I've been busy. Busier than usual. Chicago, Ohio, Chicago, and London in one month. I've been sleep deprived, sick, hung-over, and all around exhausted. I'm jet-lagged and worn out but have enjoyed every minute of it. And you want an update, I know. Demanding, but I'll give it a shot....but in a "creative (recycled) sort of a way. Below are a few bits of flash fiction I submitted for my class this week (I suppose its more flash non-fiction but whatevs) and one poem..they talk about what I did while home. Go easy on me folks, I've been time crunched with my writing and also have been spilling nostalgia all over the page since my visit home. Also, enjoy a few pictures posted below. Consider this a mixed media update of sort. Because I am lazy. Because I am busy. Because I am tired. And because I am headed to Greenwich in just a bit to show the Chicago kids my old stomping grounds. Hopefully this quenches your thirst for a Strangers and Mash update. Also, Jon Dorsey and his ability to accidentally make me cry like a giant baby in my car inspired a lot of what you'll read. Best friends do that.It rains in both places. It rains on the streets here, on the metal, cement, and stone. It pools on sidewalks, collects on roads, runs off stairs. It drenches pedestrians, soaks store awnings, and explodes under the force of tire wheels. It slides down my windows, droplets combining on their decent, until it drips in time off my sill. It rains downtown, it rains uptown, it rains out in Hyde Park and it rains up here in my dirty neighborhood where the trash has wilted and clings to the gutters.
Back there it rains on the fields, on barns and wood fences, on plastic siding and industrial playgrounds. It forms puddles in basements, ruins the legs of furniture, scares away the cat. It beads on morning glories, the dog’s hair. It rains at Tin Apple Plaza, it rains on Main Street, it rains in the suburbs and it rains out by your house where the drops bounce of the metal of your motorcycle, tickle the hirsute hairs on the back of your neck.
Lake Effect
We left our beer in the boat as we jumped in the dark water. Everyone knew what lurked beneath but we danced our legs in it, bobbed in its chill. Summers before coffins floated up, stayed at the surface like haunted buoys. A cemetery hidden beneath our liquid playground. They threw rocks in the water, piled them high on the site, the weight of the stones promising to keep the dead where they belonged. Forced down below, the bodies stayed as a reminder. We swam on their graves that night.
Motorcycle
It was the air that whipped around my arms, snaked around my exposed legs. It was the nail marks left on my hands from gripping too tightly around your torso. It was the fear of the s-curves that had nearly killed a man only a few years ago. It was the way I lifted my arms and extended my fingers, feeling the summer rain pelt them as I grew less and less afraid. It was the way we talked around what mattered, the way your mother hugged me, the way I squeezed your shoulder as I went to leave. It was the way we didn’t say goodbye that made it seem more final, and it was the way I cried in my car on the shoulder of the road that reminded me how much I’ll miss you.
Columbus
The weeds bite at my ankles, firm like bamboo, and cut the tops of my feet. A pile of discarded cement chunks serves as my retreat in that barren wasteland spotted with developing condominiums. They are ruining the beauty of the city’s decay, I think to myself, they are changing what I love most. But these places are only safe during the day, their beauty turns sinister when the sun sinks low and the sporadic streetlights attempt to create the feeling of safety. A fly lands on my forearm, waits there, patiently, for me to shoo it away. But I won’t because the lighting is just right and the rain has let up and the backdrop of the skyline has never looked so pretty. So I pose for you, damp but content, as you capture this image of me and the fly smiling in front of the city that is our home; our feet planted firmly in the part that’s decayed.It wasn’t the way it was said;
it was the where.
Near the fields by the woods
at your mother’s house.
Not on high street where
lights extend across the road,
circular bulbs in arch formation.
Not downtown where
the buildings swallow us whole,
where glass and metal replace
the green of the suburbs.
It was on the drive way,
my car in your front yard
where we lit fireworks
when we were fifteen.
It was the pool in the back,
the toilet paper I threw in your trees.
It was the time Mo split her eye open,
how red the blood was when it oozed.
It was not steel and progress.
It was not that city
or this city.
It was the place of memory.
