late on the deadline . . . been a bit overwhelmed

perhaps due entirely to my technological ineptitude, I've yet to figure out the google group . . .

They moved to Albuquerque from Ann Arbor in summer of ’95, at the onset of Dave’s sophomore year of high school. It was also the summer preceding pretty-haired Susannah’s entry into Vassar, the summer that Amy turned six, the summer after their mother had married Jack.

Dave noticed first the way the water didn’t hit his skin; the way that this sun sucked every drip of moisture out of him. It pulled even the snot from his nose and by the third day there he woke up with a nosebleed that stained his blue sheets brown and red. He pulled the sheets from his bed, gathered them in his arms, and walked across the hall to Susannah’s and Amy’s bedroom. He rapped twice on the door and heard Susannah moan, then pull herself out of her bed. She answered wearing a tanktop and shorts, her face flushed with the unbearable night heat.

“Gimme Amy’s sheets. I gotta run my own load,” Dave said.
Susannah, infamous for her inability to wake in the morning, walked to Amy’s twin bed and pulled her out. The smaller girl stirred, but her breathing slowed and her limbs relaxed as soon as she and Susannah were safely in Susannah’s bed, curled into each other. Dave put his own sheets on the floor, pulled off Amy’s, and carried both sets down to the basement.

Both girls were tied in their dark blonde hair, their curls looser in New Mexico’s aridity. Amy wore hers long and graceless, a tangled imitation of her older sister. Their hair was where their similarities ended: Susannah had the sharp and angled features of her father; Amy the full cheeks and green eyes of her father.

Hey...You...Guys...

Ho-laaa mis amigos de literatura,

I'm gonna throw it out there first thing, in case you don't read the rest of this post (have I already lost you?): Posting Deadline #3 this Friday. Let's make it happen.

Of course, Stacey and Sara are ahead of us all, posting wonderful stuff in between pseudofficial deadlines (coloring outside the lines, I like it). But for the rest of us, let's post a little something by Friday. Awesome turn-out last time. And don't be shy about commenting! I'm gonna vomit reactions all over your work (you can try to stop me, but it doesn't usually work...ask my friend Steve how the backseat of his old car is doin after he drove me home after a long tailgating weekend at Mizzou...we call his two-door beater the Black Panther, and now it smells like the similarly-named cologne in Anchorman), I just have a lot of feelings.

My past week was spent making a scrapbook for my mom's friend's 60th birthday party. Collecting stories and photos from everyone who's ever known her and recreating a life over more than half a century of jobs, cities, love affairs and shenanigans, was quite a job. But I did some lovely nostalgic anecdote writing, so I should be in fine shape when Hallmark comes calling.

I also applied for a few jobs and submitted creative work to a couple of journals. The journals were sweet because there was no fee, not even for postage since I was allowed to submit online. And they were both new start-ups, so there's a better chance my stuff will be read, at least. They were Broken Plate, out of Ball State U, and the Oklahoman Review, out of Oklahoma State. I think the deadlines have passed for those now, Stacey and everybody, but venues like that seem like a slightly better bet.

Today, I took my mom's other friend to the hospital and waited while she got new breasts. She had a double mastectomy in March, and says it feels like she's been wearing a metal Madonna-style cone bra under her chest-skin for seven months, so the real-er thing has gotta be better.

And finally, the last piece of good goings-on news in my life is that Mike, one of my best friends since junior high, who was hit by a car and suffered severe brain damage in March (that month kinda sucked for me), has started using his vocal chords to talk to us (he's way ahead mentally of what he's capable of expressing physically)... The cool, and naturally, typical Mike thing about it is that most of what he vocalizes are movie quotes. He does a mean Darth Vader impression ("Luuuke"), and also Sloth, from The Goonies, hence the title of this post.

And so. I just adjusted Barb (new boobs)'s pillows and am going to bed myself. To Stacey's question of what we're reading, I just finished Steinbeck's Travels With Charley and loved it. Now I think I have to read my uncle's teenage copy of A Clockwork Orange before I have to return it at Thanksgiving. But I'm open to suggestion.

Lastly, what was everyone for Halloween? Post pictures. I couldn't come up with anything and pulled something together at the last minute, a play-on-words costume. How very English major of me.

If you held on til the end of this post...sorry. Ruth! Ruth! Baby Ruth! Goonies never say die!

From an "Attic Office" virgin...er... right.

Sara here.

Since I, too, am inept at google docs and apparently need to spend some time figuring out how google's latest big mechanism works, I am going to post here. My first entry, be nice. And it's only a very rough first draft. But, better than that: it's a true story.

“The Pied Piper”

By Sara Lyn Rice

It came out like angry

jazz—but silver

from the Professor in the gold-rimmed eyeglasses:

Put on your headphones and earphones,

block out the sound

of the wheels, the silence.

This train is straight, inbound

to Harvard Square. I ain’t never seen

Obama there—in the neighborhood.

I’ll tell you where it’s at, bitch.

I don’t want anyone

stupid thinkin’ the President

is gonna save they ass right now.

In 1962 the cops were walkin’ around—you read

about 1962!—trying to arrest me, for a something

I didn’t do. There wasn’t

no Miranda, you didn’t get the rights.

I got a God who takes me away

from black, white—

Florence Nightingale, give me another healing,

Betsy Ross, sew me another flag, one with different stripes.

He abandons his soup to the floor of the train. It sits without spilling.

I’m takin’ my coat off

this train—I’ve lived in it,

will die in it... Yet.

That’s what your life is: yet. Yet,

it ain’t over. Oh, but it will be someday.

Remember

that

oh

yeah.

He stands up, never falters. People stare, try not to.

You think this is dramatic?

Just call me the Pied Piper.

Talk with your mouth

and not your hands.

That’s my last lesson,

a black lesson, muthafucka.

Then he crosses himself. People get off.

Amen.

Writers Weekly is a load of doggie-doo?

Hi all,

A few things:

1. Great postings! There's such diversity here; a lovely change from workshopping pieces of the same topic/concept.

2. Katie, thanks for the comments! I find them very helpful, and am going to try and get my fanny (best word ever, btw) in gear and start commenting on things as well.

3. One thing I think this blog could use: submission hints! I'm collecting a decent body of work thus far, and am starting to snoop around for places to submit (paying or non-paying, reader fee or no reader fee). I know Writers Weekly lists a number of publications looking for submissions, but my professor told me that stuff was crap (I think she forgets that unlike her, I have yet to publish in the NY Times or Washington Post...or write 9 novels), and the best thing to do would be to find particular essays/stories of my favorite writers, see where they've been published, and start submitting there. Does anyone else have any suggestions? Craigslist is great if you want to write Porn reviews...I'll admit, I did it, but just ONCE. Made twenty bucks, but had to take a scalding hot shower afterward. AND they told me it was 'too literary' and 'not titillating'...titillating, what a yucky word.

4. Book suggestions! What's everyone reading these days? I know it's hard to read for pleasure while still in school, but even if another online blog, news story (perhaps on writing, publishing, etc), or some quick read comes to mind, let us know!
I'm karate-chopping my way through all things canonical, and am actually enjoying a good deal of it! Just finished Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms, and am now reading Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation...they're a hot couple). So yeah, throw us some good reads!

Lastly, let's post pictures too, just for fun. Of anything. yeah...

~Stace

Success!

Just wanted to say how awesome it was to read all the postings this weekend. You people are damn good writers, so thanks for letting me read your stuff.

Like last time we posted, I took the liberty of making some comments on the pieces. I hope this helps, but let me know if you don't want that. I was hoping to get some discussion going about the pieces we've put up. I know that as I'm trying to keep the writing going post-undergrad workshops, I would really appreciate some feedback. Like, I'm thinking of sending out to a couple of new lit journals, so if you guys wanna share thoughts on what's been posted, it would help me out a ton.

In other news, I am now slightly employed. I'm going to do some very part-time work for the professor I worked for this year. I'll be reading her chapter drafts of her book before she send them to her editor at Yale U and giving her editing/comments. Tom, as the expert, could you tell me if this counts as freelance editing?

And finally, since Allie is bad at introducing herself, I'll introduce her. We lived together for a semester in Bath, England and both did the creative writing tutorial with an Oxford-educated "freelance" professor who put us down all the time and oozed smug from his pores. When she's not applying for law school, trying to eradicate childhood poverty, or teaching with Teach for America in Denver, she enjoys sarcasm and a glass of red wine. And she writes a mean fiction story.

I'm not really very good at titles, or introducing myself, so I guess I'll just vomit something up in this space - I don't think I have access to the google documents. As a warning, I have been surrounded by 10 year olds for the past year and a half and have not written in that time, so I'm feelin' a little shaky about it. (the beginning)


"The Navajo Nation"

Helena, with a cathedral-work of veins coloring her calves, kneels in the enclosed dirt space in front of her home. Nothing is sprouting from the soil she’d spread six weeks ago. She stares at the barren enclosure and wipes the back of her hand across her nostrils. When she stands, her knees creak, and her elastic-waistband shorts new from the Wal-Mart in Gallup ride up her inner thighs as she walks back into the house.

There are three window-unit air conditioners stationed in the kitchen and living area, blasting her with frozen waves when she comes in the front door. Her landlord had snapped at her the previous week when he came to fix the leak below the sink. “You’re gonna blow out the whole neighborhood if you keep running with that many BTUs,” he told her. Whenever he calls her refers to himself as “Mr. Berkway, your landlord,” as if Helena would not have recognized his heavy southern drawl. He is hardly older than Dave and already owns three houses on the lot. Another of his tenants, Meredith, from the down the road, told Helena that he’d gotten a law degree at Clemson University before coming to do “God’s work” with the Navajo nation. Meredith had smiled when she said that, while Helena tripped over her stomach, her loud, smoke-infused guffaw rippling through the desert air.

“BTUs?” Helena had asked. Mr. Berkway looked up at her from where he knelt on the kitchen tile.

“It’s sort of like the amount of power you use. You’re using too much. I’m surprised you don’t blow a fuse every time you turn these ACs on.”

“Must be okay ’cause I don’t turn them off and on,” Helena suggested.

“You mean you leave those running all day and night?” Mr. Berkway then stood up in the kitchen, his wrench in his right hand, his left hand exploding into the air, punctuating his question.

“You mean to stand in my kitchen and tell me that you turn off your air conditioner at night, Mr. Berkway?”

His face had begun to flush with color, but he knelt back down on the tiled floor and began wrestling with the plumbing again.

Anyway, Helena feels just satisfied with her stubbornness on the units now as she did then, when she smirked as Mr. Berkway fixed her leak. In just the few moments in her garden, beads of sweat had formed on her temples, and she can feel heavy moisture gathered in her armpits. She walks into the kitchen to pour herself some iced tea. Dave had given her a Mrs. Tea maker for Mother’s Day last year, delivered to her door gift-wrapped from Amazon.com.

I just learned "vomited" only has one T

Dear Blog,

I came here to share the exiting news that I had received my first check for freelance writing. I also planned to share with you an enthralling, heartbreaking parable illustrating what it feels like to finally be paid to write.

Then I remembered I worked as a technical writer for a year after graduating college. So, yeah, they paid me (a lot more than this silly little freelance job) to write and I didn't even realize it.

The moral of this story is that writing is writing and money is money. (I prefer morals that don't actually mean anything and leave you feeling the uneasy desire for actual wisdom.)

On an unrelated note, I "blog[ged] it up" (translation: "vomited a poem") on Google Docs. Okay, I'm a day late, but nobody's paying me to write silly poems about sunshine. And yet, I still manage to have posted one. What I haven't managed to do is ignore the fact that whenever I write a poem it seems to support moral viewpoints that I do not. Also, you already know how betrayed by meter and rhythm I feel.