Story Slam, February 2011

Words: tarantula, twist, spongy
The ridge above the property line is spongy with moss that has always made her want to take off her shoes, feel it between her toes, even when snow lingers in the shade. She twists around a beech tree, her mitten slipping easily on the smooth bark as she spins, trusts it to hold her weight. She thinks about Scotty's tarantula, the way it slipped one leg and then another off the rock in its heated tank. She thinks about not seeing Scotty again, about how you never know for sure that it's the last time. The sun is low over the lake, trees reflecting dark on the smooth surface. Any time now she should go back to her parents' house for dinner, put in some time. But instead, she spins, lazy, too slow to get dizzy, and feels the moss giving and receiving beneath her boots. She hears a mourning dove sing evening, and Spring.

Line: "You don't have to be rich to rule my world"
He went in through the out door at the frame shop where I spent the summer between junior and senior year of college. The frame shop also sold alcohol, and clove cigarettes, and he came in on Thursday afternoons to pick up packs of Sampoerna Extras for the weekend. I didn't know who his friends were, where his parents lived, or even how old he was. Maybe his friends had parties where they sat on rooftop deckchairs and talked about the movies they had seen and the paintings they were doing. I assumed he was an artist because he came to the frame store to get his cigarettes, but that was just a guess. He only ever got cloves, and all I knew was how much I wanted to kiss the taste of cloves off his lips. I wanted to be with him anywhere, but especially in the woods behind the basketball court at my college dorm, or especially on the concrete steps behind the frame shop where I took my breaks. That summer was simple, the way I wanted it. I wanted Kahlua sombreros at the pub down the street from the house I rented with six other girls. I wanted money so I could use my frame store discount to buy art supplies. I wanted a raspberry popsicle every day when I got home from work, I wanted to take off my frame shop t-shirt and sit in front of the fan and draw in one sketchbook after another after another, and I wanted him.
(didn't read)

Theme: Hypothetical urgency
I look like a city person now. Hands deep in the pockets of my dark-colored coat, crossed tight over my chest, or swinging fast, propelling me forward with purpose. I look like someone who could give you directions to the dog groomer's, the comic shop, the vegetarian bistro. Sometimes I still slip, look someone in the eye and smile, forget to keep my gaze low and stony, forget to map my path blocks ahead, to avoid collision, confrontation. Yesterday I was indecisive about my route. A man moved, I moved, and he crossed right in front of me. I held my hand up and touched his soft, dark coat, mumbling sorry. I broke my stride. But I'm learning. One block more, and I was back at full speed, arms moving, dodging people as I looked at their midriffs and not their eyes. Moving forward with hypothetical urgency, although everyday when I get to the bridge I still can't help slowing down, looking over the railing at the current streaming over the pilings of the Walnut Street Bridge, and when I look away, I always search for somebody's eyes.

Final round: truck, rent, thin
for Major Jackson (who was in attendance)
Rental trucks aren't plain white anymore. That means rollers. It means paint trays. It means time. Most people aren't dumb enough to leave a rental truck parked on a dark street overnight, but you get one once in a while.

The sound of the roller as it hits, wet, your arms shaking nervous as you reach it as high as you can. No time to be perfect. No time to reach all the way to the top, and no time to let it dry, even, before your backpack full of metal cans clanks to the sidewalk, before you zipper it open and the zipper catches--you're shaking too hard.

Calm down. The cans come out. Your lookout is a block away. A dog barks, but far, and close by nothing's moving but the overhang of trees in the streetlights. You put down a thin line, black on white, your mark. You try to make it thin enough not to drip, add the Philly fade at the top and bottom, but you still shake. It's been too long since you did this last. Your lookout's still quiet and the dog has stopped barking, and you fill in color after color and even add the stars, the year.

You'll see this in the afterlife, this one night when you didn't get caught, when it turned out exactly the way you wanted. When it turned out well enough to do it again, one time too many.