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"Squaring Up"

10/17/2015

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Originally published for "Ascension," January 14, 2009.

“I need boxers,” I say to my mother hopefully. Mostly Sean gets everything new, and I get passed-down jeans with ripped pockets and shirts with armpit stains. I draw the line at underwear.

“We’ll see if anything’s on sale after I look at ties.” She heads off.

That was easy. Mom must be in a sentimental mood. UNLV’s been courting Sean with a full basketball scholarship since he won the championship last year. There’s just the formality of the interview, which is why we’re at the mall after practice, buying suits we can’t afford.

On the thinly carpeted floors in the hallway of the men’s dressing room, I stretch out my legs, turn up the volume on the iPod I worked all summer to buy. Ten minutes later, I peer under the cheap particleboard partitions to see if Sean’s done. My brother’s sitting, still in his own clothes, staring at a piece of paper.

“Sean? What’s up?” He doesn’t stop me when I open the door, reach down to grab the note. 

The words stay low, stuck in his throat. “I’m off the team. Coach said it’s lucky I’m not expelled.” I tower over him. I’d kept his secret, but now. He’s in deep.

“Tell Mom I’m going to look at boxers.” I drop the paper.

I trip out of the dressing room, walk down the hall, through the men’s department, onto the escalator, up, high, higher.
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"Presage"

10/17/2015

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Originally published for "In Vino Veritas," July 14, 2009.

​Twenty-two hours from San Francisco to Kathmandu. Four hours until the layover in Hong Kong. Caelin will have finished grading papers by then. She arches her back, stretching, then wiggles her toes, and catches the eye of the flight attendant.

“More, please.” She indicates the travel-sized wineglass. The remaining ruby droplets glisten in the spotlight of her reading lamp. The attendant nods from the galley.

“You realize that’s basically grape juice?” Chloe peers around the headrest as her business class bed reverts to its upright position.

“It’s a second growth Bordeaux and you know it, O Queen Food Critic,” Caelin retorts. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not well. Looks like fourteen bottles of questionable Bordeaux didn’t help you sleep, either.” 

“Excited?” 

“And nervous. What if she hates us?”

“Sweetheart.” Caelin strokes her wife’s cheek as Chloe unfolds the passport she’s been clutching. A little girl with dark eyes and copper skin gazes at them, unsmiling and unafraid. “She liked us well enough before. Any kid will hate her parents at some point. Let’s just focus on getting her home.” 

The flight attendant materializes with the bottle of Château Cos-d'Estournel 1989, which streams like scarlet silk into the stemware.

“Like the orphanage is going to let her come home when you show up drunk,” Chloe teases, leaning close. Caelin smiles into her spouse’s black curls. Points of light play on the surface of her wine, casting images against the back of the seat in a rosy haze.
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Quatern

2/4/2014

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Originally posted June 14, 2009

I failed my birthday word count challenge, and Pete wrote:
My "punishment" for you is to write a poem of at least six lines and no more than 40 lines that describes the feeling of coming >this< close to a stretch goal but falling just short at the deadline.
Neither Pete or Janey was as harsh on me as McK is going to be, so I'm still in an okay place with my lack of word count. Perhaps I will rewrite the poem after I've received the sharp end of the Koala Klaws.

I chose to write a poem in the pattern of a Quatern, which, according to Shadow Poetry,
is a sixteen line French form composed of four quatrains. It is similar to the Kyrielle
and the Retourne. It has a refrain that is in a different place in each quatrain. The first line of stanza one is the second line of stanza two, third line of stanza three, and fourth line of stanza four. A quatern has eight syllables per line. It does not have to be iambic or follow a set rhyme scheme.

line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4

line 5
line 6 (line 1)
line 7
line 8

line 9
line 10
line 11 (line 1)
line 12

line 13
line 14
line 15
line 16 (line 1)
 Example #1: 
 True Love, Redefined  One day she hopes true love to find, One soul, one mind, two hearts entwined; Somewhere out there’s the perfect guy, For Youth has set her standards high.  He must be rich, handsome, refined, One day she hopes true love to find; Yet no one seems to measure up And disappointment fills her cup.  The years go by, her nights grow long, Her aging voice sings sorrow’s song. One day she hopes true love to find, Her definition redefined;  Simply a plain and faithful friend To see her to life’s journey’s end; For though her face with age be lined, One day she hopes true love to find.  Copyright © 2003 Linda Newman   
 Example #2: 
 The Master's Feet  Those who sat at the Master’s feet, Brothers who fished in waters deep, Threw down their nets and followed Him, Forsaking all to fish for men.  The crowds pressed ‘round to hear Him speak, Those who sat at the Master’s feet, Those who he said would be a light, For others lost in dark of night.  In the upper room hands were rung, When told a traitor was among, Those who sat at the Master’s feet, With emblems of Himself to eat.  The Master’s mother held her breath, When savage men cried for his death, And vainly struggled to defeat, Those who sat at the Master’s feet.  Copyright © 2006 James Dupy   
 Example #3: 
 Life’s Pulse - The Gypsies’ Song  As dark-haired beauties celebrate while moving round the fire light, their slender swirling hips gyrate, and on they dance, into the night.  The flames dance too, beneath the moon. As dark-haired beauties celebrate, their fathers clap or play a tune the merry clan perpetuate!  Then each young man takes hold a mate he’s chosen in the ring of fire. As dark-haired beauties celebrate, their flashing eyes ignite desire.  The mothers sit and smile.  They know the music will not soon abate. Life’s pulse is found by camp fire’s glow as dark-haired beauties celebrate.  
   
 Copyright © 2006 Andrea Dietrich   
All right, so I know you've been waiting with bated breath. Without further ado (or cliches), here is my original poem.

Wild Words

The words themselves run high and wild,
seeking to be corralled and tamed.
This adverb is a willful child;
that noun’s impatient to be named.

By sunrise we must reach our home.
The words themselves run high and wild.
A question mark is bound to roam.
The “being” verbs have formed a pile.

Even the sun is not beguiled
as she dips closer to her bed.
The words themselves run high and wild,
resist the stories in my head.

Despite the claws, the whips, the threat,
my heart is calm, frustration’s mild.
I watch the beauty as I let
the words themselves run high and wild.
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A Wish for Someone Else's Daughter

6/3/2010

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Dear child, welcome to this world, in all its beauty and savagery.  You'll hear the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words" (and then your da will show you a picture and teach you how to write flash fiction about it.)  This picture by Maxfield Parrish is my (half of a) thousand words, and here's what they are:

I wish for you strength, in big things and small.  An elephant cannot carry its own body weight, but an ant can, and ten times more.  May your body be strong, to run and to jump and to climb mountains.
 
I wish for you freedom, to discover yourself and be what you choose.  I hope you will make mistakes, and learn from them.  I hope you will know the feeling of wind in your hair as you run through the grass, and that that feeling will find its way into your soul.

I wish for you love, to give and to be given. I wish for love to make you its conduit - love poured in and love given freely out, made purer by the filter of your heart. 

I wish for you patience, for you to retain a sense of the movement of the eternal that you no doubt experience as you sleep an infant sleep.  I ask you to be patient with your parents, who love you and do everything out of that love.  Be patient with yourself. There’s no finish line, only the steps from one reality to another.

I wish for you impatience, for you to reject assumptions of inequality, to challenge with fierce heart the oppression of so much of humankind, of art, of faith.  Learn only the impatience that is born of seeking justice.

I wish for you faith.  May you ever feel the embrace of the Divine.  May you experience the Divine for yourself, choose to believe in the One who exists beyond us but loves in and around and through us.

I wish for you wisdom.  Sadly, you will lose your infant wisdom.  But its impressions remain inside of you.  As you grow, you’ll find pieces of wisdom, and you’ll know where they naturally fit inside the leftover spaces of yourself. 

I wish for you bravery.  Against the dark, against spiders, against aggressive four-legged creatures and bright, bold winged things.  Have courage during storms, both inner and outer, and remember that while slaying a dragon is sometimes necessary, it’s never, ever easy.

I wish for you thankfulness.  For a moment, for a lifetime.  For the smallest gesture and the grandest gift.

I wish for you books.  Skyscrapersful of books.  From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I wish for you inspiration - from art, from music, from science, from history.  A sense of the world as it is and as it was and as it could be.  A dream, that captures your passions and changes when it needs to and propels you into places of risk and ambition for the sake of the dream.

I wish for you peace.  Peace in your world.  Peace in your soul.  A calm, quiet sense  of “forever” and the luxury to languish in it.  Peace on the journey, and peace to where, eventually, you will cross into yet another reality, surrounded by the same love in which you entered this one.

You are loved.  Be well.
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Library Science

4/11/2010

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WARNING:  While everything else on this site is as family-friendly as Mr. Snuffleupagus, this entry is not.

I have woefully neglected the Co-Dictators of the Universe, so to appease them, I offer this (hastily written, once-edited) entry to their Story Sharing awesomeness.  It shocks even me.
The door sticks, so I jam it hard with my hip, and it opens onto the alley with a light rain of pale green plaster. The usually comforting smell of burned cigarettes and urine is tinged with a sour, acrid tang. Vomit, just in front of the dumpster, which is on my left, the south end of the library. On the north end is access to the street, so I move that way to escape the smell of someone else’s puke.

“Assholes,” I mutter, lighting up. I can’t smoke on the front steps: “it’s bad for the patrons” and Williams nearly pissed herself trying to stay all sweet apple pie while she explained, my first day, that I couldn’t smoke in the stacks. Shit, I have a library degree, does the woman fucking think I’d endanger the only extant copy of 聖教初学要理 in America? She seriously needs to get laid.

(Oh, and for those of you who don’t read Japanese, that title is: A fundamental Catechism of Christian Doctrine. Did I mention it’s the only copy in America? I mean, the volume is a wood-block print made up of Japanese paper with Japanese binding, printed at Nagasaki. I might vomit just thinking about anything happening to it.)
Picturephoto courtesy of M.K. Hobson
That’s the problem - not people not reading Japanese, or needing to be laid, but people thinking that librarians are all cardigans and bobby socks and don’t smoke. Like, if you’re intelligent enough to read, you’re supposed to think smoking is a cardinal sin, a crime, a waste of your goddamn youthful health. Bullshit.

Librarians aren’t supposed to have tattoos, either, I think, looking fondly at the newest ink, a flower-bedecked swastika. Its vibrancy stands out against the rest of the ink covering my right arm, varying degrees of darkness depending on their age. 

Fucking stereotypes.

It’s my dinner break so I have 20 more minutes than when I sneak a usual cigarette break. And anyway, I’m not hungry lately, not for food. I light up again, concentrating on the sky changing colors so I can pretend I’m meditating instead of just being lazy. I name the kaleidoscope hues: mauve (from Latin, the color of the mallow), amber (from Arabic ʼanbar, ambergris), violet (from Latin viola, a violet, not the musical instrument, whose origins are Old Provençal, from viula).

What a crappy week. Leaving my diamond nose stud at Carl’s and knowing that he’ll hock it because he hocks everything to pay for his disgusting habit and it doesn’t even matter how many times I deep throated him. Bastard. 

The sky’s going from mauve to indigo, and I’m getting skeeved by these deep shadows that look like they’re pissing oil on the graffiti.

And the dissertation committee asked the most inane questions about my theories on 3D imaging and rare manuscripts. What will it cost? Who the fuck cares? Those cocksuckers have no imagination. This is why God made rich patrons who want their name on a library building even though they use books to wipe their asses.

As I pull out my third cigarette (and last, I swear silently to my mother, but I am skipping dinner and I need satisfaction somehow), I notice a little pile of grey lint. No, not lint, some kind of finch. Bombycillidae, maybe? Unlucky guy is dead, his eyes squeezed like someone’s popping a zit. Which reminds me of my dead Uncle Ernie, God rest his soul, the giant zit in the powder blue suit. I close my eyes and cross myself.

After my 10-second memorial for Uncle Ernie, I reach for my cell phone to call and check in on Gooney, my little sister. That’s when I notice another pile of grey lint, two inches north, with its eyes oozing pus. Puzzled, I look around for a cat, or raccoon, or some natural predator of finches. (This is why I’m a vegan.)

Checking again, I realize there’s another finch, nestled up next to the second one. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think so. Where the hell are they coming from? The roof? I jump up, bouncing on the balls of my feet to try to see a shadow, an arm, or something.

“Okay, whoever you are, that’s just sick. What’s your problem, you son of a bitch?”

When I stop bobbing, I notice a fourth finch, several inches from the others, with blood smeared on its stomach. I reach for the mace that I keep in my bra (cleverly hidden since both the canister and my underwire are black). It’s there, but I still pull the chain from my waist, and move toward the door.

I hear a muffled sound, like someone trying to pretend they’re not throwing away a tampon wrapper in the bathroom. Another bird is in line with the others, only this one seems to be slightly alive, choking a quiet death croak, begging to be put out of its misery.

The next one lands on my boot, gore splattering up my shin. Another, behind me, smears something wet and sticky like snot down the back of my head. 

Shit, why is the door shaking, I think, as I try to fit the key into the door, and I realize it’s my hands shaking.

Shit, shit, shit. Another bird thuds, this time on my shoulder, bouncing off with the smell of sewage and decay, but this time I don’t even look, don’t even breathe, just turn the key in the lock and pull, pull.

The door sticks.

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Reconnaisance

1/15/2010

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The image below was the visual prompt for 'Silhouette', the twelfth Clarity of Night flash fiction contest held by Jason Evans (and supported by his awesome spouse, Aine.)



You can read my entry a little farther down, and if you don't care about my unique state of mental health, you should just skip to it.

I have to defend some earlier whining I did on Facebook.  I had problems with writing this entry, as I always have, because I'm such a perfectionist.  Every word must be right.  I had three ideas that seemed decent, but none of them wanted to be transcribed.  This resulted in a few "Woe is me" type Facebook status updates, one of which was taken as me saying that I can't write.

However, here's what I meant:

The thrust of being a writer is for other people to read what you've written.  Hence, what you've written must be disseminated somehow.  If you can't make a deadline by which what you've written shall be disseminated, then being a writer may not be the most appropriate vocation for you.

I didn't mean to say that I have no talent as a writer, but my perfectionism often results in procrastination and down-to-the-wire work.  I know this about myself, but I can still be surprised by the ways in which my fear-of-failure manifests.   And, while I do have some talent as a writer, I'm still learning the skill of showing-not-telling (take that, undergraduate creative writing professor who said I would never learn).

Um. 

Are we all clear now?  Moving on.



Reconnaisance

Blonde upswept hair, black pinstriped pantsuit, lacy pale camisole. She’s like walking moonlight. Tim mistakes her for a reporter.

“I’m sorry, this is a restricted area. You can contact the front desk in the morning for an interview.”

“No, Dr. Dalton, I’m here to see you.” She advances on him with predatory stealth and berry-moist lips. He lets her push him back into his office, onto the immaculate camel-colored leather couch.

Tim flashes the smile that says “Here I am, brilliant and single, corporate success at the age of thirty-seven, perfect hair, and a rock-hard six-pack. Of course you’re here to see me.”

He almost doesn’t hear her ask about the bird.

“Excuse me?”

“BIRD - Bio-Imaging Regenerative Device. Nanotechnology that facilitates the connection between synapses, like a bird flying from branch to branch. Research conducted by Dalton Labs. Paid for by a private Alzheimer’s foundation.” Her crisp recitation efficiently snuffs his flame-bright smile.

“How…?”

“Secretly sold to the CIA to rewire the brains of suspected terrorists.”


Shit. He knew that contract would bite him in the ass.

“Look, if you want exclusive rights to the story, I’d be willing to work something out.”

“You underestimated your backers.” Her voice slices through his bluster. “Don’t worry. After I rewire those charming synapses of yours with your own technology, you won’t even remember to feel guilty.”

The full-pane windows display the skyline, drowning in the inky darkness of the Bay waters.
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Presage

7/17/2009

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<b>Presage</b><br />
<b>by Aerin Rose</b><i></i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Twenty-two hours from San Francisco to Kathmandu. Four hours until the layover in Hong Kong. Caelin will have finished grading papers by then. She arches her back, stretching, then wiggles her toes, and catches the eye of the flight attendant.<br />
<br />
“More, please.” She indicates the travel-sized wineglass. The remaining ruby droplets glisten in the spotlight of her reading lamp. The attendant nods from the galley.<br />
<br />
“You realize that’s basically grape juice?” Chloe peers around the headrest as her business class bed reverts to its upright position.<br />
<br />
“It’s a second growth Bordeaux and you know it, O Queen Food Critic,” Caelin retorts.  “How’d you sleep?”<br />
<br />
“Not well.  Looks like fourteen bottles of questionable Bordeaux didn’t help you sleep, either.” <br />
<br />
“Excited?” <br />
<br />
“And nervous.  What if she hates us?”<br />
<br />
“Sweetheart.” Caelin strokes her wife’s cheek as Chloe unfolds the passport she’s been clutching. A little girl with dark eyes and copper skin gazes at them, unsmiling and unafraid. “She liked us well enough before. Any kid will hate her parents at some point. Let’s just focus on getting her home.” <br />
<br />
The flight attendant materializes with the bottle of Château Cos-d'Estournel 1989, which streams like scarlet silk into the stemware.<br />
<br />
“Like the orphanage is going to let her come home when you show up drunk,” Chloe teases, leaning close. Caelin smiles into her spouse’s black curls. Points of light play on the surface of her wine, casting images against the back of the seat in a rosy haze.&nbsp; <i><br />
</i>
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    About Me

    Cerebral.
    A Democrat.
    A Potterhead.
    A Theologian.
    A Disney fanatic.
    Hopelessly Romantic.
    A Mother.
    A High School teacher.
    An Autism advocate.
    A Whovian and a Whedonite.
    A Feminist.
    An alum of USC, Duke and U of Louisville.

    I believe in faeries, God, life on other planets, kissing, the right of all human beings to clean water and adequate food, the power of love, Gonturan, Middle Earth, red wine, Charles Wallace, Hillary Clinton, the color blue, medicinal chocolate, and the sacredness of womankind.

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    "Anyone can slay a dragon ...but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero."— Brian Andreas

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