He stomped space with a drunken toe, suddenly tired from the taste of the melancholy found at the bottom of a bottle.

“No need to worry,” he slurred at the contents, as he swished and swirled them around, before slurping them down. Apparently, he hadn’t had his fill of the same bland taste from the same bland existence of nine-to-five followed by a six-pack in front of the TV every night. Everything he consumed had the same consistency as a cloudy day, with a sharp aftertaste that made him want to die.

He watched the news while smiling sarcastically as some soon-to-be-forgotten celebrity bragged about the things he wished he’d done. But he’d learned to accept the rectangles he’d drawn around himself, because he was smart enough to know that life wasn’t about what we choose, but what we accept.

Everything he had accepted was out of desperation. Certainly that’s how he ended up married to the grey-faced specter who sat across the room in flickering shadows hovering. Few meaningful words had ever passed between their petrified and passionless tongues. He’d called an old girlfriend in search of new flavors for his senses to savor, but their intercourse tasted like the telephone, and their conversation was perfumed in plastic-coated pleasantries.

Sex had become redundant. Even lusty kisses between strangers in strange places were no longer filled with myriad sweet sensations that pulverized him into sweet submission. Joy awaited at the bottom of the bottle amid the essence of his own decaying distress.

He looked at his wife and she glanced through him. There was nothing to say, not even “goodnight,” as he stumbled to the refrigerator for another brew.

Evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:02:00 +0000

Temple monkeys sprawl in the sun, unaware of anything but the growling of bellies and the chirping of their broods. A quick jolt of fear by something stirring nearby dissipates as the search for carnal needs takes hold. They do not know that right now, abused kids around the world cry in corners and bleed, models starve in Paris fashion houses to fit into the latest throwaway trends, while in America, teenage girls are either lusting or loathing Edward Cullen while popping pimples and dreaming. Instead, they eat fallen fruit on forest floors in the warmth of ancient temple climbs.

From forest floors to boardrooms and windswept prairie plains, we have not grasped this elemental truth; we are not plastic. We may occasionally be slightly psychotically metallic; unfeeling things, without the ability to realize that there is something better, than what we so easily accept.

Lorena does not smile as crowds of ideas fight for supremacy in her consciousness. In a corner of the street she walks down every day, an old man hums drunkenly. She thinks of joining him, but doesn’t recognize his tune. It is not something she recognizes from the radio. She would ask him, but there is no point. She knows she will not take the time to learn. Instead, she will come up with excuses to forget him and his music. Instead, she will lose herself in the shop windows she passes, without realizing that the painted smiles of mannequins are the only smiles she’s received today.

We are sometimes reptilian, crawling on our bellies without pride or knowledge of legs, following the crowd that follows the crowd before it. Our feet might have lead us to thoughts, but we walked away too soon for them to take hold.

Temple monkeys do not care, as they stand guard over eternity. They live, breathe, birth and die on the same spot, beside the same temple that generations of their kind have occupied since its construction. That is the only crowd they follow. While we rush to go nowhere, blindly accepting half lived lives as reality or fate.

Lorena tries not to care that she hasn’t been invited to the office party. She tells herself that it was an oversight as she listens to the laughter of her coworkers echoing down the corridor. It is fine. It is good, she tells herself. She will show them all someday. She will be something more than she is now, though she has no idea what that could be. She thinks all this, while leafing through a copy of a photography magazine detailing the lives of primitives and primates, to make herself feel superior.

Godiva Undone

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:43:00 +0000

To hear my reading of "Godiva" go to the Readings page.

She echoed these words to herself as she lay dying in want of something more; something exciting like a ride through Coventry. “I cannot pretend to be a box of chocolates. I cannot pretend I am capable of love. Shouldn't you have awakened as well,” she asked looking at the sleeping form beside her.

"Those who dream that they are Cleopatra awaken to find black booted reality stomping upon their crystalline fancies." This would be her explanation for the shattered glass upon the floor. If only the shag carpet was able to hungrily swallow each shard of unhinged mirror like a Bedouin in search of one drop of liquid sustenance. But no, reality is not as kind as dreams.

Her old dreams hung upon her brow like beads of sweat, trickling down where they were happily caught on her tongue. She delighted in their salty-sweet-haziness as she silently cleaned up the floor.

“That is all that remains of who I was in murky hoped for memory,” she thought, remembering the poems she’d written and tossed aside like trash. “My memory and I are long lost friends. She and I may have been writing you on those thrown away scraps, so much like these shards. Would you recognize our hands in spite of the blood? In spite of what time has taken from them?”

She looked at her hands. They were no longer beautiful and smooth as they’d been when he’d wrapped her fingers in platinum and gold sealing her as his own. Even their stones had lost their enticing gleam. Her hands ached under the weight of wifely obligations.

Once her hands ached from writing. She remembered in college, how her pen hummed happily; hungry for words, these children of its unholy union with wanton paper and thought. She believed the day would come when she would write them all; delighting in each syllable and phrase.

Words weren’t dangerous in those days before her husband told her to “hush” whenever she tried to speak. Ideas flowed freely unhindered, and safety hadn’t been their aim. Smoke wasn't the signal of her anger and repression, which she exhaled in explosive bursts.

It had finally come. It had come. The day. This day had come, and now surrender rose on the horizon beckoning her to accept that as the definition of her life. And she smiled in the knowing that this step was not the final one, but the first of many towards oblivion.

This story grew from this poem, "Godiva."

The Conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:30:00 +0000

To hear my reading of "The Conversation" go to the Readings page.

Once upon a time, in the land of America, in a place called Brooklyn, two women attempted to have a conversation.

“What a day I had!” said Sylvia, a recent graduate of the ‘Barbizon School for Pretentious Females Over Forty,’ to her companion, Maureen, a manicurist and graduate of the “Billing’s House of Upper-Lip Bleaching.’ “First, as I was perambulating the circumference of my environs, a blitzkrieg of ebony miscreants assaulted me with a glow of amplifiers until my aural cavities, which are much accustomed to more discriminating reverberations, converted themselves into a great void of nothingness.”

“Huh?” said Maureen.

“While I wuz wawkin’ ‘round de block dis mornin’, a bunch of black kids wuz playin’ dere music so loud I couldn’t hear nuthin’!”

“Oh,” said Maureen, while chewing her gum. “Oh my gawd.”

“Yeah,” said Sylvia, “I almost regurgitated my cock-crow victuals all over de place!”

Maureen stopped mid-chew, with her mouth open wide enough to see its’ contents. “Yeah, I hoid of dat happenin’ on de news last night. Good thing dat lady called 9-1-1 or she woulda lost her house.”

Sylvia looked at Maureen, then at the ceiling, which often substituted for God, before continuing her discourse.

“Then this afternoon, because of the idiosyncrasy of my chronometer, I was unpunctual at the conveyance transference locality and was forced to ambulate to the province of my vocation.”

“Huh?” said Maureen.

“My watch wuz slow, so I missed de bus and had to walk to woik.”

“Oh! Oh my gawd. Don’t cha just hate dat?”

“Yeah,” said Sylvia, “if I don’t submerge my pinions in some thermogenic aqua pura, I’m gonna die.”

Maureen raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow, and then slowly let it fall. “Uh yeah,” she said, “didn’t Julia Roberts get an Oscar for playin’ someone who had dat? Gawd, I love her, she’s such a good actress.”

Sylvia became more intimately involved with the ceiling. This time however, it was a nice country lane where happy little bunnies hopped and played over the rotting remains of Maureen. She sighed, contented and refreshed before continuing to speak.

“So after leave-taking the province of my vocation and discerning that it was an unaccountably agreeable day, I determined to promenade to my habitation.”

Maureen swallowed her gum.

“On the way I passed by a pander of pornographers, which was beside a lech of dirty old men with protruding obscenities in their nether regions.”

She looked at Maureen, “you get what I’m sayin’ heah?”

“Uh, I think so,” said Maureen. “Oh my gawd.”

“Well dere wuz dis guy, I mean, this rogue. Well his posterior wuz seized so tightly in his raven cow-hide breeches that I virtually oozed solvent all over my lips and down my chin.”

“Oh my gawd.” said Maureen. “Is dat good?”

“Oh yeah it is!” said Sylvia, “After a quick hello, we wuz like a lubricity of nymphomaniacs, a rut of satyrs, a concatenation of orgiasts!”

“Huh?”

“We wuz doin’ it like rabbits all over de place!”

“Oh my gawd!”

“Yeah, it wuz wonderful.”

They both looked dreamily off into the distance.

“An’ I’ll tell ya somethin’,” said Sylvia almost forgetting herself, “I don’t think I’ll be able to perambulate the circumference of my environs or anyplace else for a coupla days.”

“Well,” said Maureen, “not unless you use lots of hairspray.”

Safety First

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:10:00 +0000

"Hey!" said Mrs. Johnston, "You could've turned!"

"Just a minute," said Mr. Johnston, his hands grasping the wheel of their Benz like his life depended on it.

Mrs. Johnston eyed the approaching traffic, waiting for her husband to make the turn out of their driveway. "There, right after that red car!"

"No, I can see another car coming after it."

"But you've got enough time, that other car is a good distance away!"

"Yes, but it's still there."

The red car passed by. "Now's your chance!"

"I can't. That other car, it's coming closer."

"But its four blocks down the road!" she said, accentuating every syllable with her arms.

"Now it's three. Then two and soon it will be right here in front of us."

She tried to frown, but Botox prevented her. So, she blinked her eyes while pounding her fists on her thighs.

"I'm just trying to be a safe driver."

"But what's unsafe about making a turn when there's a break in traffic?"

"Anything could happen."

The car in question chugged by.

"That car could've lost its brakes and come barreling right for us. We could have been in a terrible accident. We could have been killed."

"But it didn't lose its brakes!" she said, ripping her fingers through her coif and massacring every curl.

"Well, it could have."

"Are you out of your mind?" she said, decorating the windshield with missiles of spit.

"No, it's just that safety reigns supreme when I drive this automobile."

"You're making us late for our dinner with the Millers!"

"Well, we certainly wouldn't make that dinner if we were dead, now would we?"

Tears plunged down her face, turning her mascara into long black snakes racing towards her chin.

"Charles."

"Yes?"

"The street is completely empty now. There are no cars coming towards us from either direction. Turn."

"I can't."

"Why not!" she said, grabbing his arm and shaking it.

"Because sooner or later, another car will come."

"Well of course another car will come! It's not like we have the only one on the road."

"That's right, and I don't know if the drivers of any of them have been drinking or taking drugs or anything else I don't have any control of. This is the safest way. We have to stay here. We have to wait."

"Wait for what?" she said, screeching so loudly that dogs began barking.

"The right moment when it will be safe to turn,” he said calmly patting her hand. "Now I know you're worried about our evening out. You have spent half the day getting ready for it. But, I'm sure the Millers will understand us being a little late."

"A little late?" she said, her voice a menacing snarl. "Do you realize that we would be there right now, but because of this bizarre notion of yours, we're still in our driveway?"

"Well, you could always go inside and call a cab."

"I'll do no such thing! It wouldn't look right if I did that while were you here. The neighbors would think we're quarreling."

"Then wait for the bus,” he said smiling already sure of her answer.

"Not in this outfit I won't! I look too good to be on the bus. Every derelict in the world would be asking me for change. Then I'd have to walk, and these shoes aren't comfortable for anything but sitting. Besides, I refuse to arrive alone. Appearance, Charles. Appearances."

"Then sit back and relax."

"Relax?"

"Be patient. I'll know when the moment comes."

"Well, when will that be?"

"I don't know, but at least we'll be safe. Isn't that what counts in the end?”

“I’m going inside to call the Millers,” she said.

“No, I think you’ll be safer here where I can keep an eye on you,” he said locking her door with the driver’s side lock.”

“Charles!" she said frantically trying to open her door.

“You’ll be safer this way and that’s what counts.”

“But Charles, just a minute ago you told me to go inside and call a cab…”

“I changed my mind.”

“No Charles, you’ve lost it.”

“Actually Evelyn, I think I finally found it.”

“But what happens if…”

“Hush, now dear….there’s nothing to worry about…,” he said patting her hand again.

So, they sat there until the windows of the car fogged up and everything around them turned into mist, as they waited for the time to come when everything was safe enough for them to journey down the road before them.

A Good Day

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:27:00 +0000

Mona hadn’t bathed in two weeks, and had only reluctantly forsaken the constant comfort of her well-worn pajamas for her less assuring jeans and t-shirt. Getting dressed was a hateful necessity reserved only for buying groceries or going to funerals. Her neighbors were nosy and she wasn’t in the mood to get into another screaming match with them about her going outside half-dressed, so she’d put on her jeans to appease them.

Just the same they were stiff with body odor and stains, which Mona considered a personal thumb on the nose to anyone who cared. Besides, she didn’t have anything else to wear. Her other clothes weren’t safe anymore and had been stored outside in the garage, where the vermin could have their way with them.

Mona’s hair hung in long impossible knots so snarled that she’d broken combs in two in her attempts to fix it Now the remnants of those broken combs decorated her hair with plastic rainbow teeth.

Because of the prying eyes of her neighbors, she’d become accustomed to living in dimly lit rooms. Now her vision was restricted to what little of the world she could see through the permanently narrowed slits, which had once housed luminous, hopeful eyes.

The morning sun infested the walls with angry fingers summoning Mona to her bed. Now was the time for sleep, when the safety of darkness succumbed to all the things she sought seclusion from and the only safe place was beneath her moth-eaten blanket until darkness returned, enveloping. Though in truth, nothing could protect her from the onslaught of perniciously happy people whose aim in life seemed to be making her see how truly miserable her life was.

The phone rang. It was already beginning.

“Hello.”

“Hi there, my name’s Bob from the Mayflower Life

Insurance Company.”

“Go away Bob…”

“Ma’am, if you’ll just give me one minute…”

“Razor, I think I’ll use a razor.”

“Hello?”

“Looks like it’s gonna to be harder this time, gonna have to cut through scar tissue to do the job right.”

“Uh, I’m sure you wonder what will happen to your family in case something happened to you...”

“I’ll have to soak the skin really good to soften it before I start cutting. Ever slit your wrists, Bob? I’m an expert. I’d love to show you how it’s done properly…”

Click.

Mona smiled as she reached for the tattered notebook on her nightstand table. She put a check on the blank page.

One.

Soon this page would be full of checks just like all the other pages of all the other notebooks that towered up from the floor like dozens of wobbly columns.

She went back to sleep, but as always her rest was interrupted by someone knocking at her door. Mona opened it only enough to admit a shadow and nothing more.

“Go away.”

“Hi, my name is Crystal, and I have an offer you won’t believe...”

“Crystal, the only thing you could offer me is your head on a spike.”

Mona smiled as she watched the woman run away.

Two.

It was going to be a good day.

The Good Wife

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:31:00 +0000

Marla’s final descent began five years ago. That was the night Jonah told her he’d been cheating. She remembered how he said he still loved her and wanted to work it out. The other woman hadn’t meant anything to him, but had only served as a rest stop from the same grey paved road he’d traveled everyday with her.

Things would be better now. Amazingly, he’d realized that love was more getting sex whenever he wanted it, and that Marla was indeed, a good wife.

She remembered how surreal it had felt hearing his confession, along with all of his words of reclaimed love and devotion. The day had begun so differently with a more lingering good morning kiss from him than was usual and a day full of errands. Now it had turned into a soup of betrayal, begging and burnt chicken.

Jonah said he’d be waiting for her upstairs, presumably to physically show her how sorry he was. Marla smiled through fierce tears. How stupid could he be to think that sex was the way to heal her from the deathblow he’d dealt only a few hours ago?

She didn’t want to follow him. She didn’t want anything, but to lose herself in the awful mall painting his mother had given them on their last anniversary. It was a wash of muddy colors that perfectly depicted the murkiness of their relationship.

Marla remembered how she’d stood at the bottom of the staircase before ascending. Now she had reached the bottom of that same staircase again. She looked at Jonah remembering how the realization had come in that moment, five years ago. The many ways of dying and death can come in slow easy steps until you’re so completely removed from yourself that you don’t recognize yourself anymore. Words can kill.

“You killed me Jonah,” her eyes said even as she smiled in silence. “You killed me and you don’t’ even know it.”

“What shall we do today?” asked Jonah absentmindedly.

“I have no idea,” she replied. “I have no idea about anything at all.”

The Spectator

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 04:10:00 +0000

Celia clicked off the TV. The memorial service had been an abomination of art direction, meant to confer the idea that the mourners felt a connection to the corpse. She was certain most hadn’t known him, with their choreographed crying fits that only seemed to take place when a camera was nearby.

“So much for that,” she said taking another drag off her cigarette. “Top of the world Monday and dead on Friday.”

She looked at her watch and then out the window. Time had rushed through the rain washed streets of the boulevard leaving sparkling trails of glistening garbage, which soaked pedestrians hopped over to avoid homeless vets.

“Bet none of them realizes how good they’ve got it. That fool on the TV would give anything to be alive enough to be that wet and miserable.”

She stood watching them until the rain stopped and the hide-and-seek sun bashfully appeared from behind a cloud illuming the city from darkness to shadows.

“What next?” she asked sinking back down onto the couch. She wondered if the coverage of the services was finally over and the TV stations would return to the hours of mental mush meant to distract the bored from their boredom.

No such luck.

On every channel she clicked there was another moderator discussing the importance of the corpse from birth til death and then back again. Other channels carried rebroadcasts of the festivities filled with even more extreme close-ups of botoxed babes who hadn’t seen their twenties in thirty years but clung to the idea of everlasting youth.

“You probably think I’m jealous. What a joke. You’re nothing but a bunch of rotting old broads with big pocketbooks and nothing else better to do,” she yelled at the screen.

The hype hadn’t died down by the time night returned the noonday shadows to blackness. Celia continued to watch the news, now transfixed by lurid details of fatal habits fed to her in sound bytes by those who had known the former demigod. Apparently, he’d had a penchant for headboards, bondage and recreations of hell in torch lined dungeons. After he’d become famous, he’d dismissed all of his family and friends and replaced them with those he’d hired to execute his wishes.

Celia’s stomach howled like a lonely wolf through the slush of perversity blaring back at her from the TV screen. She’d forgotten to eat and it was past midnight. Her legs ached as she stood up for the first time in hours.

“I’m so grateful I never bought into such folly,” she said shuffling into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. “What a wasted life...”

After brushing her teeth, she looked into the mirror. The ceiling light cast a shadow across her face that caused her cheekbones to look pronounced. She struck model poses until she noticed that no matter what she did, her eyes looked empty, almost soulless.

“Time for bed, I guess,” she said still haunted by her reflection. The words, “you can’t take it with you. You can’t take it with you,” echoed off the walls as she pulled back her sheets.

Then she lay down on her bed unaware that this could have been her last day because tomorrow wasn’t a guarantee, while taxicabs and sirens echoed in the distance.

Osyei

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:17:00 +0000

Hope is not a harmless thing. It can move mountains of trouble, pulverizing them to bits at the moment of its birth. Joyous tears, moist with anticipation, trickle down like sparking reaching fingers, yearning and hungry to replenish the soul. You are the gift hope gave to me. I leap with elation. I yelp like a wolf eagerly calling her comrade. Join me in joyousness until sorrow turns to dust.

Osyei (pronounced ooh-dew-gee-guh-dee in English) is the word for hope in the Cherokee (Tsalagi) language.

Feathers

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 23:15:00 +0000

Photograph by Federico Erra

It started with the birds. They fell from the sky like heavy black rain littering the ground. The media gave explanations that didn’t make sense, yet there were those who willingly believed them, because that’s what some people always do. Others became frightened as more and more reports of natural creatures doing unnatural things continued. It was as if they were simultaneously abandoning ancient voices to spread destruction from one end of the earth to another.

Had the birds been scared or had they simply forgotten how to fly? There were no easy answers as some continued to wonder while others clung to normality in desperation for something concrete. In time, the government took over the giving of answers until the memory of birds and birdsong had completely disappeared. Nothing had happened because there was no such thing as a creature that could fly.

That was the time before and all mention or thought of the time before was banned now that Mother was in charge.

There was no reason to worry. The skies were completely empty now except for the occasional cloud, but no one took the time to notice such frivolity. Pleasing Mother was the only joy. No one saw her except for the photographs displayed around the of encampment and inside every pod. Each day, she welcomed them in thunderous tones to hear the latest news the world.

“My children, the world is yours and you are the worlds. You are my children and you belong to me…”

For some reason, Harold found it difficult to focus on his work of loading and unloading empty boxes at the depot. Though he had taken his daily dose of Forget-Yourself pills, a wisp of something kept dragging him back to the time before Mother had come. He tried to fight it by repeating the words he’d been forced to suckle since Day One; “Memories are my enemies. Memories are my enemies. There is nothing but Mother. Mother is all.” But nothing worked to erase it.

His wife noticed something off in his expression when he entered their pod that night. She didn’t ask him what was the matter. She didn’t ask him anything at all. Well-trained wife that she was, she knew that Mother was the only one allowed to ask questions. Instead, she sat down and waited for Mother’s voice to tell them it was time to go to the rationing center for their evening meal.

Harold barely ate any of his daily allotment of bean curd and was scolded by one of the elder children for showing a lack of gratitude to Mother. The elder child forced him to chew every bite of his meal while loudly berating him.

Harold’s wife said nothing as she continued to eat. She didn’t look up or take notice of what was going on, but neither did anyone else. It was more important to be grateful to Mother.

“Mother is your friend and provider. She is the reason we are here. Mother loves us.”

After doing his duty to Mother, and once again attempting to impregnate his wife, Harold lay in the dark thinking about the wisp of the thing that had haunted him throughout the day. He didn’t know what it was. He only knew that it must have been something from the time before. He knew it should have scared him, but it didn’t. Harold also knew he couldn’t tell his wife, since it was a spouse’s duty to report everything to Mother. Besides, he was her third husband in five years, so clearly she had no qualms about dispatching him and allowing Mother to provide her with someone else.

Harold continued to concentrate on the delicate-black luminosity of the wisp, which glided above him. Sleep finally overtook him encircling him with wisps of memories containing faces, words and abandoned dreams. He slept satisfied for the first time since Mother had come and awoke in his still-darkened pod with images of fluttering wisps still circling overhead.

As he stepped out into the damp morning air, Harold looked up at the sky and smiled. Then he took a deep breath allowing his senses to awaken from the dead place Mother and Forget-Yourself pills had sentenced them. The air smelled sweet, and though Harold did not know what it was, it pleased him, just as the wisp of memory had pleased him. He did not care that others saw him or would view him as a blemish that required removal. He inhaled the air so deeply that he sighed, and then he did it again and again, until a sound rose his throat and forced itself free.

“Caw,” he screamed, before laughing for the first time in years. “Caw,” he screamed again, knowing that his wife would become an indifferent widow once more. Would others hear? Would they remember? Would remembering make a difference?

“Caw, caw, caw, caw!”

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except this moment and the delicate-black luminosity of a wisp.

A Bird Lies Sleeping (Ghazel)

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:51:00 +0000

There’s an inside of me and an outside of me.

A bird lies sleeping in the driveway.

My dreams live in-between, beyond the taint of truth’s caress.

It is not willingly there, but was snatched by an unseen hand.

Sometimes I pretend I’m someone else when no one is looking.

Looking at it, you’d never guess it was once able to fly.

My hands reach out hoping to touch more than mist.

Its body is skeletal, but it’s wings remain.

Walking on pavement makes my feet long for softer things.

It looks peaceful, even though it’s a crumpled heap.

The sun is so bright that it burns my eyes, yet I continue to stare.

What made if fall? Was it the wind or did death catch it in midair?

A more plausible version of myself would understand.

The bones aren’t white, but red. Its talons point like Pavlova’s toes.

When I smile, it’s always because I’m happy.

Did something so wonderful ever realize that it was so carelessly free?

Aloha

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:07:00 +0000

Watching the moonrise gave her no joy. Each day ended with the same sense of failure. No highlight had occurred during the course of the preceding twenty-three hours to uplift her, except for the knowledge that finally and thankfully, the last hour of it was coming and would quickly die.

She closed her eyes embracing the darkness of her eyelids with no one around to antagonize her causing angry outbursts to bloom and blossom into pulsing vein-covered flowers. Reality floated in, carried by a hovercraft across a sea of perennial grasses and evergreen leaves. After stepping onboard and through the womb-like hatch, she sat down and was greeted by a waitress who took her order for peace with a side of tranquility.

Below lay the world, her world, with all of its garbage, disputes and yokes of unbudgeable burdens. Forward, forward, forward they glided until even the idea of trouble faded into the landscape. Whoosh! Her mind melted away the lexicon of negative words she had spent a lifetime collecting, until there was nothing left but calm.

She smiled and for the first time her smiling wasn’t veiled by cynicism or the thought that happiness is fleeting. It was a real thing and she could grasp it freely, tightly, with the knowledge that it was finally and perfectly hers.

Traveling down the corridors of the hovercraft, she saw other passengers with outstretched arms. Were they embracing happiness too or had they come seeking other things? She didn’t know and didn’t ask, but observed their joy at whatever they were finding knowing that its value equaled her own precious awakening.

“I love you.”

She heard, felt, savored-said the words in response to some newly discovered country buried deep within herself.

“I love you too,” followed by another smile and a deeper sense of fulfillment than the first.

Life lurched forward and finally, she had reached her destination. Ignorance comingled with bliss bringing forth the knowledge that this was where she belonged. There was no one to escort her or greet her as she stepped down onto the landing and felt the outside air prickle her skin.

“Aloha” was written on the side of the hovercraft and she remembered that it meant “I love you,” as well as “hello” and “goodbye.”

She was back home and the moon had found its place in the sky. The day was dead with no one to mark the event with tears or grief. Even so, the happiness she had grasped remained fixed in her hand. She would not file it away for safekeeping. Instead, she would wear it like a jewel about her throat.

This is the secondary road of your journey; a bot’s voice said evaporating silence. It didn’t matter that her journey had taken her back to where she’d begun, and she would have to find some way of maintaining what she’d found. This day had not ended in failure as she had assumed it would. Now, walking down this secondary road, which resembled the same road she’d walked everyday of her life, she realized that it was OK to make return trips to various aspects of herself. Some lessons must be repeatedly learned, just as some roads must be repeatedly walked. She wasn’t infallible after all.

This Morning There Was Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:14:00 +0000

For three-word Wednesday

buckle, evade, wedge

He was trying to wedge himself next to her, but the subway was full and there wasn’t even room enough for that. A nearby drunk belched fouled air, momentarily polluting the mood. She coughed, trying to evade the kindness of his smile, before returning one of her own. He would stand next to her tomorrow and perhaps find the courage to finally say “hello.” For now, there was nothing in the world but the hope that his knees wouldn’t buckle when he saw her again, and that she would say “hello” back to him before the doors of the subway opened up to rush her away.

Snakeskin

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 21:08:00 +0000

Snakes are cool creatures. They do not betray what they feel. Other animals, you can see their joy or sorrow on their faces or in their body language. Snakes do not have the tenderness of apes that patiently pick flea-after-flea from a comrade to show affection. Snakes have no comrades. They are solitary creatures who move about their worlds with seeming indifference seeking warmth or the coolness of the dark, depending on the needs of body temperature. Mother snakes do not comfort their young and their young slither way without a goodbye or a returning thought to her care. They are indifferent to fear and unaware of their beauty. Snakes do not study their markings or seek ways to improve their design. They are not vain nor do they have a concept of what vanity is. They do not look at nature with admiration. They accept it as it is and use it to survive. Snakes do not shrink back from killing nor do they show fear at the imminence of their own deaths. Their eyes do not narrow or widen as they breathe their last breaths. They are what they have always been since before Eden and onward to eternity.

She didn’t know why she felt the need to display her blood for the world to see. She hadn’t loved him and had only allowed him to touch her to see what it was like. It hurt, but beyond that it was nothing but an experiment.

There was no passion, only the grunting indifference of his pleasure quickly sapped. She thought her crossing from the tiny mesh that separates girls from women, would be momentous, but it wasn’t. When it was over, there was nothing left to say, but “thank you,” as she turned away dismissing him into darkness. It didn’t matter if he cared or if he left or did anything at all. She was asleep before he closed the door.

Before it had just been the two of them, she and her father so far out in the country that they had to generate their own electricity, with no one else save the mailman ever stopping by. Now that she was older, and others had come in hopes of tempting her to take bite-after-bite of forbidden fruit until everything that was joyous suddenly turned foul. She had refused them all until now.

Why him? No reason. He was there. He was interested. He was a means to an end; a cat-killing curiosity. She had killed something too, but it was deeper than a question or a crossroad.

Daddy hadn’t told her the truth. He hadn’t prepared her for the fact that their life wouldn’t last forever. That’s all she wanted. Now he had invited others to their door in hopes of forcing her to grow-up, even as he clung to his “little girl.” She spent more and more time walking through the woods collecting treasures from the forest floor. Her father had taught her the names of all the flora and fauna that gathered and grew on shadow spilt darkened green, but he was dying; something was dying and there was nothing to do but wait and watch.

Now she watched her father crying as he stood in front the bloodstained sheet. Emotion had overtaken him until it bent him forward like a marionette with freshly cut strings. He was not himself. This was not daddy. Daddy never cried and now he looked like he would never completely stop. A puddle of teary snot ooze saturated the place where he stood. He picked up a falling branch and began wildly swinging at the air.

He didn’t see her, but she didn’t care if he did, at least that’s what she told herself as she walked away. Instead, question upon question formed, rose and fell as her father’s odd actions comingled with her own. There were no answers, at least not now. Perhaps they would come later.

She thought about going into the garden to see if any her father’s tomato plants were big enough to squish, but instead released the snake she had caught just the day before and watched it slither away until it was gone.

Grist for the Mill

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:15:00 +0000

He hadn’t meant to belittle her, but it would have been cruel to allow her to believe she had a chance of dancing in the ballet.

“There is no hope for you, I’m afraid.” The words stung even now, as he remembered them and the way her face looked red and swollen as if he’d slapped her. He knew he was foolish to obsess about it, but her face floated like a phantom in the slate-grey sky as he traveled through the outskirts of the city. The road swelled with a human zoo dripping with discord, Twinkie wrappers and bicycle messengers guzzling energy drinks between stops. He feared it would take nothing less than a séance to rid him of the memory of her, them and the world in general.

“So much for sleep tonight.”

Perhaps, he wondered, he could go back to that awful little theater and help her improve so that she could become the bright light he’d been looking for to feature in his company. He knew it wasn’t possible. She wasn’t good enough to stand on the stage besides the men and women he’d carefully selected like perfect porcelain puppets.

Now he sat in his luxury sedan that was built not only by the will of his own particular genius, but also the blood and sweat of generations of dancers and began to wonder what would happen to her now. She’d spent her life taking lessons. She’d told him that while pleading for mercy, a second chance, anything, as he strode away after dramatically putting on his tam. He remembered thinking it was all just grist for the mill and not worthy of his time.

What happens to those who’d built their lives living up to the moment when they’d audition for him with nothing but raw talent and hope only to fall short of achieving their dreams? He’d never considered them until now. Instead, he had hidden himself behind the self-righteousness of indifferent genius and art.

Truth be told, his life could be chronicled in moments like this. He rejected some one-on-one and others in groups of tens, fifties and hundreds. Open calls were always a nightmare. If he could find one or two good dancers, he was lucky. Most were as bad as that nervy young woman had been or worse. Awful lines and non-existent arches without a clue of what it takes to become a dancer.

If enthusiasm was all it took to make it, she would have been a star. Instead, she would probably end up working at a beauty salon amongst a throng of mature sweeties and sluts who all wanted to look like fashion magazine covers.

Perhaps this was why she haunted him and why he’d spent so much of the ride home lost in introspection. With one word, he had destroyed not only her dreams, but any chance of her getting out of that rancid little town. He knew what theater-life meant to small town kids. He’d been one himself once. If he’d told any of the people in his current inner circle that his first job had not been – as he told had them – working as an assistant to a choreographer of note, but instead shoveling cattle cadavers at a processing plant, they would have been theatrically shocked.

Yet in truth, there would be no real emotion from any of them. They didn’t care about him and the feeling was mutual. They only wanted to be “in” with him so that they could feel powerful or popular. When the time came for him to step down from the stage, they would disappear like a bunch of street whores escaping police sirens.

He turned on his car radio and was momentarily shocked to hear ukulele music coming from it, and looked away from the road before him. It happened that quickly. Crash. The leather seat of his car was covered with blood, his blood or the blood of the woman he hit, he did not know. Was it her? That sad creature he’d rejected. No that was impossible. Obviously it was someone else. It couldn’t be her; she was not only miles away from him, but also a lifetime away from him now.

Sirens, hadn’t he just been thinking of sirens, he thought as he heard them coming closer until they came to a screeching halt where he lay. He heard one of the EMTs say the woman was dead, but he’d known that before they’d come. He’d seen her in that last moment before the impact, and then afterwards when he’d struck her and all the life drained from her face.

That’s two lives I’ve destroyed today.

Then a realization struck him as they cut him from his car. No, I’ve destroyed three. No, more than that. I don’t know the number. I don’t know their names. Then through the haze of the ambulance window there they were; all of the nameless faces of the rejected pressing against the glass. She was there too, her face still red and swollen. He was taking them all with him as he slipped from consciousness to unconsciousness to knock on oblivion’s door.

The Secret Language of Horses

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:31:00 +0000

This is how it feels, she said in words that only she understood, while standing between the promise of a cadmium sunny day and the oblivion of shady breezes. This is how it feels to be alleviated from the snarls and whines of the old man’s blazing rationale. He’d lay traps for her in hopes that she’d bend over and reveal the grassy moistness of unplowed fields. She knew his games and refused to budge as he dropped objects on the floor in a maelstrom of geriatric angst.

His son had hired her as a companion and cook to care for the needs of his ailing father. It had seemed like an easy gig at the time, but it didn’t take long for the old man to reveal his true nature. But she’d found ways to cope. When she wasn’t avoiding his constant barrage of requests to bend over him so that her breasts were close enough to clasp, she prepared nutritious meals, ladled with saliva.

Revenge was not only sweet, but it slurped.

Learning to put up with him and make-do in order to keep the free room and board that was part of her pay, meant more to her than the pocketful of cash she was paid on a monthly basis. The room wasn’t fancy, but it was hers and thankfully it rested on the top of a steep staircase, which the old man was unable to climb. She loved to walk around naked on the landing knowing he was below slithering along like a slug, leaving trails of decay.

“Hush-hush,” she murmured, in her own secret language in the silence of her room. These words were hers alone. She’d been making them up since childhood. No one must know what she said or that she and the old man existed on the fringe of the tangibly awful. She’d say it in her words, but no one else’s. This is how she remained sane. This is how she was able to pretend that everything was fine and that the horses that galloped on the wallpaper of her room, were free. Sometimes at night she could hear their hoof beats and snorts of exhaustion. She would speak to them and they would gentle until morning light sent them galloping away once again.

When she had to take him out, she’d roll him around in his wheelchair pretending that all was well. Now she could end her ruse because he had disappeared one afternoon when she’d not quite so accidentally left the backdoor open, and they’d found him half-dead and clinging to an old oak tree. It didn’t take long for eternity to finish what her forgetfulness had begun and he had been assigned to a place beside family pets, critters and dead relatives in the family plot.

“Strong enough to kill a horse,” she whispered in her secret, beautiful words. “Strong enough to kill the whole world if I want to,” she said when the son came to her some days later and said that he loved her.

He thought she was being flirtatious as she slowly formed each syllable of each mysterious word she spoke.

“Perhaps someday you’ll teach me your language,” he coaxed drawing her to him, “My father swore that he almost understood you at times.”

“Is that so, she said, finally in English. “No one understands me, but horses.”

Pegasus Awakes

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:28:00 +0000

Moonlight lit the darkness forcing purple shadows to rise, glowing the sky like angels in flight. Coyote watched the Pegasus constellation gallop across the night sky. It could not follow its ancient hoof beats nor dream of what life was like in the stars. A lonely howl rose and was momentarily caught in water vapor before descending into silence in the bitter air. Then another howl followed until coyote songovertook every other sound except the drum of heartbeats pounding.

That is how the day began, with the world feeling a world away from itself. As if everything had gone back to a distant time and place, without a reckoning of anything but the midnight sky and the howling of a lonely coyote.

In the morning, the old scarecrow stood in a field of wheat, on the very spot where long dead Indians had once stood, fought and died. Jenny stood in the kitchen doorway, where several generations of other women had stood listening to the call of mourning doves before beginning another day caught between old dreams and the constant unfulfilled expectations of life as a wife and mother.

Looking down the drive she studied the rusting remains of the Cadillac that had sealed her destiny and tied her to the man who had taken her for a ride and brought her back home carrying the first of their children. She hadn’t loved him then and wasn’t sure if she ever had or could. The void between them had multiplied with each child, each unhappy night and each bill due that couldn’t be paid.

“This is the price you pay for being easy,” her self-hatred bellowed to her even after all these years when forgiveness for youthful foolishness should have already occurred. But it hadn’t come and Jenny wondered if it ever would.

Her husband sloped up the steps and came into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

“It’s a scorcher out there again today. No clue how much I’ll be able to do,” he said between hearty gulps.

“I thought I’d make us a cold supper tonight, what do you think?” she asked.

“Whatever you like, you know I always leave those things up to you…”

“But I was just ask…OK.”

The stillness of the air exaggerated the stillness between them.

“Lots of nonsense on the news this morning,” he said, “Newsman called it ‘social unrest.’ Sometimes it seems like the whole world is unraveling.”

“Really, what’s going on? You didn’t wake me to make your breakfast…”

“I think you had a bad night, so I let you sleep,” he said, walking over to her.

“Dang coyote was howling so loud I’m surprised anyone got any rest,” she said.

“That wasn’t it,” he interrupted. “You can’t hide much from me, yet you always try…”

“So do you want an early supper tonight?” she replied as she turned away. “I’m just asking because I wanted to polish the brass and get some other things done this afternoon.”

He didn’t respond but walked out of the kitchen and back out into the summer sun.

In the sky, a lone hawk slowly circled and glided indifferent to the struggles of those below. Jenny watched it, feeling fully awake for the first time that day. She didn’t hear her husband reenter the kitchen and jumped when he addressed her.

“Sorry,” he said noticing her shock. “Got a call from up the road, Hank wants me to help him lift some bags of cement and work on the radiator of his old Lincoln. It doesn’t seem like I’m going to get much done here today, so I thought I’d go over there and help him out for a while.”

Jenny pursed her lips and nodded.

There was nothing to say as they stood together beneath the electric hum of the old ceiling fan. It was a given that this was how it would be between them until one of them died or finally gave up and left. Youthful eagerness to explore every aspect of themselves had been lost and replaced by a need to overlook what remained.

Jenny spent the rest of the afternoon polishing the stained brass and making potato salad.

That night in bed, beneath an orchestration of stars, they lay silently side-by-side as the world around them darkened into oblivion. They did not know that great things were being born or dying in the universe or that just around the corner both blessings and troubles were coming in a series of leaps and bounces. There was nothing but the stillness of sleep upon troubled pillows and coyotesong begging Pegasus to linger.

Towards a Poisoned Canal

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:30:00 +0000

A pigeon sits on a lonely stoop watching a traffic of geese fly overhead. This street smart bird that races after busboys who discard perverse amounts of barely touched food in garbage cans and curbs, knows that speed means a meal and waiting is death, as lingering gulls circle overhead. It coos to its lover who sweetly coos back, before she springs and wings towards poisoned canal. Dead fish float in the autumn breeze between hovering ducks and sewage pulp. This was how the day began; a seamless comingling of beautiful ugliness with sparks of sunlight teasing through pollution flame clouds. Hillary thought she’d heard a cricket the night before — between the humming of the air conditioner and the snoring of her husband, but cancelled the thought; dismissing it as fantasy.

Sighing herself up and out of the unpleasant warmth of her bed, she admonished herself for sleeping so late.

“Well, looky here, Sleeping Beauty has finally awoken,” said her husband Glen.

“I was waiting for Prince Charming, but he didn’t show up. Guess that means I have to settle for you,” she replied, narrowing the space between them until they were close enough to kiss. The moment passed without affection and they continued their morning routines talking endlessly about nothing in particular.

Later, after they’d given each other a perfunctory kiss and walked in separate directions down the same street, Hillary saw a dead pigeon and her mate cooing beside her. The scene stopped her cold, even as other city workers plowed past without cognizance that there was more to life than rushing to the next meeting or catching the next train. Some admonished her for standing there, but she was beyond them; lost in the sight and sound of a truly broken heart.

She heard so many things in that lonely coo, such as “Why,” “Please don’t leave me,” “I want to die” and “I love you.” She couldn’t move; didn’t want to move, it was all too much to absorb until a garbage truck drove by and crushed the dead bird flat.

The horror of the moment forced her to remember herself and the time, even as she watched the other bird fly away.

I suppose I should congratulate myself for never allowing myself to love someone that much, she thought after finally arriving at work where she spent her day finagling deals that would be forgotten before five.

On the way home, she contemplated taking another route to avoid seeing what was there, but remembering that she and Glen had a function to attend that evening, she took her regular route instead. She tried to avoid it, not wanting to see what she assumed was there, but curiosity forced her to look. By now the bird had been run over so many times that all that remained were some crushed bones, feathers and a single talon reaching out to something that wasn’t there. But Hillary’s focus was elsewhere. She looked around for the other bird; even tried to pick it out of group of birds nearby, but it was gone.

“I knew it! I knew you’d abandon her!” said Hillary forgetting herself as tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s all pointless. This whole existence is pointless. We’re born, we live and we die, and for what? We’ll be extinct with no one left to remember us, and for what?”

By the time she got home, her tears had dried enough to conceal her emotions from Glen, who rushed her in and out of her dressing room to put on just the right dress, so that they could make an appearance at a party neither one of them wanted to attend. Even though time had passed, and she’d washed her face before applying another mask of make-up, Hillary could still feel the salt trails of her tears on her face.

“I want to go home,” she whispered in Glen’s ear.”

“Not yet, babe. You know how the boss likes me to give the hands-on approach to new clients.”

Hours later after they’d returned home feeling beaten down and triumphant, Hillary pushed Glen’s hand away after he tried to syphon some lingering residue of the image she’d created for that evening’s festivities, and fondle her.

“Still waiting for Prince Charming?” he grumbled turning over and away.

She sat in silence through the night, listening for crickets.

*****

On her way home from work the next day, Hillary passed by the spot where the bird had been. Now there was nothing left at all. It was as if everything she had seen and been moved by, hadn’t occurred. Then she heard it, the same sad coo she’d heard before. She circled around trying to see where it perched until as if wanting to make itself known, the bird flew down to the very spot where his mate had been.

*****

“I love you,” Hillary said to Glen during dinner that evening.

“What brought this on?” he asked.

“I just wanted you to know, that’s all,” said Hillary until a long silent lapse imbued the moment with something dark. “Do you love me?”

Glen didn’t reply, he wasn’t the sort to reply to a question like that; which was the excuse she had fed herself on from their first “hello” until now. She changed the subject to something she didn’t care about and smiled as if nothing mattered, while remembering the simplicity of a perfect love lost on a cold city street.

Little Piggies

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Blackbirdsong) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:43:00 +0000

The storm rolled past, rushing the scent of stockyard butchery and the misery of dying swine through the air like Superman chasing a villain. No one harkened to the reverberating howl of frightened animals finally realizing that their long journey from sow’s teat to crowded transport trucks, had come to its end. Everything had been fixed so that they couldn’t flee the agony of being gutted with nothing to veil the pain. There was no iconoclastic army of socialist hogs to save them, and then rewrite the rules of who governed whom. There was only blood, death and a new existence bound by shrink-wrap with the steady drone of music designed to lure shoppers into purchasing what they couldn’t afford.

Maryann stared at the plate of pork ribs before her and smiled. “Best sauce ever,” she told the waitress. “If that recipe doesn’t make you famous, nothing will.”

After paying her bill, she walked down the footpath that took her from the diner back towards the heartbreak of her empty home. Going out had become her way of escaping the ghosts of old arguments and pleadings for love that still echoed from the walls and floorboards. Even though she had felt trapped in her marriage to Derek, she was now caught in the dilemma of mourning its end. She hadn’t felt equal to his feelings from the moment he’d first shared them. Instead, she’s settled for a dollhouse existence of masked feelings and static smiles, until finally, the fear of spending the rest of her life like a frozen pillar of a retired saint, had overtaken her, leaving her thunderstruck and hungry for something else.

The hush of the early evening tide gentled James to sleep, even as the faint echo of a cabaret singer from a nearby bar danced across the ancient timbers of his room. It had been a good day and he had earned his rest. He did not dream about money or fields of wheat, but of a myriad dancing cleavers all chopping off the heads of his more demanding customers at the butcher shop. He woke smiling and ready to face them again like a lion on the prowl.

Penny put on her waitress apron, though both mind and body begged her to go home. It had been a long day at the mill and now she was here serving plates of grease and wilted lettuce to the hungry and cheerless. She had gone outside during one of her allotted breaks to escape the grease pit and the constant needs, burps and complaints of the faceless throng who came and left without retreat. The extra money of her second job beckoned her back inside, even though her feet throbbed with every step. Between orders of prune Danish and shredded pork, came the images from the night before when her children had delighted to the fake-cockney strains of Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.” Those cherished moments thrust her to the next table, the next order and hopefully a good tip for her efforts.

The sea rushed in, wildly attacking the shore as another herd of swine was transported on another truck on their journey to oblivion.

Maryann turned off the light; finally ready to succumb to the quiet mastery of sleep. Perhaps she would call Derek tomorrow and perhaps not. The past clung to her with needy hands and the future was still too new and uncertain to rely on. James trekked down the early morning streets to the stockyard, past the booths of those he had added to an imaginary blacklist because of their unwillingness to cut him deals, to inspect a shipment of fresh meat. He would butcher the carcasses of hogs, count his money and smile at old women he would later butcher and count one-by-one like sheep before falling to sleep. Penny peeked into the bedroom of her sleeping children, almost too tired to walk the few steps to her bedroom. For some reason the childhood jingle of “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” repeated in her mind as she undressed and readied herself for bed. A flash of moonlight lit her room as she stood in front of the mirror. A youthful smile crept across her face as tiny feet journeyed across the carpet to stand beside her. She patted the tousled head of her youngest, and they stood together in silence. All was not right with the world, but it would have to be good enough for now, she thought.

“What are you doing up so late?” she whispered, breaking the silence, “its time for all little girls and boys to be asleep.

“But I’m a little piggie momma. Oink.”

So another day began and ended as the storm rushed in and rushed out.