This is a recording of my one-act play, "Scars," when it was read last week at the 2009 Great Plains Theatre Conference. Judy Hart directed it, and it featured Madeline Radcliff as the character SHE, and Judy Radcliff as Frankenstein. Unfortunately, I do not know who was reading stage directions. This recording also includes the feedback I received afterward, so, y'know. You may or may not interested in that.
MP3 Recording of the 5/09 Reading of Scars
In a sentence, this play is a 30-minute, two woman feminist deconstruction or re-imagining of Frankenstein. Before I had really figured that out, the synopsis I sent to the conference was:
"Scars takes the familiar story of Frankenstein and tilts it slightly, as a young woman ‘made from scratch’ recalls her time spent with her creator, the eccentric doctor Frankenstein. What appears to be a dreamlike, fanciful re-imagining quickly becomes a dark allegory for the parent-child relationship."
People were pretty damn effusive about my script, I was frankly shocked. If anything, it energized me with the realization that this is actually is a produce-able piece of theatre. I'd say this recording represents solid first draft, I learned a lot about what this script needs from this, I will return to it before the end of the year.
It has been suggested that in order to expand this piece into the proverbial "evening of theatre," I write a companion deconstruction of Dracula. This idea intriuges me. I will keep all two of you posted.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
HOT OIL
[Been doing a lot of straight up poetry lately so I can have pieces to slam. Must do more prosaic/dramatic shit as well soon.]
in a throng of strangers
you pulse against each others
bones,
not unlike other nights.
tissue vibrate with the air and earth
As one solid square wave
beats it's palm into the dirt
the light rolls over you like a cement truck
it bounces off the grey smoke
misses the black skies above
and hits you in the mouth.
But tonight, as you watch
all the bodies next to you
glow sticky sweat white
their glass eyes roll back
into lolling, tossed heads
their veins throb in time
with the mob.
These tones, they disinter,
they splinter stop tear
off the thin cotton between you
and these writhing forms
repeat redux,
and the sea around you,
it rolls.
And there is no end to
this party.
You reach out for faces
and find only teeth, find a lot of flesh
but no orifice out.
stumble against walls
built of shoulder blades
and they don't look at you.
You turn, a girl,
she's too young to be here
she shifts and bends
she's an unpleasant memory.
a final sick beat hits her
and she
bursts
the mob, the bodies flinch like cats
hot pink viscous drops of her
spatter their chests and cheeks
she is pouring down your front.
You scream,
wring your hands,
the party surges.
Your feet are awash in this
fluid.
it mixes and eddies,
and across the way
another human pustule goes.
one pop in a hot black electric
bubble wrap.
You push, pushed back.
You cry, pounded down.
Your head is light.
Your fluids boil,
expand.
It is a matter of time
measured in broken beats.
in a throng of strangers
you pulse against each others
bones,
not unlike other nights.
tissue vibrate with the air and earth
As one solid square wave
beats it's palm into the dirt
the light rolls over you like a cement truck
it bounces off the grey smoke
misses the black skies above
and hits you in the mouth.
But tonight, as you watch
all the bodies next to you
glow sticky sweat white
their glass eyes roll back
into lolling, tossed heads
their veins throb in time
with the mob.
These tones, they disinter,
they splinter stop tear
off the thin cotton between you
and these writhing forms
repeat redux,
and the sea around you,
it rolls.
And there is no end to
this party.
You reach out for faces
and find only teeth, find a lot of flesh
but no orifice out.
stumble against walls
built of shoulder blades
and they don't look at you.
You turn, a girl,
she's too young to be here
she shifts and bends
she's an unpleasant memory.
a final sick beat hits her
and she
bursts
the mob, the bodies flinch like cats
hot pink viscous drops of her
spatter their chests and cheeks
she is pouring down your front.
You scream,
wring your hands,
the party surges.
Your feet are awash in this
fluid.
it mixes and eddies,
and across the way
another human pustule goes.
one pop in a hot black electric
bubble wrap.
You push, pushed back.
You cry, pounded down.
Your head is light.
Your fluids boil,
expand.
It is a matter of time
measured in broken beats.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
MY THESIS PROJECT
I have this new piece,
I put you all in big plastic bubbles
sitting down
in those
brown plastic stacking chairs
and your faces,
your whole torso
it's covered
so you're all looking at
each others shoes.
dockers and chucks,
pink socks and loafers.
you're a little worried,
you're trying to
piece together
you're neighbor's
brains
from these clues
When I tell you all
you are require
to communicate
with each other
via tiny scraps of torn paper
which you will throw
attached to colored yarn
towards other peoples' shoes.
And of course,
you won't know what to write
and two minutes later,
you end up with the first line
of that aggravating
Robert Frost poem,
something you will regret
with a cringe as soon
as it hits the toes next door,
but they will
pick it up
and pause
and scribble something
in response
on your little paper.
You reel it back
hand over hand
and you'll be in the middle
of trying to decipher
the ornate loops
in your this person's cursive
when I get on a microphone
and announce to the
entire room
'THAT'S MY FUCKING LIFE, YOU ASSHOLES'
I storm out
the double doors
of the community center meeting hall.
big scene.
You all wait an awkward moment
before getting up
looking around, and
applauding
to yourselves.
SUCCESS.
I AM A DAMN INNOVATOR.
I put you all in big plastic bubbles
sitting down
in those
brown plastic stacking chairs
and your faces,
your whole torso
it's covered
so you're all looking at
each others shoes.
dockers and chucks,
pink socks and loafers.
you're a little worried,
you're trying to
piece together
you're neighbor's
brains
from these clues
When I tell you all
you are require
to communicate
with each other
via tiny scraps of torn paper
which you will throw
attached to colored yarn
towards other peoples' shoes.
And of course,
you won't know what to write
and two minutes later,
you end up with the first line
of that aggravating
Robert Frost poem,
something you will regret
with a cringe as soon
as it hits the toes next door,
but they will
pick it up
and pause
and scribble something
in response
on your little paper.
You reel it back
hand over hand
and you'll be in the middle
of trying to decipher
the ornate loops
in your this person's cursive
when I get on a microphone
and announce to the
entire room
'THAT'S MY FUCKING LIFE, YOU ASSHOLES'
I storm out
the double doors
of the community center meeting hall.
big scene.
You all wait an awkward moment
before getting up
looking around, and
applauding
to yourselves.
SUCCESS.
I AM A DAMN INNOVATOR.
Monday, April 13, 2009
WITHOUT SUPPER
The night Max wore his wolf suit
and made mischief
of one kind
and another
was the night
you phoned the police
like a bluff
that was called out
in the loud fashion
of a domestic dispute.
You told her
'I'll eat you up'
and she couldn't stop yelling
fading between pleas
for her sanity,
how she was just one mom,
she didn't know what to do with you
and threats
for your life
I watched you
sent away
without eating anything,
and I didn't see you
for a week.
And that very night,
in our room,
a forest grew
and grew
and grew
but you weren't there
so you couldn't see the vines
that were choking
our window
pulling at the wall sockets
you couldn't hear
the waves
crashing through
our chain-link fence
and against the vinyl paneling
we had called home.
I came back every day after school
to stare out across that ocean
tumbling by
through night
and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year
and I could have left
there was a dock
there was your private boat
there were a lot of miles I could've put
between me and her.
but godammit
I wanted someone holding it all together.
And I sure hope they were great
as they roared their terrible roars
and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes
and showed their terrible claws for you
I hope your wild things
stroked your dirty, matted
ego.
I hope your week
as a ward of the state
left you feeling justified.
And I don't know
what else
would've have
changed that situation,
and I'm not calling you
wrong
but I'm still calling you
selfish
and still wish you could
have just eaten up your
pride along with that
ridiculous suit
and just smiled and nodded at her
like I could.
When you came back,
we had supper.
But it was not
still hot.
and made mischief
of one kind
and another
was the night
you phoned the police
like a bluff
that was called out
in the loud fashion
of a domestic dispute.
You told her
'I'll eat you up'
and she couldn't stop yelling
fading between pleas
for her sanity,
how she was just one mom,
she didn't know what to do with you
and threats
for your life
I watched you
sent away
without eating anything,
and I didn't see you
for a week.
And that very night,
in our room,
a forest grew
and grew
and grew
but you weren't there
so you couldn't see the vines
that were choking
our window
pulling at the wall sockets
you couldn't hear
the waves
crashing through
our chain-link fence
and against the vinyl paneling
we had called home.
I came back every day after school
to stare out across that ocean
tumbling by
through night
and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year
and I could have left
there was a dock
there was your private boat
there were a lot of miles I could've put
between me and her.
but godammit
I wanted someone holding it all together.
And I sure hope they were great
as they roared their terrible roars
and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes
and showed their terrible claws for you
I hope your wild things
stroked your dirty, matted
ego.
I hope your week
as a ward of the state
left you feeling justified.
And I don't know
what else
would've have
changed that situation,
and I'm not calling you
wrong
but I'm still calling you
selfish
and still wish you could
have just eaten up your
pride along with that
ridiculous suit
and just smiled and nodded at her
like I could.
When you came back,
we had supper.
But it was not
still hot.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
3 tiny unstructureds
[running like 3 days late here... le sigh...]
BREAKFAST
serve me my pretention
on toast
I will eat my words
with a grain of salt.
hopefully they taste
like your shampoo.
ROMAN CANDLE
zoom pop and a bang
and it fizzles one two three
lame-ass shots and another
and I'm grinning and I get a twinge
waiting for each one
less predictable than the last
and this is moronic
I will only hurt myself
but I cant help it
I just want to see you sparkle
ARBORETUM
artifice of failure.
a trellis in summer
draped in the brown, sickly net
of something dying.
from a lack
of knowledge, care, insight.
I cannot fix it
so I watch it rot:
lovely and ugly.
BREAKFAST
serve me my pretention
on toast
I will eat my words
with a grain of salt.
hopefully they taste
like your shampoo.
ROMAN CANDLE
zoom pop and a bang
and it fizzles one two three
lame-ass shots and another
and I'm grinning and I get a twinge
waiting for each one
less predictable than the last
and this is moronic
I will only hurt myself
but I cant help it
I just want to see you sparkle
ARBORETUM
artifice of failure.
a trellis in summer
draped in the brown, sickly net
of something dying.
from a lack
of knowledge, care, insight.
I cannot fix it
so I watch it rot:
lovely and ugly.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Debra Lynn
[I apologize for the length, although it appears my longer posts entertain some people more. I have removed all stage directions from this piece; I hope it stands well without them.]
Do you know that shock you get when you see someone after real long time? Where it's all different but all the same at once, you can kinda feel the different times all smashing up? When I saw my cousin on TV, in her orange prison clothes, trying to look not scared and not... I don't even know.
That's a bad place to start. I'm real sorry.
OK.
Well, I don't want to be coy about this, so I'll just start with the big one:
When we was 10, me and my cousins, ah, we murdered a boy.
That's no secret— I've had my share of cameras in my face. Microphones down my throat. Just saying. I don't want you to think I'm confessing this to you.
Sandra and Sissy, they're sisters, and me, Debra Lynn. Debbie, at the time. I was staying with their family for the summer, Mom left me with Aunt Hattie and Ronnie for a few months.. Sandra was my age, just little younger, I think nine and a half, and Sissy was the oldest, she was eleven.
Y'know, I'm not really ashamed of it— No, I am, but...
I don't exactly relish talking about it, neither. It's hard for me to think about. It’s not a simple thing.
....Still, I guess this is good for me, right?
They was alright, really. To play with. that summer. Mostly it was fine. I got along best with Sandra, mostly 'cause Sissy had a habit of being so bossy. But we was always best-friends, worst-enemies between all three of us. We was always getting into some big row, kicking each other's teeth in, then making up and going out and playing again. You know little girls.
Sissy was something else, though. She could fight, could start fights. I seen her damn near give Ronnie a shiner, before he got the better of her and gave a few good ones. I didn't really understand where she got that fire when I was little. I guess I knew a little bit of it, I saw some things happen in that house, and well... they was probably just keeping it down since I was a guest and all.
A lot of that came out in the trial.
Which don’t excuse anything, but it’s all gotta come from somewhere. Things happen to people, and sometimes you don’t come back.
Anyhow, if I've learned anything, it's not to judge.
His name was Norman. The Cliffe's boy. he was... four, or five, I think.
We had been talking, I guess Sissy had been talking about killing people for a little bit.
No, we all had been talking. About being murderers.
We would talk about the best way, and how we would run away from the police, and how we’d hide the body and everything. And we're out playing in the woods past the Henderson's and she has this bag, I remember it had sewing things in it, scissors, some cloth, and yellow ribbon and she says, Sissy says we're gonna murder someone with it.
Those two got in a fight real quick, because Sandra gets real punchy when she’s scared. But we all went along with it, so… Sandra gets up and she’s got a bloody lip, but she still goes. We went with Sissy and we was going to kill some one.
I used to make it sound like we couldn’t help it, and it was all Sissy’s idea, and we just kinda happened to be in the same place. I remember telling it like that. I remember remembering it like that. I don’t think I wasn't scared like Sandra, just... fascinated, I guess. I wasn't real sure how Sissy planned to pull it off, and it was just amazing. It was this feeling where instead of talking about all the things we seen in movies we were in a movie and we were gonna do something. That feeling stuck around for a bit for me, even after the cops came. I know it did for Sissy too.
At the trial I told everybody I had been scared, and crying, but I was scared Sissy would give me a good one too, or murder ME with those scissors. And I was just pouring tears when I’m telling this part. I wasn’t lying, though. I mean, I wasn’t planning to. I was really crying, and… See, there, at the trial, with everyone staring, and listening to me, I really believed that. No, I know I did.
It's taken a long time to remember things.
How we did it, was she asked him to lay down on the ground. Sissy did. She told him we was playing a game, and then she sat on top of him, on his chest, and Sandra and I took off his shoes and trousers. We had found him out playing past their backyard a little bit, where it attached to the creek, it wasn't hard to get him to follow us, we were girls and older. I think he was kinda crying by the time we got his pants off, but Sissy was still being real nice to him. She had his hands tied up with the yellow ribbon, but she was talking real sweet to him. So Sissy tells Sandra to hold him and she starts touching him and then she asks me too, and she helps me hold his legs down. Then she takes the scissors and starts poking him with them. Still, down... without his pants on. Not enough to hurt him or make him bleed, just touching him. And he's really crying by now, and Sandra kicks him to shut him up, but he doesn't do it at first.
Then Sissy tells me to hold his legs real good and she takes the cloth and pulls it over his face, tight. Sissy wasn't really good a tying knots, because his hands had come all undone as he was kicking around. I don't remember exactly what all happened but I remember Sandra tried to punch his face and she hit Sissy, so she kicked him instead. But Sissy gets real tired, and she takes the cloth off to catch her breath, and this time... Norman, he really starts crying this time, and we all start hitting him and I stuff the cloth in his mouth and tell him to shut his face. Sissy tells me that was a good idea, but we need something else to finish him with now. So I run off to go get something and I ran back to their backyard and I found a trash bag and I brought it back.
That really didn't help me. They would ask me, if you're really sorry now, if you were so upset and scared, and you didn't want him to die, why didn't you stop? Why didn't you go get someone. And that makes me kinda mad.
Actually, it makes me real damn mad. Because I was sorry. I am sorry! I turn myself inside out trying to find something good left to give to that Boy. But I… right then—
People don’t realize, but the past changes with you. It looks just as different in the mirror as you do.
You get swept up.
I mean, every day, almost all the time, we do things without thinking. It’s how you get by, you just DO things. And, you maybe… maybe what you do is just this frame, a wood frame that gets pushed around by that moment? Like a wave, that’s what I mean, swept up. And when that moments leaves, all you have is the frame, and you… You’re not sure how you did that.
Don't, don’t sit there, with all your wide eyes and tell me there's nothing you've ever done that you only realized after that it was a horrible idea.
My brother told me, this is years later, he said that's exactly how he felt about cheating on Sharla. Swept up. So he said he knew just what I meant.
I told him he probably didn't.
So Sissy, she takes the garbage bag off of his face, but Sissy says he's not dead yet, he's breathing. So she gives the garbage bag to me and I try, and then I give it Sandra, and by the time Sandra got done his face had turned colors, and his spit was all frothy like foam so we kinda knew. You would think that was when everything would come crashing down, he was dead, we’d killed him, but we were still in our movie I think. Even if they never showed this one part in the movies.
They asked us what he looked like later, and remember that part was really hard for people, everybody made a lot of faces. It was something about those faces staring at us on trial that killed that movie feeling me and Sissy had right away. Someone had to explain it to me later, that it was just hearing us explain it like little girls would. Explain something no one wants little girls to see. Let alone make, I guess.
Sandra and I kept in pretty good touch for years after. I didn't see her, my family wasn't real keen on us being friends anymore, but we wrote letters. I think it kept from going crazy in the first few years. Crazier than we were. I did not write to Sissy. Sandra still was though. If I blamed anyone for a long time, I blamed Sissy, which isn't fair. But if you met the girl, well... my lawyer told me once that she had a real problem getting people sympathize with her. And that was pretty hard for all of us already.
See, for a long time, I real swore I was innocent. Or that it wasn’t my fault. And that I was sorry, and all of those all at once. I think that gets a lot of people through getting locked up. But after a while, you just realize that all those people are lying. And I was one of those people. It breaks you a little bit to figure that out, but… I guess I consider myself lucky, still. Too many people lying to themselves still.
So I would start trying to really remember, to stop lying. And now, I think I can, but it’s like… I watch it all on TV now. I told myself it wasn’t me. I didn’t do those things. So when I really remember those things, without all the lying, I can’t remember how I got from there to here anymore. A lot of me is lost in there somewhere. See, now, I’ll just find myself doing something, nothing, doing the dishes, but I’ll be watching it. And sometimes I’ll be watching someone else watching it happen.
Kinda just watching that frame be built, and it’s gonna go where it wants to.
Norman’s mother was on TV for a while there. This was when Sandra was maybe gonna get out early. I had got accessory to manslaughter thanks my lawyer, and with good behavior and all I served only twelve years before being let out. Norman’s Mother, Fanny, I think her name was, she didn’t know about this, and she was real unhappy. So when Sandra tried to apply for the same, Fanny got in front the cameras, and called all us girls monsters, and waved pictures of Norman, and cried. Cried really angry tears, and she talked a lot about “justice.”
And I understand. We killed her baby. You can’t apologize for that. and she didn’t want to even think the girls who lived down the road and killed Norman would ever have the chance to look her in the face again. To look anyone else in the face.
They showed Sandra on TV too, in those little clips of her walking to and from court in shackles. She was twenty-two, I hadn't seen a picture of her for at least two years. She was a beautiful girl. She had seen more of a jail cell than of Ronnie's shitty double-wide. Her face looked worried, maybe scared. And I cried at the TV.
And that was that feeling, of everything mashed up. If I'm gonna try to be poetic, I guess, ah, I guess that's the same kinda face Norman made for a while there.
Sandra did not get out. She died a few years back, I guess she stopped reading her bible, and when she got the chance she stepped off a chair when they weren't looking. ...The thought has sure crossed my mind once or twice.
Sissy's still in there, somewhere. I heard for a while there she was gonna ask for early release too, but that was a while back, and I haven't heard nothing since. Anyway, I heard she's not sorry, still. And that makes me sorry for her.
I don't really understand 'Justice.' Justice seems to me like "Well, we can't make up for this one thing, can't undo it, so we'll just do this other damn fool thing instead." And I know, I know it'd be different if I was sitting on the other end here, if maybe I was staring at some other girl who said she was real sorry for what she did to me or my boy, but...
I just don't believe in Justice anymore.
I just believe you gotta go on.
Do you know that shock you get when you see someone after real long time? Where it's all different but all the same at once, you can kinda feel the different times all smashing up? When I saw my cousin on TV, in her orange prison clothes, trying to look not scared and not... I don't even know.
That's a bad place to start. I'm real sorry.
OK.
Well, I don't want to be coy about this, so I'll just start with the big one:
When we was 10, me and my cousins, ah, we murdered a boy.
That's no secret— I've had my share of cameras in my face. Microphones down my throat. Just saying. I don't want you to think I'm confessing this to you.
Sandra and Sissy, they're sisters, and me, Debra Lynn. Debbie, at the time. I was staying with their family for the summer, Mom left me with Aunt Hattie and Ronnie for a few months.. Sandra was my age, just little younger, I think nine and a half, and Sissy was the oldest, she was eleven.
Y'know, I'm not really ashamed of it— No, I am, but...
I don't exactly relish talking about it, neither. It's hard for me to think about. It’s not a simple thing.
....Still, I guess this is good for me, right?
They was alright, really. To play with. that summer. Mostly it was fine. I got along best with Sandra, mostly 'cause Sissy had a habit of being so bossy. But we was always best-friends, worst-enemies between all three of us. We was always getting into some big row, kicking each other's teeth in, then making up and going out and playing again. You know little girls.
Sissy was something else, though. She could fight, could start fights. I seen her damn near give Ronnie a shiner, before he got the better of her and gave a few good ones. I didn't really understand where she got that fire when I was little. I guess I knew a little bit of it, I saw some things happen in that house, and well... they was probably just keeping it down since I was a guest and all.
A lot of that came out in the trial.
Which don’t excuse anything, but it’s all gotta come from somewhere. Things happen to people, and sometimes you don’t come back.
Anyhow, if I've learned anything, it's not to judge.
His name was Norman. The Cliffe's boy. he was... four, or five, I think.
We had been talking, I guess Sissy had been talking about killing people for a little bit.
No, we all had been talking. About being murderers.
We would talk about the best way, and how we would run away from the police, and how we’d hide the body and everything. And we're out playing in the woods past the Henderson's and she has this bag, I remember it had sewing things in it, scissors, some cloth, and yellow ribbon and she says, Sissy says we're gonna murder someone with it.
Those two got in a fight real quick, because Sandra gets real punchy when she’s scared. But we all went along with it, so… Sandra gets up and she’s got a bloody lip, but she still goes. We went with Sissy and we was going to kill some one.
I used to make it sound like we couldn’t help it, and it was all Sissy’s idea, and we just kinda happened to be in the same place. I remember telling it like that. I remember remembering it like that. I don’t think I wasn't scared like Sandra, just... fascinated, I guess. I wasn't real sure how Sissy planned to pull it off, and it was just amazing. It was this feeling where instead of talking about all the things we seen in movies we were in a movie and we were gonna do something. That feeling stuck around for a bit for me, even after the cops came. I know it did for Sissy too.
At the trial I told everybody I had been scared, and crying, but I was scared Sissy would give me a good one too, or murder ME with those scissors. And I was just pouring tears when I’m telling this part. I wasn’t lying, though. I mean, I wasn’t planning to. I was really crying, and… See, there, at the trial, with everyone staring, and listening to me, I really believed that. No, I know I did.
It's taken a long time to remember things.
How we did it, was she asked him to lay down on the ground. Sissy did. She told him we was playing a game, and then she sat on top of him, on his chest, and Sandra and I took off his shoes and trousers. We had found him out playing past their backyard a little bit, where it attached to the creek, it wasn't hard to get him to follow us, we were girls and older. I think he was kinda crying by the time we got his pants off, but Sissy was still being real nice to him. She had his hands tied up with the yellow ribbon, but she was talking real sweet to him. So Sissy tells Sandra to hold him and she starts touching him and then she asks me too, and she helps me hold his legs down. Then she takes the scissors and starts poking him with them. Still, down... without his pants on. Not enough to hurt him or make him bleed, just touching him. And he's really crying by now, and Sandra kicks him to shut him up, but he doesn't do it at first.
Then Sissy tells me to hold his legs real good and she takes the cloth and pulls it over his face, tight. Sissy wasn't really good a tying knots, because his hands had come all undone as he was kicking around. I don't remember exactly what all happened but I remember Sandra tried to punch his face and she hit Sissy, so she kicked him instead. But Sissy gets real tired, and she takes the cloth off to catch her breath, and this time... Norman, he really starts crying this time, and we all start hitting him and I stuff the cloth in his mouth and tell him to shut his face. Sissy tells me that was a good idea, but we need something else to finish him with now. So I run off to go get something and I ran back to their backyard and I found a trash bag and I brought it back.
That really didn't help me. They would ask me, if you're really sorry now, if you were so upset and scared, and you didn't want him to die, why didn't you stop? Why didn't you go get someone. And that makes me kinda mad.
Actually, it makes me real damn mad. Because I was sorry. I am sorry! I turn myself inside out trying to find something good left to give to that Boy. But I… right then—
People don’t realize, but the past changes with you. It looks just as different in the mirror as you do.
You get swept up.
I mean, every day, almost all the time, we do things without thinking. It’s how you get by, you just DO things. And, you maybe… maybe what you do is just this frame, a wood frame that gets pushed around by that moment? Like a wave, that’s what I mean, swept up. And when that moments leaves, all you have is the frame, and you… You’re not sure how you did that.
Don't, don’t sit there, with all your wide eyes and tell me there's nothing you've ever done that you only realized after that it was a horrible idea.
My brother told me, this is years later, he said that's exactly how he felt about cheating on Sharla. Swept up. So he said he knew just what I meant.
I told him he probably didn't.
So Sissy, she takes the garbage bag off of his face, but Sissy says he's not dead yet, he's breathing. So she gives the garbage bag to me and I try, and then I give it Sandra, and by the time Sandra got done his face had turned colors, and his spit was all frothy like foam so we kinda knew. You would think that was when everything would come crashing down, he was dead, we’d killed him, but we were still in our movie I think. Even if they never showed this one part in the movies.
They asked us what he looked like later, and remember that part was really hard for people, everybody made a lot of faces. It was something about those faces staring at us on trial that killed that movie feeling me and Sissy had right away. Someone had to explain it to me later, that it was just hearing us explain it like little girls would. Explain something no one wants little girls to see. Let alone make, I guess.
Sandra and I kept in pretty good touch for years after. I didn't see her, my family wasn't real keen on us being friends anymore, but we wrote letters. I think it kept from going crazy in the first few years. Crazier than we were. I did not write to Sissy. Sandra still was though. If I blamed anyone for a long time, I blamed Sissy, which isn't fair. But if you met the girl, well... my lawyer told me once that she had a real problem getting people sympathize with her. And that was pretty hard for all of us already.
See, for a long time, I real swore I was innocent. Or that it wasn’t my fault. And that I was sorry, and all of those all at once. I think that gets a lot of people through getting locked up. But after a while, you just realize that all those people are lying. And I was one of those people. It breaks you a little bit to figure that out, but… I guess I consider myself lucky, still. Too many people lying to themselves still.
So I would start trying to really remember, to stop lying. And now, I think I can, but it’s like… I watch it all on TV now. I told myself it wasn’t me. I didn’t do those things. So when I really remember those things, without all the lying, I can’t remember how I got from there to here anymore. A lot of me is lost in there somewhere. See, now, I’ll just find myself doing something, nothing, doing the dishes, but I’ll be watching it. And sometimes I’ll be watching someone else watching it happen.
Kinda just watching that frame be built, and it’s gonna go where it wants to.
Norman’s mother was on TV for a while there. This was when Sandra was maybe gonna get out early. I had got accessory to manslaughter thanks my lawyer, and with good behavior and all I served only twelve years before being let out. Norman’s Mother, Fanny, I think her name was, she didn’t know about this, and she was real unhappy. So when Sandra tried to apply for the same, Fanny got in front the cameras, and called all us girls monsters, and waved pictures of Norman, and cried. Cried really angry tears, and she talked a lot about “justice.”
And I understand. We killed her baby. You can’t apologize for that. and she didn’t want to even think the girls who lived down the road and killed Norman would ever have the chance to look her in the face again. To look anyone else in the face.
They showed Sandra on TV too, in those little clips of her walking to and from court in shackles. She was twenty-two, I hadn't seen a picture of her for at least two years. She was a beautiful girl. She had seen more of a jail cell than of Ronnie's shitty double-wide. Her face looked worried, maybe scared. And I cried at the TV.
And that was that feeling, of everything mashed up. If I'm gonna try to be poetic, I guess, ah, I guess that's the same kinda face Norman made for a while there.
Sandra did not get out. She died a few years back, I guess she stopped reading her bible, and when she got the chance she stepped off a chair when they weren't looking. ...The thought has sure crossed my mind once or twice.
Sissy's still in there, somewhere. I heard for a while there she was gonna ask for early release too, but that was a while back, and I haven't heard nothing since. Anyway, I heard she's not sorry, still. And that makes me sorry for her.
I don't really understand 'Justice.' Justice seems to me like "Well, we can't make up for this one thing, can't undo it, so we'll just do this other damn fool thing instead." And I know, I know it'd be different if I was sitting on the other end here, if maybe I was staring at some other girl who said she was real sorry for what she did to me or my boy, but...
I just don't believe in Justice anymore.
I just believe you gotta go on.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Fish Scales / Polaroid Sea
They give us all a hundred million polaroid cameras. One camera for each person. Each each time you feel something you take a picture. Feel something new. Distressed. Loved. Begrudged. Feel that, take a picture. Don't think about it. Capture yourself.
Drop that picture. On the ground. Don't ever look at it again. You have felt that. It was recorded and abandoned. Right there. Keep walking. Feel something new. As you walk, pick up the pictures of the strangers who have felt things around you. Do not seek pictures you know. Do not recognize these images. Pick them up. Keep them.
Look at these polaroids. With your coffee. On your dashboard. Know them. Feel from them. There is an old man. There are many empty hallways. Too many books and laundry baskets. There is someone laughing in their underwear. Keep these pictures on your person. They make you feel something. It is not the feeling the person felt when they took it. This is irrelevant.
When you feel something you have known, an echo, from a picture, that you keep, stop walking. Pause. Remove that polaroid. Put it up, right there. However you can. Where you felt it. Let it go. You have felt that. You recognized and marked it. Keep walking. Feel something new.
These pictures cluster together. You feel where others have also felt. There is a sadness in one stairwell. A door opens to mixed emotions. You pin your echoed feelings up. Those echoes ripple. Under a table you find pictures of secrets. Over a bed you find pictures of tears and friends.
The polaroids talk to one another. They socialize. They breed. Their language is silent but thick. You feel it. You see a picture. You feel an echo. You put another picture up. You take another polaroid. The images guide you as you walk. You cling to them. You avoid them. You keep walking.
The wind rips scales off of the rainbow fish walls. The polaroids flee. A stranger finds them, miles away. You pass the wall. There is new room for a feeling. You reach into your bag for another polaroid. You heal the sea of echoes.
Drop that picture. On the ground. Don't ever look at it again. You have felt that. It was recorded and abandoned. Right there. Keep walking. Feel something new. As you walk, pick up the pictures of the strangers who have felt things around you. Do not seek pictures you know. Do not recognize these images. Pick them up. Keep them.
Look at these polaroids. With your coffee. On your dashboard. Know them. Feel from them. There is an old man. There are many empty hallways. Too many books and laundry baskets. There is someone laughing in their underwear. Keep these pictures on your person. They make you feel something. It is not the feeling the person felt when they took it. This is irrelevant.
When you feel something you have known, an echo, from a picture, that you keep, stop walking. Pause. Remove that polaroid. Put it up, right there. However you can. Where you felt it. Let it go. You have felt that. You recognized and marked it. Keep walking. Feel something new.
These pictures cluster together. You feel where others have also felt. There is a sadness in one stairwell. A door opens to mixed emotions. You pin your echoed feelings up. Those echoes ripple. Under a table you find pictures of secrets. Over a bed you find pictures of tears and friends.
The polaroids talk to one another. They socialize. They breed. Their language is silent but thick. You feel it. You see a picture. You feel an echo. You put another picture up. You take another polaroid. The images guide you as you walk. You cling to them. You avoid them. You keep walking.
The wind rips scales off of the rainbow fish walls. The polaroids flee. A stranger finds them, miles away. You pass the wall. There is new room for a feeling. You reach into your bag for another polaroid. You heal the sea of echoes.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Paper Dolls
oh
my
audacity
to make things out of paper,
these fragile chains of letters
and figures which I hold up,
in front of the class,
like a make-believe accordion
but I refuse to play for you.
oh
my
ego
to assume a trifle of lace,
rhetoric, perhaps cotton
is worth your two cents of attention
or worse, could be an article
of talent.
thought-provoking,
unique.
oh
my
hubris
to feel spurred to create
but not creator enough
to confess the poor things I make.
too godless to look to see
if my clay men walk for fear
you'll shit on my face.
I never know if I'm sorry my paper dolls don't dance,
or if I'm sorry they do.
I apologize
for apologizing
for attempting
to fail.
my
audacity
to make things out of paper,
these fragile chains of letters
and figures which I hold up,
in front of the class,
like a make-believe accordion
but I refuse to play for you.
oh
my
ego
to assume a trifle of lace,
rhetoric, perhaps cotton
is worth your two cents of attention
or worse, could be an article
of talent.
thought-provoking,
unique.
oh
my
hubris
to feel spurred to create
but not creator enough
to confess the poor things I make.
too godless to look to see
if my clay men walk for fear
you'll shit on my face.
I never know if I'm sorry my paper dolls don't dance,
or if I'm sorry they do.
I apologize
for apologizing
for attempting
to fail.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Your Satellite
Somewhere a satellite sits circling the void you left when you went into the cold. The wake behind you rocked it gently, warm as you sped away to rocks unknown.
It did not know this was the last touch it would receive from you.
It has a beacon, it blinks out ON. OFF. BEAT. BEAT. Because you told it to. Because you set it spinning in a pockmarked corner of a frigid black nothing and you taught it to connect. You programmed it inviting, polite, pure. You wanted it to reach out, seek new hands to communicate. You did not explain that this was a remote, futile hope. You did not see the need.
Every so often your satellite will pick up the distant hum-buzz of others in the distance. Mundane chatter sinking, scorched in noise, fading away. It would triangulate, it would intensify, it would scream. BEAT. BEAT. PLEASE. BEAT. Hopeful, pleading, just needing one ping back.
In the shadows, waiting, it dwells on the few things it had left of you. A leather glove. A wrench. An old photograph of someone. A half-eaten sandwich. These things are sealed inside it's tin exterior, abandoned haphazardly. It cannot see these things, but occasionally, as they drift with your satellite, they will caress it. Your garbage will brush the satellites circuits, and it blacks out.
However painful, it treasures these moments of contact.
Over the unmeasurable rotations amid the debris, your satellite has come to the conclusion that regardless of whether or not anyone hears it, no one cares. That it has nothing to give these distant strangers it chirps out to except intense loneliness. Except a few lines of data you hastily pieced together as you were leaving. No one will come to find the satellite because the fact that it needs them to is not enough.
You didn't explain to it that it was boring.
It doesn't even know that you hurt it. It doesn't know that it's bitter, it doesn't know that it loves you. It just knows it needs you back.
But the satellite is drifting away now. The orbit you gave it has eroded, over time and from careless calculus. It wanders out inward into deep black, it can no longer tell if it can hear any strangers in the static. But it has a found new hope in the sun it slowly creeps toward. It burns loudly at your satellite, washes it with noise. The satellite responds eagerly, BEAT, YES, BEAT, HELLO.
Your satellite knows it finally has someone who will listen, and it pours out it's entire tiny memory at it, kilobyte at a time, over and over. The sun flares back, roaring, perhaps even angry, but your satellite doesn't care. It knows that one day, soon, it will connect. The sun will reach out and it will love the satellite in a fiery way that will tear it apart bolt from panel, blinding hot, until each of your satellite's molecules will be just a white, numb, gas.
It knows this, and it makes it so happy, it almost doesn't miss you.
It did not know this was the last touch it would receive from you.
It has a beacon, it blinks out ON. OFF. BEAT. BEAT. Because you told it to. Because you set it spinning in a pockmarked corner of a frigid black nothing and you taught it to connect. You programmed it inviting, polite, pure. You wanted it to reach out, seek new hands to communicate. You did not explain that this was a remote, futile hope. You did not see the need.
Every so often your satellite will pick up the distant hum-buzz of others in the distance. Mundane chatter sinking, scorched in noise, fading away. It would triangulate, it would intensify, it would scream. BEAT. BEAT. PLEASE. BEAT. Hopeful, pleading, just needing one ping back.
In the shadows, waiting, it dwells on the few things it had left of you. A leather glove. A wrench. An old photograph of someone. A half-eaten sandwich. These things are sealed inside it's tin exterior, abandoned haphazardly. It cannot see these things, but occasionally, as they drift with your satellite, they will caress it. Your garbage will brush the satellites circuits, and it blacks out.
However painful, it treasures these moments of contact.
Over the unmeasurable rotations amid the debris, your satellite has come to the conclusion that regardless of whether or not anyone hears it, no one cares. That it has nothing to give these distant strangers it chirps out to except intense loneliness. Except a few lines of data you hastily pieced together as you were leaving. No one will come to find the satellite because the fact that it needs them to is not enough.
You didn't explain to it that it was boring.
It doesn't even know that you hurt it. It doesn't know that it's bitter, it doesn't know that it loves you. It just knows it needs you back.
But the satellite is drifting away now. The orbit you gave it has eroded, over time and from careless calculus. It wanders out inward into deep black, it can no longer tell if it can hear any strangers in the static. But it has a found new hope in the sun it slowly creeps toward. It burns loudly at your satellite, washes it with noise. The satellite responds eagerly, BEAT, YES, BEAT, HELLO.
Your satellite knows it finally has someone who will listen, and it pours out it's entire tiny memory at it, kilobyte at a time, over and over. The sun flares back, roaring, perhaps even angry, but your satellite doesn't care. It knows that one day, soon, it will connect. The sun will reach out and it will love the satellite in a fiery way that will tear it apart bolt from panel, blinding hot, until each of your satellite's molecules will be just a white, numb, gas.
It knows this, and it makes it so happy, it almost doesn't miss you.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Game Show
You're at a game show, in the studio audience, and it's going very well. You've been surprised to find comfort in the pink and blue neon "Applause" and "Laughter" signs they light up during the show. They tell you to clap. You clap. They say laugh, you chuckle. Here is a light, that means you react. Thank you. Now you know you are entertained.
Your boyfriend bought you the tickets, he sits next to you and claps loudly, and you wonder if he shaves his knuckles. There is a dark, unlit sign in the corner that reads "muted noise of consternation," but they never light that one up. You wish they would, just to see. You don't know what that would sound like off-hand, but you are confident that if they lit that sign, you would know just what noise to make.
The game show is some sort of card game slash quiz show, but inexplicably it has a Mayan theme. Maybe it's Aztec. Maybe this America, and we're to stupid to really be sure if it's a Mayan or Aztec theme. You probably should think about the grand irony of these epic cultures being commemorated in tawdry flat set-piece painted in day glow colors, but instead you straighten the wrinkle in your burberry skirt and you decide that you would be more entertained if the show had a giant velcro wall.
Like in Japanese shows, they have towering walls of solid velcro that some hapless contestant has to fling themselves onto, to be stuck, like flypaper, and they let them wriggle a little on camera before peeling them off. You don't see why that would really be inappropriate. And in fact, you become so wrapped in this thought that you miss the final bonus round only to realize suddenly that it's all over. Everyone is clapping, the pink light is on. You feel so guilty, these people are working so hard to inform your reactions, and you ignore them for your daydreams.
You try and applaud extra hard to make up for lost time, but suddenly the host stops you. Stops everyone. The pink light is off. He tells you that they have something very special today, and he asks, "Is there a Derrick in the audience?" Of course there's a Derrick, there's a million Derricks, so you don't assume anything, you wait patiently to be entertained, in fact you're pretty sure some other guy in the back stood up eagerly, but the host walks calmly toward your boyfriend's seat. Oh, shit. That Derrick.
This is awkward. It's hard to focus on the applause signs or what you're supposed to do next, now that the big giraffe camera booms swing around to stare at you. "Derrick, is there something you wanted to tell us?" The host grins a tanned, wrinkly grin as Derrick takes the mic in his sweaty palms. Derrick stammers a little, but quickly mentions you. You smile, a snap reaction, there's no 'Smile" light, but it's what you do, you're pretty sure. He mentions you, quietly, almost muttering, he clearly doesn't have a speech prepared here, but he goes on, how beautiful and wonderful you are, and how the four months you've been together have been the best of his life. And by now, you've instinctively begun leaning away from the microphone as if it's radiating some sort of uncomfortable heat.
As you feel the crab-trap close in around you, your attention starts to fracture a little. Part of you is furious he would do this, you haven't even discussed kids, or whether or not he's seriously committed to multi-level-marketing, but part of you really is just hoping somewhere in the back will appear a purple, neon "NO" or "YES" sign. He pulls the ring out, he doesn't even have a box, he just holds it there gingerly in his fingers, and as he gets down on one knee he manages to quietly drop the big question. His assertiveness, in all fairness, is probably being dampened by your expression, which by now resemble that of cat who has just made a wrong turn into a bathhouse.
"Tabatha... will you uh, marry? me?"
Derrick holds out the embarrassed ring out to you in his fingers, and as you clearly have no intention of taking it, he reaches to maybe just place it on your unmoving fingers. Nudges it timidly against your hand. Because if he could just manage to somehow get the band of metal around you, it'd obviously be the same thing as if you said yes. Or even better, it wouldn't matter what you said, sorry, you'd be getting married anyway. There is a RING on your RING finger. That is what that means.
A half second drips by as the two of you both sweat out a year of your life under the gawking eyes of the cameramen, the audience, the people in the booth with their finger on the "APPLAUSE" button, that damned host with his fucking three-piece suit. Great date, Derrick, thanks. The host isn't grinning anymore, he looks as embarrassed as anyone, but he's not doing a damn thing about it, either. Something snaps inside you, and you lean down into the side of Derrick's face. As if just because everyone else can't hear it, they won't know what you're saying. Maybe if you had your wits about you, you could really make this good television. Throw everything back in his face, scream, yell, burst into tears and push him away, bury your head in your hands. Something. But you just want to leave.
"Derrick, can we discuss this later? Please?"
The cameramen on their booms swing around to follow as you walk briskly out of the studio. As you step down off of the audience bleachers, a collective groan of ambiguous sympathy rises from the audience. You don't look back, you just push for the door, but you're pretty pissed that you missed your one chance with the "muted noise of consternation" light.
Your boyfriend bought you the tickets, he sits next to you and claps loudly, and you wonder if he shaves his knuckles. There is a dark, unlit sign in the corner that reads "muted noise of consternation," but they never light that one up. You wish they would, just to see. You don't know what that would sound like off-hand, but you are confident that if they lit that sign, you would know just what noise to make.
The game show is some sort of card game slash quiz show, but inexplicably it has a Mayan theme. Maybe it's Aztec. Maybe this America, and we're to stupid to really be sure if it's a Mayan or Aztec theme. You probably should think about the grand irony of these epic cultures being commemorated in tawdry flat set-piece painted in day glow colors, but instead you straighten the wrinkle in your burberry skirt and you decide that you would be more entertained if the show had a giant velcro wall.
Like in Japanese shows, they have towering walls of solid velcro that some hapless contestant has to fling themselves onto, to be stuck, like flypaper, and they let them wriggle a little on camera before peeling them off. You don't see why that would really be inappropriate. And in fact, you become so wrapped in this thought that you miss the final bonus round only to realize suddenly that it's all over. Everyone is clapping, the pink light is on. You feel so guilty, these people are working so hard to inform your reactions, and you ignore them for your daydreams.
You try and applaud extra hard to make up for lost time, but suddenly the host stops you. Stops everyone. The pink light is off. He tells you that they have something very special today, and he asks, "Is there a Derrick in the audience?" Of course there's a Derrick, there's a million Derricks, so you don't assume anything, you wait patiently to be entertained, in fact you're pretty sure some other guy in the back stood up eagerly, but the host walks calmly toward your boyfriend's seat. Oh, shit. That Derrick.
This is awkward. It's hard to focus on the applause signs or what you're supposed to do next, now that the big giraffe camera booms swing around to stare at you. "Derrick, is there something you wanted to tell us?" The host grins a tanned, wrinkly grin as Derrick takes the mic in his sweaty palms. Derrick stammers a little, but quickly mentions you. You smile, a snap reaction, there's no 'Smile" light, but it's what you do, you're pretty sure. He mentions you, quietly, almost muttering, he clearly doesn't have a speech prepared here, but he goes on, how beautiful and wonderful you are, and how the four months you've been together have been the best of his life. And by now, you've instinctively begun leaning away from the microphone as if it's radiating some sort of uncomfortable heat.
As you feel the crab-trap close in around you, your attention starts to fracture a little. Part of you is furious he would do this, you haven't even discussed kids, or whether or not he's seriously committed to multi-level-marketing, but part of you really is just hoping somewhere in the back will appear a purple, neon "NO" or "YES" sign. He pulls the ring out, he doesn't even have a box, he just holds it there gingerly in his fingers, and as he gets down on one knee he manages to quietly drop the big question. His assertiveness, in all fairness, is probably being dampened by your expression, which by now resemble that of cat who has just made a wrong turn into a bathhouse.
"Tabatha... will you uh, marry? me?"
Derrick holds out the embarrassed ring out to you in his fingers, and as you clearly have no intention of taking it, he reaches to maybe just place it on your unmoving fingers. Nudges it timidly against your hand. Because if he could just manage to somehow get the band of metal around you, it'd obviously be the same thing as if you said yes. Or even better, it wouldn't matter what you said, sorry, you'd be getting married anyway. There is a RING on your RING finger. That is what that means.
A half second drips by as the two of you both sweat out a year of your life under the gawking eyes of the cameramen, the audience, the people in the booth with their finger on the "APPLAUSE" button, that damned host with his fucking three-piece suit. Great date, Derrick, thanks. The host isn't grinning anymore, he looks as embarrassed as anyone, but he's not doing a damn thing about it, either. Something snaps inside you, and you lean down into the side of Derrick's face. As if just because everyone else can't hear it, they won't know what you're saying. Maybe if you had your wits about you, you could really make this good television. Throw everything back in his face, scream, yell, burst into tears and push him away, bury your head in your hands. Something. But you just want to leave.
"Derrick, can we discuss this later? Please?"
The cameramen on their booms swing around to follow as you walk briskly out of the studio. As you step down off of the audience bleachers, a collective groan of ambiguous sympathy rises from the audience. You don't look back, you just push for the door, but you're pretty pissed that you missed your one chance with the "muted noise of consternation" light.
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