Story Slam #3 (1/28/10)

Poet: Paul Siegell

#1 google, muffin, useless

Some places have good airports, good train stations, some places you just know when you get there. Years before google, years before useless commitments, excuses, the streets warm and smelling of flowers at night when you walk to the beach with the girls you just met, the girls yelling "la playa". You just want to put your hands in the water, fulfill the promise of that airport, that train station, that morning when you walked downstairs to their version of the 7-11, siete diez y ono?, to get a muffin in the morning (and the morning smelled like flowers, too) and you saw the machine for squeezing oranges, fresh, and were you ever glad to be so far from home. And are you ever now, la playa, as you put your hands in a body of water you've never touched.

(didn't read this one aloud)

#2 Baccanalia
Barcelona midnight with these girls I just met. Cartons of sangria from the 7-11, and we watch the street sweeper twist along the sidewalks around the park,
(restart)
Barcelona midnight and it all smells like flowers. I sit on benches with these girls I just met, drinking sangria from the 7-11 next door to our hostel. And the park is dark, the air thick and sweet, but when someone says "la playa", we all get up and go. Winding the streets, windowboxes vined with flowers, flowers dripping almost down to our feet and loose petals underneath.
(restart)

I release you, you want to say. Cold November, your hands are cold but his lips are warm. You didn't expect this. You didn't want this.
(restart)
Take me somewhere beautiful he says, and you don't want it, you don't want any of this. He flew across the country for this. Cold November, and his lips are warm, but warm is all you feel, nothing else. You pull back and you see it in him, how badly he wanted this to be different. How he said, next time I see you, I won't be able not to kiss you. Next time. And all it is is cold and gray, and all you are is tired from work, and he says, if I go...if I go, this is it. He looks at you. You nod.

(didn't read any of this aloud. Wasn't feeling good about the writing yet.)

#3 Dishrag, imbibe, retro
At the bar everything shines, even the dishrag with soap bubbles bursting, shine of pink and blue on each bubble, and the tiny movement when it pops. She looks at the shine on the dishrag and thinks the word imbibe, rounded like bubbles, classy. Classy like this retro bar, red sparkle vinyl on the seats, rounded TV in the corner with a basketball game on, retro, windy March Madness. Imbibe, she thinks, imbibe, and she watches the little bubbles shining and bursting on the dishrag that looks homemade, made by someone's classy grandma, someone who would never have done what she just did in the rock-walled basement, down narrow stairs, below where she sits at the bar, watching the bubbles burst, thinking imbibe. Retro. Class.

#4 Alcoholism
Spin, spin, downward spin, spin the bottle and it always points the same way. You spin it anyway, every time, label up, label down, label soaked off in the rain from the overflow pipe below the market street bridge. On the rocks, on the ice, thin ice, black ice, rocks sharp, poking through, jagged up-and-down rocks. The bottle spins and once it was Coke and once it was a circle of girls, pretty girls, drunk girls, low-lidded girls in low dresses, low blouses, low jeans. Low. Spin low, swing low, sweet chariot, sweet Jesus, Sweet Jane. Spin low, swing low, spin bottle after bottle and it's time to go home.

#5 Refrigerator, tucked, brilliant
The fountain is supposed to be a waterfall, water over the ledge in a clean clear sheet, bright blue that looks almost tropical. But it's cool as a refrigerator back there, me and Evan sitting there cross-legged, looking through the light on the water, something brilliant, grey asphalt all around, cross-legged, wearing shorts, legs bare on the cold concrete, the afternoon long and hot, and we will sit there, knees barely touching, all afternoon.

(rewrite -- done at the Slam)
The fountain is supposed to be a waterfall, water a clean clear plate falling fast over the ledge right in front of us, so close we can feel the cool, smell the chlorine, see the sun through the brilliant blue, so bright it's almost tropical. Cool as a refrigerator back there, cavern cool, basement cool, cool as deep under the pier in Atlantic City, me and Evan cross-legged in shorts, concrete scratchy on our skin. Something brilliant, water plate glass clean, me and Evan, knees barely touching, and I could stay here, legs tucked beneath us, knees almost touching, sun on the water. I think we could stay here, all afternoon.