Nano iTom

“Hunched”
Sunset in the grass; Aileen’s hunched, crying. I decide to leave. Standing, I remember her hair matted with rain, her wet lips kissing her husband.

“Chores”
She left yesterday, dresses stuffed in two red suitcases. Today I mowed, clipped hedges, chatted with Chet across the fence about dogs. It’s my fault.

“Sunday Morning”
I woke in a cold, empty bed, her pillow smelling like strawberries. She’s left a rose on the kitchen table. And a note, “Love you.”
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Here's my stab at it. This is a great exercise, Katie. Along with all the things you said in your email, I feel like the 25 words also force you to lay claim to your voice in a way long works don't. There aren't all those paragraphs to muck about in.

Katie, your first two are highly poetic and almost surreal in the way they reveal the moment and the plot. Your third also reads like a poem, but instead of surreal, feels grittier, more grounded in the conflict and character

This reminds me of a 6-word memoir site I saw a while back: http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords But let's be honest: unless you're Hemingway, there can be such a thing as too short.

Nano-Fiction (25 words)

Little Violence


"Drive-by Paintball"

Remnants of a redhead, widowed optimist, she waits for a friend. Slow car, half window, pop. Her temple blasted green: At least it happened to me.


"The Pitch"

Stunted boy, outgrown his brain, cocks his arm, kitchen knife clutched. Babysitter, nurse, all-time pitcher til now, freezes for the snap.
She doesn't blink.


"Rodeo"

At the wall, he stamps his brother's cigarette to dirt.
He'll take her from him.
This is what it means to root for the bull.

Lovely, Fulfilling/Gangly, Awkward

I have been very writing-busy as of late. There is an odd aspect of attending a writing workshop: they give you deadlines and then you write to meet them. It is a lovely, fulfilling way to live. I highly recommend it.

Actually, I've mostly been shirking my deadlines because I like to use the word shirk so awful much and don't get a chance in my non-writing life. I am supposed to be writing fiction, so I have been writing poems, obviously.

In fact, I will head over to Google Docs right now and post a poem or two (posting directly to the blog makes me feel gangly and awkward). It''ll just be a silly little first draft of a thing, but it is evidence that I am a writer.

There's a voice in my head, but I don't know if I like it just yet...

Hey all,

     So as we try and pick ourselves up and get back into the swing of writing (by any means necessary, including a swift kick to the arse, as Tom suggests), I was wondering how everyone is feeling about their ‘voice.’ Yeah, yeah, you hear it time and time again, but I am beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable with this alleged character I’ve developed. Do you ever find yourselves in a slump not over material, so much as the way in which a story is told?

     Well, I’m taking a literature course with the infamous Shelley Jackson (she’s totally mind-blowing, do some googling and learn all about her crazy hypertext projects and tattooing of novels on volunteers, etc), and basically we’ve been prompted to respond to each work we read with not an analysis or critique, but rather just something ‘creative,’ using one or more of the author’s techniques for inspiration. Perhaps we like the structure of the piece, or the subject matter, or tense usage, tone, whatever. Well, this week, as I mentioned in an equally blabbering email to all of you, we have been tackling a Samuel Beckett trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. And I’m totally hooked. Generally, I prefer my authors to still be breathing, or at least lukewarm in the grave (how morbid, my bad), but I’m definitely connecting to Beckett’s style more so than anything I’ve recently read. I think the guy’s absolutely hilarious, totally immersed in his characters’ own heads, so much in fact, that many of them don’t even have fully developed bodies, or exist in a space and time that’s real. But who cares, because their inner musings are so damn good! So I tried my hand at writing in a style similar to his, and thought that I’d leave you an excerpt of a longer piece I’m working on (this too, is still in very rough form…I thought it and then wrote it, and haven’t spent much time editing/looking it over just yet). It sort of goes along with Molloy’s obsessive thought process, as he oftentimes goes off on tangents about his own bodily functions. And while Kim is probably sitting there, shaking her head, I must give my little ‘self-saving’ speech. I don’t actually think/believe a lot of this (Keep that in mind when you reach the final bodily action…I’m not that bitter or gross or overly emphatic, haha), but it fits with many of Molloy’s discussions about himself; he’s a fan of discussing his urine flow, lack of hygiene, and the unending assortment of awkward things he does with his penis. Oh, and the ending is not a cry for help; Molloy and most of Beckett’s characters are always sort of on the verge of death, or at least not being alive in the typical sense, so that’s where the last line is coming from. I’m totally up for not being on the verge of anything outside of living. So it’s a little gross, maybe a bit crude, and not like anything I’m used to writing. But hey, here’s my mound of clay for the week…

The Push-Pull

     My body is a network of give and takes. Look at my hand, the left one for certain, of which I write, among other inviolable acts. It begins by pushing the pen, trying and yet almost always failing to lasso the thoughts from the skull’s centrifugal mess onto the tablet. It tenses (of ‘it’ I refer superficially to the hand at stake, though it is inevitable to keep the mind from following suit), forcing itself harder and rougher upon the utensil, which in turn drives onto the page, carving out brail-like imprints of cursive. Each press hurts more and more, my hand resisting acknowledgment of such force’s origin, (likely stemming from the depths of my not surprisingly self-afflicted entrails) until it hurts just so that I must throw the pen, shake and shake and shake my hand, an almost cathartic exorcism (aren’t all conjurations liberating, you ask? Surely not, but my story is of particulars, and time forbids me from expiating). Soon, the blood reemerges from hiding, knuckles lose their precarious egg-shell hue, and all that’s left to do is inhale. I must reel in the perspiration that has formed on my brow, swallow the words on the page, or perhaps at this moment, only smudges remain. It matters not. Hell, I even gorge on the luscious trail of black ink stains, from the pisiform to the tip of my pinkie finger. I sit up, look at the physical evidence of yet another expulsion, and pull it all back in.

     So, too, does the push-pull phenomenon occur with my sneezes. At first, the nose departs from its routine, obedient nature atop my face, setting off a slight twitch. It is a warning sign, but one in which there seems to be no preventative measure for what shall unavoidably ensue (Though I do encourage you to take note of the fools who mistakenly believe to hold the cure: bright-light-seekers, tongue-biters, nostril-spelunkers, and screamers of ‘pineapple pineapple pineapple!’). Then, like a sudden rip current along a jetty, frenetic inhalations suck the rest of my body into the moment: ribs becoming irresolute, bottom lip repelling downward from its superior, eye sockets hosting an exorbitant measure of emotional juice. Time stops. Well, I’m lying, and you should be grateful that earth revolves around the sun and not my bodily functions. But I stop—doubtful that my heart does, as the myth would have it, for in this moment alone, I am nervous, powerless to the will of my booger canals. But before I can ponder, I am hurled into the throws of release, an expulsory action of air and bioparticles. When it’s over, I survey the damage (never consistent from one act of sternutation to the next), and suck back in whatever gelatinous remains dangle near my septum.

     And why, how can I come to speak of this push-pull experience without the most obvious of them all? Yes, the love button, tucked away under layers of skirts and nylons and undergarments—should one choose to be so dress-code compliant—a place where men’s fingertips magnetically repel, though they have been told time and time again by their health teachers (and partners, female friends, magazine articles, television shows, blogs, surveys, specially designed condoms…oh, what’s the use) of its finely enervated composition. The clitoris, the beacon of release amidst an underworld of retention. It is apparent on the female fetus, just fourteen weeks after a mother’s missed menstruation. And speaking of blood, how it flows, right here, engorging this glorious protrusion until it stands firmly at attention. And so it is pushed—more accurately, touched and rubbed and stroked—until the rest of my body cannot continue to function properly, thus directing every ounce of focus to this fleshy nub. And then. Much like the sneeze, burp, bowel -movement (must I go there now? What shame), a release overtakes my very being. The aftereffects leave me with a frost-blue tingle running the course of my femoral veins, halting only after my toes have cramped; I become the victim of erotic paraplegicism. But recovery is a must, and after minutes of cunt-clenching, skin-quivering bliss, I pull back into reality, and let the sexual flatlines of everyday life carry me along.

     And so why discuss my most intimate bodily occurrences in such depth? Because with each expulsion, I leave myself. Or my perception of what most think is a self, a fully composed and functioning human being. At times, the escape is exciting; at others, it begrudgingly sucks me in. Nevertheless, it is during these moments of self-examination that I am able to look upon the body which holds me in tact (though not without glitches), and see it for what it’s worth. Its worth, you ask? Why, I fear, that like a close friend, I am on the threshold of being no more.

Public Transit Poetry

So there's this poetry contest here in St. Louis where they pick 15 poems to be displayed inside local Amtrak cars. I'm going to submit a few un-critiqued poems, which I'll probably have to hand-deliver since they're due in the office on Monday, and I only just went over some potential poems to turn in and made sure they fit the maximum 15-line limit...Is it just me, or is hand-delivery border-line creepy? I get to be almost-late and pseudo-stalkeresque. Story of my life.

FYI: Sean Keck, BC '07 was one of the winners last year.

Here are the poems I'll probably submit. (Posting them here instead of on our G-Docs account is so in-your-face.)


Covered Bridge

You made yourself a covered bridge:

Red walls, white roof, beams flaked with sawdust,
Weather-scraped, painted like seasons
Of rainstorms have rolled down upright panels,
And stood: soaking, drying, standing.

A steepled roof, scent of hay can trick the mind,
Red lumber can still the heart:
Shelter to take us over the stream, and over, on.

But I can hear the whitewater stones,
Tramp the grass, feel it rise in the soil.
I know the creak of air through floorboards,
The absence underneath. Please

Don’t build me a barn for passage.
I’m four legs, one mouth in still drowning water, and
The river’s home to me.



Toasting the Flood

The flood comes for frittatas and stays to wash in the sights.
To work for once, the Venetians walk through water.

Meanwhile the gondoliers docked
At half-submerged café tables
Toast the morning off, glassfuls
Scooped from the waist with well-
Tuned wrists, gray water high
Over taut ankles, and stones
Over more water, spilling the flood
Into itself:

Alla salute di Venezia, the floating city!
To our Atlantis, may we go down together—
When the world turns over,
They’ll need boatmen below, they’ll need
Those men that know the way.



Inauguration Day, Hampton Overpass

To the man made of January ash
Standing in the crushed-us dust cross
Roads, at night, the gaping
Hole where old Hampton Bridge used to be, a question—

Him foot prints freezing as a Polaroid
Turns to focus, the lamplights go out
On the town, this stretch of midtown
Where the overpass went under and came down—

Him at the imploded span, deserted
To the search for lightning conductors
Amidst concrete cylinders, almost praying
For dissolution—oh, let bulbs overrun their rims,
Whittle us to our central spinning—a question—

Does the breath, waiting to be breathed, have to ask:
How do we get there from here?



...So, let me know how you all are doing with writing, jobs, life, etc. And if you think I should adjust these poems before Monday at 5 p.m. Any advice welcome.

Single White Male Seeks a Writing Career

Whoa. It seems that I have gravely misled you. I know almost nothing about freelance writing.

The only thing I can say is that I am a fan of Craigslist for many reasons. It's not only the ads for free beige toilets that have won my affection; there are also two sections that list writing jobs. One lives under "jobs" the other under "gigs." This is where I found my one ill-fated writing assignment. Coincidentally, I also found my real job, my last 3 apartments, and my beige toilet on Craigslist.

Free-style (what what)

Hey Tom --
Can you post some tips for beginning freelancing?
I want to start submitting to local papers/websites while I'm working my 9-to-5 (which is, thankfully, no longer Borders. I'm in the Biomedical Engineering department at Washington University now, yeehaw).

I know I addressed Tom specifically, but don't be shy, feel free to join in everybody.