Story Slam, April 2010
Words: Agitate, Dude, Spindly
The water glass, table bump, agitate. Patio chair with its spindly legs, everything seeming to tilt. And the air cool around the cone of the heat lamp, her foot hooked around the chair's leg, worrying it, tilting the chair slowly back and forth. She looks beyond the table, across the street, into the dark branches of the trees, branches that flip in the light breeze. She pulls her scarf around her shoulders. Agitate. The water glass tips, the water spills over the lip, slight. Dude, she says, you're bumping the table.
***
Theme: The improbability of love
The path through the woods is faint, and you don't even know if you're still on it, or if it ever existed, or if you want it to. There's something to the thought of getting lost, even if it's just a mile from a highway. You imagine wax wings melting, the feathers that covered the floor when your comforter split. One mile away, the car is still smoking, the hood mangled metal, reflecting streetlights off plane after plane, silver paint grayed.
***
Same theme?
Are you going to eat that, she's thinking. She waits, waits. He's talking about his job again, the job where he works with people she's not close enough to know. Yet, she should think, not close enough to know yet. And she wants to believe that someday she will be able to put her hand on his knee while he drives, casually and without having to wonder if it's okay. She'll be able to go to a party with him and know she doesn't have to worry about him -- he'll make his own way. She'll be able to take the pickles off his plate as soon as it comes, before the pickle juice soaks into the chips. Someday, she thinks. Not yet.
Words: ditzy, wipe, earlobe
Red velvet tiptoe the fork, three pronged, silver, patina. Do you clean it and make it pretty, or leave the dirt on to show how old? Tiptoe to the top of the staircase, the mystery show the grownups watch, spoons serrated in the garbage disposal, taped together with masking tape, my grandmother's Sharpie handwriting, "mangled". Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, you tiptoe to the kitchen, slip a finger along the edge, a little at first and then farther, more, the cake ruined already, but you can't stop licking the sugar off the groove along your fingernail, grooved from bike-fall, grew back wrong. The cake ruined now, and all you can do is climb up on the stool, steady yourself, lift the sheet of cake above your head and let go. It falls flat, red pieces spring up, and settle.
The water glass, table bump, agitate. Patio chair with its spindly legs, everything seeming to tilt. And the air cool around the cone of the heat lamp, her foot hooked around the chair's leg, worrying it, tilting the chair slowly back and forth. She looks beyond the table, across the street, into the dark branches of the trees, branches that flip in the light breeze. She pulls her scarf around her shoulders. Agitate. The water glass tips, the water spills over the lip, slight. Dude, she says, you're bumping the table.
***
Theme: The improbability of love
The path through the woods is faint, and you don't even know if you're still on it, or if it ever existed, or if you want it to. There's something to the thought of getting lost, even if it's just a mile from a highway. You imagine wax wings melting, the feathers that covered the floor when your comforter split. One mile away, the car is still smoking, the hood mangled metal, reflecting streetlights off plane after plane, silver paint grayed.
***
Same theme?
Are you going to eat that, she's thinking. She waits, waits. He's talking about his job again, the job where he works with people she's not close enough to know. Yet, she should think, not close enough to know yet. And she wants to believe that someday she will be able to put her hand on his knee while he drives, casually and without having to wonder if it's okay. She'll be able to go to a party with him and know she doesn't have to worry about him -- he'll make his own way. She'll be able to take the pickles off his plate as soon as it comes, before the pickle juice soaks into the chips. Someday, she thinks. Not yet.
Words: ditzy, wipe, earlobe
Red velvet tiptoe the fork, three pronged, silver, patina. Do you clean it and make it pretty, or leave the dirt on to show how old? Tiptoe to the top of the staircase, the mystery show the grownups watch, spoons serrated in the garbage disposal, taped together with masking tape, my grandmother's Sharpie handwriting, "mangled". Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, you tiptoe to the kitchen, slip a finger along the edge, a little at first and then farther, more, the cake ruined already, but you can't stop licking the sugar off the groove along your fingernail, grooved from bike-fall, grew back wrong. The cake ruined now, and all you can do is climb up on the stool, steady yourself, lift the sheet of cake above your head and let go. It falls flat, red pieces spring up, and settle.
Labels: story slam
posted by Elizabeth Thorpe at 11:22 AM
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