Poem: Monday, 4:05 PM

The reflection of the sun on the water
Is sending ghostly ripples of light
Across my windowpane,
As if I’m being visited by the visual echo of wind,
Or an aurora borealis known only to me.

A cursory glance at the pool
Shows no waves,
No movement at all from the water,
And the trees are not blowing with vigor,
But breathing gentle sighs
As their branches lift and fall
In arboreal shrugs.

In a few minutes,
The sun will sink behind the treeline.
The water will be cool and dead-looking
Instead of sunlit and alive,
And the essence of wind drawn in light
Will be gone from my view.

For now, though,
I’m content to sit here
And watch the wavy lines
Sketch temporary patterns on the glass.

It should be painfully obvious from this piece why I rarely attempt poetry. This is posted unedited, as I originally wrote it on 24 November 2008

From the Vaults: The Rep

Originally written in August, 2006.

He spends Tuesdays at the Dixon Hotel, drinking cheap whiskey and watching local comics at the weekly open mic night. He thinks he’d like to try, but compared to them he feels old, worn, grey. He still has suits in his closet, and wide ties, though he’s forsaken all in favor of business casual button-downs and khaki pants. Secretly, these clothes make him feel like he’s raided his son’s closet.

He spends Wednesdays at Barley’s, the pub on fourth street, because they serve free hot dogs if you order a beer. He’s partial to Becks these days, but he notices that the younger men, the ones who fit the word ‘guy,’ drink Bud and Coors and Michelob. Then he pretends not to notice.

The highlight of his day are the frequent calls to the office, where he greets the women who work his files with “Hi, beautiful,” and teases them unmercifully. He doesn’t know they talk about him after every call, or tally the number of times each speaks with him.

Thursday, he meets his daughter for a glass of wine. They talk about her husband, her kids, her job. He doesn’t mention his own work, or that he’s been threatened with replacement. They share an hour, catching up, and as he leaves, he kisses her forehead and says, “Bye beautiful.”

On Friday, he wonders if the women in the office know that he thinks of all of them as daughters he’s never met.

From the Vaults: In the Heat of the Night

Originally written sometime in 2005

Twelve-thirty in the morning, and it’s still over ninety degrees outside, the night air calm as death and twice as deep. I’m wearing as little as possible – a strappy red tank top and matching panties – and my hair is pulled up into a messy pony tail-knot-thing on the top of my head. Ugly, but effective, it keeps my hair off my neck at least. I’m trying to read, but it’s too hot to focus, so I just sit in bed and watch the dog sleeping on the floor.

The phone rings, and I answer it in a voice laced with sex, “Hey handsome. Coming home soon?”

The voice on the other end, my husband, my lover, laughs softly, and tells me he’s on the way. “Wait for me in bed,” he says, “I’m ten minutes from home.” I smile into the phone, and say I will.

He doesn’t speak a word to me, when he comes into the bedroom, just strips in the dim light from the stars and the street lamps. He kisses my lips, my neck, then tugs at my shirt. Minutes, and several more pieces of clothing, later, we’re moving together to the beat of the music from the bar down the street.

An hour later, we’re both laying in the bed, sweaty, sated, and sleepy. He whispers something about it being really good, and then, louder, murmurs, “Love you, baby,” and rolls over.

I lie there in the bed and listen to the sound of his breathing and the dogs, mingling in the darkness. I close my eyes, then open them, and stare at the moon, shining through the frame formed by the patio doors. Moonlight always seems so cool and serene, that for a moment I wish I could reach out and capture the glow, bathe in it.

Contemplating this, I fall asleep, or at least, I think I do, because the next time I look at the clock it’s blinking 6:00 in insistant red digits, and the air is, if not cooler, at least not as thick.

From the Vaults: The Gravity of the Situation

Originally written for The Alchera Project, November, 2005

Deanna isn’t a novice at singing, really, though she feels like one as this is her first Christmas concert that involves an actual church. Oh, sure, she sang with school choirs, had solos, made her entrance into community theatre at the tender age of ten, but somehow, standing with the other choristers in the cold sanctuary, the music is different, her heart is different.

The mood is broken when the puffy-haired woman next to her opens her mouth. Sure, Martha is a sweet old woman, sort of grandmotherly, and not a little dotty, but some people just should not be able to sing. The notes she offers forth with a flourish are not known to human kind. (Deanna wonders, idly if Martha is perhaps an alien, attempting to communicate, or an exiled mermaid, unable to produce melodious sounds unless under several feet of water.)

Midway through the verse, the director stops the choir, and asks each section to sing their part. When he gets to the altos, he pauses near Martha and makes a face that, thankfully, the woman utterly fails to see, so focussed is she on singing the correct words, if not the correct notes. He glances past her at Deanna, and the two exchange a look, acknowledging the gravity of the situation.

The next week at rehearsal, Martha is positioned at the end of the row, where the microphone cannot pick up her graceless warbling.

Dog Days of Podcasting: At the End of the Day

Dog Days of Podcasting

Yes, it’s morning, which for most of us is the beginning of the day.
Yes, this is a catch-up post from last night because I spent all day yesterday in the state of mind that Jo March would have referred to as a “vortex” and I call “extreme writey-ness.”

So, listen at SoundCloud.com, or just click the play button below:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/106671572″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]