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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Flash Fire

That red petticoat
Flashed from under grandma’s skirt
Like the flicker of a cardinal’s wing,
Against white snow in a winter wood.

That red petticoat,
Six yards of scarlet taffeta,
Scalloped ‘round the hem
With white lace and satin bows,
Put a strut in grandma’s walk
That made her silver curls
Bounce and giggle on her head.

Grandma said red is the devil’s color,
And it was the devil made her buy it
When she spied it on the rack
Among the weary whites and pale pastels.
Grandma said it caught her eye
Like a bullfighter’s cape,
And she charged that rack,
Head down and nostrils flaring,
Grabbed that petticoat
And turned her back forever
On baby blue and powder pink,
Those soft-hued shades old ladies wear
To match their tinted hair.

Grandma said when she wore
That red petticoat
She thought of gypsy girls
With the rosy flush of campfires
Creeping over their copper-colored skin,
Or, can-can dancers high-kicking
Across a stage in starched crinolines.

That red petticoat,
Some might say,
Was as out of place on grandma
As a blush on a burlesque dancer.
But when grandma wore
That red petticoat,
She shot off sparks like a firecracker,
And we leaped around her
Like little tongues of flame
At the edge of a flash fire.

Copyright Susan Matthewson 2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

An Irreparable Earthquake in the Fabric of Friendship

Since birth I’ve been working on a patchwork quilt of my life. It’s colorful, it’s fun, and I love looking back on it, but it’s even more fun to create the new pieces, the additions, the new experiences that add to my already beautiful quilt. I’ve be doing this for barely over two decades, and hopefully I’ll have lots more years to put this thing together. In some places the stitches are rough and in some places the fabric’s a bit tattered or frayed, but it’s all coming together, and in retrospect, it all looks quite good. I have to admit that there are some lumps sewn in that I figured will need to be aspirated when they get out of hand, meaning too many failed relationships or other things that have me hiding under it rather than constructing further pieces. Perhaps some day I might turn to therapy or spirituality or some other form of mental, emotion, or spiritual dry-cleaning where the whole beautiful mess will be examined and analyzed square by square.

But I don’t know what to do with the square I am currently in the process of constructing. What am I supposed to do when a friend my own age dies? He was only 22. Really 22 and one day when death intruded, taking my friend without permission or rhyme or reason and blotting out the fantasy that I will live forever. But worse, as I looked back at my beautiful quilt I see a gaping hole where he had been, where the times spent, the laughter and the ‘oh my Gods’ used to reside. The fabric, ripped and flapping in the wind looks so raw and I don’t know how to fix it. Those memories – my first kiss, though forced in a playful and fun way, and the dozens of others that he tried to plant on my unsuspecting mouth, long conversations trying to understand this passionate, reckless nut but enjoying his fun loving attitudes and love of life. All my memories are now ghosts that haunt me and force me to question my life. It disturbs my peace of mind and makes me not want to ever sleep again as sleep is just the bedfellow of death. It disturbs me as do lesser questions like why people my age are getting married and having children. Things no longer make sense. Guilt and fear and hopelessness are rearing their unavoidable heads.

I never really thought about it, but I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even see him again. I knew that leaving for college three thousand miles away was not just a new beginning, but an ending. Time does tear people away from each other, and that’s not really a sad thing, it’s just part of life. But then we get a call, or read Facebook entries and we think we are dreaming, but we are not. We have, ourselves, crashed at one-hundred miles per hour into the wall we did not see coming. Our tears are bad enough, but the tears of the ones who stayed close, the tears of guys we never thought we’d see cry, those tears dissolve the stitches that held together the pieces of our together past that are now a gaping wound as we search for reasons that we know we will never find. I begin to place a new patch, but that patch will never quite fit properly, and every time I look at it, it will remind me that things I thought were permanent are not, and that people I love or even just enjoy will not be around forever.

Only the Forever stamp is forever. Ten years from now, if I still have those stamps, I can use them when a letter costs a dollar or less or more, but ten years from now I have no idea how many of those colorful and wonderful patches will be shredded or changed irreparably, or even if my own quilt will still exist on this earth. But I don’t have too much time to ponder these things because, life, mice, and midterms intrude – and maybe that’s good.

Inspired by recent events and the lovely no-longer-teens who are in my life and copyrighted 2010 by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

Monday, March 15, 2010

Larry Lee's Orange County Story

by Susan Cameron

Back in the early 60’s I had a house in Dana Point.
You remember the movie “On Any Sunday”?
Remember the opening scene, kids on Sting Ray bikes,
Tearing through the dirt? My house was just behind them.
There was room then, room to play then, room to move then,
Space and freedom, not house house house as far as the eye can see.

We were young men, swimming in easy money.
We owned our own businesses -- we were 22, 23, 24 years old.
We had wives and kids and houses and motorcycles and race cars.
No big marina in Dana Point then, we surfed there then.
Hobie had his surfboard shop in his two-car garage.
Killer Dana – well, there’s a lot of hype,
Things always seem bigger and better after they’re gone –
But the surfing really was great. Orange County was great. Life was great.

Everybody played back then! I remember
The kite contest at Easter, where Blue Lantern ended by the headlands,
A contest for grownups, catered by Chart House and Ancient Mariner,
A bathtub full of booze with plastic cups for dipping.
Can you even imagine that today?
Liability! Lawyers! Lawsuits!
But there we were, hundreds of people partying, laughing, dancing to the
Mexican Fighter Pilot Mariachi Band. You heard me!
Crazy bastards in kamikaze helmets and goggles, dress whites,
Gold-braided epaulets, riding in,
Playing mariachi music on horseback. Great guys!
Did I ever tell you about the German tank my buddy the importer bought?
Tearing around Dana Point in a tank, sixty miles an hour in the dirt, with
Buckwheat the pit bull up the hatch wearing sunglasses and a red scarf!
We played back then, didn’t take life so seriously back then –
We were winning!

But then –

The developers bought off the county, threw up stucco wall to wall.
The grim-faced yuppies swarmed in to buy their house house house
And filled the harbor with their boat boat boat. That killed surfing.
No more motorcycles in the dirt because there was no more dirt.
The times changed. The people changed. The culture changed.

Hollywood came to Orange County with their shitbox ethics,
Running scams, snaking other men’s wives, breaking up homes,
Greed and evil running rampant.

No more easy money, no more free time, no more camaraderie,
No more young guys doing honest business with each other,
No more friendship, being playful and having fun.

Money dried up
Fun dried up
Land got built up
Harbor got filled up
People got split up
I got fed up
And got the fuck out of there.

But I remember Dana Point.

And every so often I watch “On Any Sunday” and see what used to be.
The place was a young man's paradise.
I was one of the lucky ones.
I feel sorry for the young now --
They don’t have what we had
And they never will.


Susan Cameron (courtesy of Larry Lee), copyright 2010

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Turning Nineteen

A change of pace –a little bit about Cassie’s history.

October 5, 1980

Cassie is curled up on the threadbare red sofa with a Diet Pepsi and last month’s People magazine open to a page she doesn’t see. Her eyes are on the door where any minute she knows Billy will walk into the tiny Chicago apartment. It’s nine at night on her nineteenth birthday and they are going out to celebrate as soon as he comes home. She’s been waiting for three hours beside the phone.

She’s beginning to get that feeling she always has when Billy’s late – that he’s taken off on one of his adventures again. That’s what he calls these vanishing acts. Adventures. He will disappear for days at a time without telling her where he’s going, or even that he is going. She’ll call his friends and his sister, but no one will know where he is. They’ll all say don’t worry, Cass, you know Billy. He’ll come back when he’s ready, he always does. So she will try to relax and go to her job and pick at her lunch and hope that he’ll be sitting on the front porch when she gets home. Then one day there he’ll be, acting like he’s only been gone to work for the day and has come home for dinner.

“Hi babe. I forgot my keys,” he’ll say with a shining smile and no sign of apology in his gray-blue eyes. She’ll light into him, so angry and so glad to see him, then angry again.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she’ll say. “Don’t go off and leave me here to worry about where you are and whether you’re even alive and if you’re coming back to me. Don’t leave me all alone, Billy. Promise me.”

“Sure, I promise, babe,” he’ll tell her, brushing back that curl of caramel hair that always falls in his eyes. “We’re in this together. You know that.”

He’ll give her a gentle kiss and put his arms around her, holding her in that way he has of making her feel safe. She’ll kiss him back, reluctant at first to give in to him again, then letting go of her anger altogether. Skipping dinner, they will end up in the bedroom making love like they always do and fall asleep in each other’s arms. But in the middle of the night Cassie will wake up with a gnawing hunger, lie awake listening to Billy’s faint even breaths and wonder what she’s doing there.

Tonight, on her nineteenth birthday, waiting in her good dress for Billy to come home, she knows she can only depend on herself. She thought she could build a new family with Billy to replace the one she ran from two years before, but she was wrong. She is her only family.

At midnight she falls asleep on the sofa, tears forming a crust on her eyes. Tomorrow she will quit her job, put all her belongings in one small blue suitcase and take the bus to California, as far away from here as she can get.

Copyright 2010 by Liz Zuercher

Monday, March 1, 2010

Televangelists

Devil-chasing, scripture-shouting shamans,
Their styrofoam hair cupped over soft, fleshy faces,
Bleat out blessings in between begging for checks.
Their plucked and powdered wives
Sit beside them with glazed eyes and vacant smiles,
Their faith flowing from weeping eyes.
Like old cheerleaders gone to seed,
Transported from one field of glory to another,
They lead the fans in hallelujahs now
Instead of hurrahs and hip-hip-hoorays.
Their husbands vow to save the sinners
With donated dollars from all the devoted
Who get the privilege of spiritual participation
Without the burden of economic partnership.

Like travel agents for Christ,
They plan devil-hunting safaris
For the faithful who are flush
With spiritual assets of the hard cash variety.
Why run with the bulls in Pamplona
When you can chase the devil from Rome?
Those believers whose balance sheets
Fall short of a full-price tour should not despair.
Even a minimum donation merits a love gift—
This month the faithful can choose between
A weeping cross key chain
Or a glow-in-the-dark “Faith” mug.
God’s glory is available to all.

 
Copyright 2010 Susan Matthewson