Story Slam #5 (3/25/10)
No poet this time.
Words: kneecap, pretty, ridicule
Her kneecap was pretty bony, which led to playground ridicule when they hung their legs down through the skeletal metal dome and kicked at the kids fighting inside, beyond the thunderdome. Her kneecap was bony, but pretty, and he tried to bump into it as often as possible when weaving out of range of Frankie's fists.
Theme: letters to Mom
(I was eating a burger, so I didn't write in response to this one)
Line: something very long about Benjamin realizing only after 1000 feet that he had stopped worrying what the neighbors thought. Also shouted out: "Nobody believes in dragons anymore."
I responded to this, but didn't read it aloud, so I was able to wrap it into a later piece.
Words: email, wrangle, waterlogged
Twenty years before email we wrangled, wrassled, grappled on the truck tire inner tube. The lake was sunlight sparkled, the water undulating away from the tube in fast rolls getting slower, farther, the lake a tub shaken, water slopping side to side, his wiry arms clenching, grabbing biceps, ankles, trying to shake my grip. Our waterlogged shorts wrapped around skinny thighs like plastic bags draped and dripping across fallen trees. We wrestled, wrangled, shorts low on our waists, legs about to give out, feet ready to slip. And then the splash, sinking down through the water weeds, streaks of sunlight, blowing water out hard through my nose, arms and legs finally limp. I lay back, looked up at sky wavered by water, looked at his bright white legs dangling down below him as he held the tube. Let myself stop, float, let him win.
Poker round. Words: hallucinate, chew, moist
Nobody believes in dragons anymore, Benjamin thought, but we do believe in drugs, specifically acid. We do believe in 700 strangers signing our Tao of Pooh t-shirt, the Sharpie pushing through the cloth to crawling skin, marking him so that when he took the shirt off in the tent later he could see black dots all over his pale chest.
He was working on a pretty good farmer tan, farmer burn, probably, which is why people kept offering him sunscreen, spraying him with cool mist from water bottles. Finally, mid-afternoon and the dry straw grass was rising and sinking below him, affecting his footing, and an earth-mother type with silver rings in her dreads squirted some sunscreen from a bottle she kept in her backpack's side pocket and just slathered it onto his arm, slipping her fingers down, massage artist.
Benjamin had stopped worrying what the neighbors would think a long time ago, when he chewed the moist paper tab, wondering if you were supposed to chew it, really, or just swallow it whole.
The tent, later, pink cloth moist but not dripping. His teeth were starting to feel metallic, edged, clenched. He looked at the tent ceiling, filmstrip burning in an ashtray, everything falling down. Moira there, wrapping him tight in his sleeping bag.
"Your safety song is 'Sex You Up', by Color Me Badd," she said, and started humming, hugging the down of the sleeping bag around him, bodies conforming.
Words: kneecap, pretty, ridicule
Her kneecap was pretty bony, which led to playground ridicule when they hung their legs down through the skeletal metal dome and kicked at the kids fighting inside, beyond the thunderdome. Her kneecap was bony, but pretty, and he tried to bump into it as often as possible when weaving out of range of Frankie's fists.
Theme: letters to Mom
(I was eating a burger, so I didn't write in response to this one)
Line: something very long about Benjamin realizing only after 1000 feet that he had stopped worrying what the neighbors thought. Also shouted out: "Nobody believes in dragons anymore."
I responded to this, but didn't read it aloud, so I was able to wrap it into a later piece.
Words: email, wrangle, waterlogged
Twenty years before email we wrangled, wrassled, grappled on the truck tire inner tube. The lake was sunlight sparkled, the water undulating away from the tube in fast rolls getting slower, farther, the lake a tub shaken, water slopping side to side, his wiry arms clenching, grabbing biceps, ankles, trying to shake my grip. Our waterlogged shorts wrapped around skinny thighs like plastic bags draped and dripping across fallen trees. We wrestled, wrangled, shorts low on our waists, legs about to give out, feet ready to slip. And then the splash, sinking down through the water weeds, streaks of sunlight, blowing water out hard through my nose, arms and legs finally limp. I lay back, looked up at sky wavered by water, looked at his bright white legs dangling down below him as he held the tube. Let myself stop, float, let him win.
Poker round. Words: hallucinate, chew, moist
Nobody believes in dragons anymore, Benjamin thought, but we do believe in drugs, specifically acid. We do believe in 700 strangers signing our Tao of Pooh t-shirt, the Sharpie pushing through the cloth to crawling skin, marking him so that when he took the shirt off in the tent later he could see black dots all over his pale chest.
He was working on a pretty good farmer tan, farmer burn, probably, which is why people kept offering him sunscreen, spraying him with cool mist from water bottles. Finally, mid-afternoon and the dry straw grass was rising and sinking below him, affecting his footing, and an earth-mother type with silver rings in her dreads squirted some sunscreen from a bottle she kept in her backpack's side pocket and just slathered it onto his arm, slipping her fingers down, massage artist.
Benjamin had stopped worrying what the neighbors would think a long time ago, when he chewed the moist paper tab, wondering if you were supposed to chew it, really, or just swallow it whole.
The tent, later, pink cloth moist but not dripping. His teeth were starting to feel metallic, edged, clenched. He looked at the tent ceiling, filmstrip burning in an ashtray, everything falling down. Moira there, wrapping him tight in his sleeping bag.
"Your safety song is 'Sex You Up', by Color Me Badd," she said, and started humming, hugging the down of the sleeping bag around him, bodies conforming.
posted by Elizabeth Thorpe at 9:42 PM
2 Comments:
beautiful and interesting ;) compliments Neil
Thank you for reading. I appreciate the comment.
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