Random Freewrite 2: Week of 4/17/11

Hiroshima

Draft 4 

The crane calls me home. Hiroshima,

with checkered mats of loose-leaf green,

fed by snow and rain. Spring yields

and summer rains pelt my newborn rice into coin.

Aged farmers in pairs, in their married cadence

bent through years into jackknifed broken form,

picking rice to turn to coin.

They call me home. Hiroshima,

pink petal silks in spring cobweb

all the patchwork market ways.

Folding willow trees line the streets

and sway like silk creased gowns.

Red bobbins and violet combs,

for black-haired bonnets in elegant form,

dress daughters in wedding folds.

August blends in with paper twists

folded up in rainbow stuttered steps.

Paper cranes recalling bombs.

—They said it was the rain.

They said it was the seeping wind.—

Outside the park of hope and peace,

where dignitaries and somber tourists drift,

old buildings and their hollowed vertebrae

stands upward bare and breaks the catacomb of the sky,

like tree limbs sketch-marking the winter grays.

Color only comes in paper, the twists of crane

line building bones, one thousand strong in rainbow squares.

Paper prayers for shadows burrowed in cement walls,

where the shapes of heads and shoulders linger,

flash-burnt like human pottery.

If I could but burrow out from casket walls

sons and daughters buried too short, too young,

or too long, in bleeding skins and ash-burnt lungs.

August lingers every year,

at once too anonymous and too precise.

These days only end in breathing,

—once in, now out, again and out—

till night folds in and ribs unclench.

—I found it was the rain.

I found it was the culling wind.—

The crane calls me home from this.

With ruffled mask of grey-white rust

she feeds me in the winter rain

and carpets of snow unfolding across my vertebrae

to seal asleep until I begin again. Spring yields

and summer rains pelting newborn rice into coin.

The broken cadence of my farmers, aged in twos,

turning green rice carpets into coin.

I am as was, will be.

Of wet carton carpet greens,

pink cobweb grace and folding trees.

I lie awake

with my paper rainbow folded wings.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 4/17/11

Antoine Dodson Doodles in Art Class
Revision #4


My portrait mugs the internet.
An overgrown meme, a bias breeder.
I’m out of bounds, they say, irregular to common taste.
Hollywood’s old Sissy back in prime time luminosity.
Sexless and two-toned like a Top Model menagerie
cut loose for time, spectacle and boneless design.
A face in bent motif, backdraft hair, intrepid teeth,
this body freefalling from a crack binge high.
Ungainly gesticulations maim my daddy,
like he’s in sync with me, too flap, too slack.
They don’t know he don’t know me
for this very portrait of me: gender bent,
this dick in crayon-wobbled lines.
Every day I happen again.
Woman-ish. Again. “Effeminate.”
My daddy’s name for me, not mine.
Paint me a face, Rembrandt. Interpret my cacophony.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 4/10/11

This is part of that story I've been re-writing over and over. Some parts are becoming clearer, but this particular section feels too expositional, although (hopefully) not as melodramatic as the second draft was. I'm not sure if this is going in the final draft (that is, of the third draft) or not. I still have a lot to work on. I have a feeling this story is going to be a long-term project, but I'm really feeling it and I hope I get a complete draft done at least by Fall semester.

==========

She had tried all that she knew to try, from tactics she’d happily embraced and those she’d believed were closeted deep away when she had married woman, not man. She had spoken directly, saying, “I’m not happy here,” and spent hours with Blair roadside in silence that could be taken as admonishment or consent, but Blair had never sought to discover which. She had helped Blair search the shrine’s archives and question any passengers that spent the night if they knew the secrets of the ghost; she had withheld nothing from Blair, yet Blair had yet to notice her hand on pages turned or her voice on stories shared. She had worn gorgeous dresses—such as she had—that a year ago would have held Blair’s eyes enticed, and in anger at her want, she had spent hours wearing even less, to catch if only a single glimpse. Blair only seemed aware on nights like these, and for scant days after, on the high of a sighting. But aware only of skin and form, it seemed, having lost translation of Harlow’s voice and face.

“I am more fully a woman now than I was ever before allowed to be,” Harlow had written her sister a year and two months ago. “Tell me everything about it,” her sister had replied. “Let me live through you!” But Harlow had kept silent now for eight months, saving her sister’s continued letters in a small lock box beneath the bed, which she and Blair shared every night but barely touched and only after Blair had been satisfied elsewhere, by books or stories or ghosts in the sky. “I am more specifically a woman now than I had ever before allowed myself to be.” She kept the unsent letters in the box, where Blair would never even guess to look. Some she destroyed in the hearth as soon as she’d written them, revolted by her tears. She could not bring herself to record in ink, “I was wrong about our sex.”

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 4/10/11

(Yes, I'm still doing this. Don't ask me why. I don't know why. It's silly, and I know it's silly.)

Two Tails

an episode

(4)

(Some time later.)

Night had fallen. It was raining, too. Little more than a drizzle.

The house seemed quite tiny, with some windows glowing orange and some windows quite dark.

They could see it from where they were, on the faint slope of the schoolyard.

The Sheep sat on eir rump, resting eir aching feet. The Dog stood next to em, slightly in front. Alert. Eir tail was a stiff line curling slightly over eir back. Eir ears twitched. Eir eyes were set wide and staring, however, down at the house with the tree.

Somehow, it seemed a little wrong. Blocky and hard.

Home had called em all along, but now that they had made it there, ey couldn't find its scent.

The Sheep was very still. Slumping. Eir wool drooped over eir eyes and across eir hooves. Eir head hung low. Ey looked weary and wet.

Very quietly, the Dog sidled up to em and slid down on eir own rump. Eir hip brushed along the Sheep's shoulder, and when ey sat, ey sat on a hoof. The hoof didn't move or seem to mind. The Dog's shoulder nudged into the Sheep's side, and the Sheep bleated once, softly. A lonely sound. But the Sheep didn't move. Ey just sat there with a Dog on eir hoof and stared at the house.

The Dog knew the Sheep was hungry. Ey could hear the soft stomach noises beneath the hum of night.

Ey shifted eir weight and, leaning close, tucked eir chin across the back of the Sheep's neck. It was very soft there. And warm, down deep in the wool. The scent of grass and rain was very strong, but the scent of the Sheep was stronger. The Dog pressed eir nose in tighter against the wool.

The night air was very thick. Sounds and smells and cold wet rain. It felt too big for them. The sounds were too many, the smells too close. Ey was whining very faintly, high-pitched and helpless, as ey breathed out a sigh. It hurt when ey choked it out; it caught in eir throat, but the Dog swallowed over it. That's what Dogs do when Sheep depend on them, and ey was a very good Dog. Ey knew ey was. Ey was very well trained.

The Sheep hadn't made a sound. But something felt different. Calmer. Heavier. The Dog felt the weight against eir chest, and the press of damp, grass-stained wool against eir muzzle.

The Sheep was leaning back.

Just a little.

They were both dirty and matted. And itchy, too. Ey felt the Sheep's skin twitch deep within the wool. So ey dug eir nose in and nibbled there with gentle teeth. The Sheep's muscles jumped, then stilled as the Dog found itch after itch. Gradually, the Sheep calmed underneath the Dog's care, folding eir legs under eir chest to relax on the ground. And although the Fleas were still there, somewhere, ey seemed to become a little calmer.

So had the Dog. Ey draped emself over the Sheep, chin over back, keeping watch for an itch.

And if the Fleas decided to feed on em instead, well, the Dog was content with that.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 4/3/11

(This is the second draft of the first story I submitted for class. I didn't change the structure or point of view, but tried to clarify it just a bit, since it's second person and might be somewhat confusing. It needs a lot of work!)

ANONYMOUS 

It’s nearing five. Almost suppertime. You know by the roofed carts with roofed trays and the RNA’s with white-knit hair in buns and white-capped hands. Something smells good, something held in plastic and stainless steel. Lasagna, maybe, or country fried steak.

Outside, the sun blends out. Moon curving crescent. Sunset around the corner, sometime after supper, making autumn stretch-marks in the sky.

She’s sitting with the rest, in a chair like any other, though it’s hers, where there’s comfort. Sitting with others. Some were speaking, most were silent. Thinking. Maybe. Maybe seeing. In a teal blue sweater and pink cotton pants, and her hair brushed pretty, she sits and waits for consideration. Someone’s tied her shoes and clipped her nails but left her face untouched. She knows it, maybe. Touching her lips once now, and later, again. Maybe it hurts. Maybe she’s shy. Ducking her head, smiling shy.

“Mom?”

It takes a moment, and the RNA who likes her saying loudly, “Your daughter’s here.”

Slow take in her eyes. Slow gaining smile. Like doors that open, swinging wide.

“Oh.”

As if you’re walking close from far, walking real.

“Hi, Mom.”

You speak louder for no reason, really, but that she’s far apart. Her eyes following you, reading close. You’re speaking but she’s only saying, “Oh.” Some days, she can’t but cry. Those days are hardest, but not today. Today is laughter.

Her hand is tugged up, the RNA saying, “Come along.” She folds off the chair and holds the hand you reach for her.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

She nods, hesitantly, but when she holds your hands, her grip is strong. You walk together, face-to-face. She watches you walk backwards holding both her hands out in front; she walks catawampus through the white-made walls, past shadow frames of paper echoes etched on stranger faces. Leaning backwards off from you, smiling shy, uncertain scuffled feet in green-laced walking shoes with her name marked in clean black lines. When you danced a little, she does, too. This game she knows. She bounces, too, and sings a buoyant chanting line over and over with smiling eyes.

For minutes however long you stroll in sidesteps and playful bobbing knees until at last you’ve gone full circle around back to her single room. She hesitates at the door, shyly smiling. You say, “It’s okay,” but it’s better out. Her eyes are speaking aloud. Some days, you’ve an answer, and some days, you don’t. Some days, it’s just better out.

   There’s no one there at the front door, as you walk outside with her. Outside to the plastic chairs, once white, on red brick and cooling floors. It’s quiet without the rain. People are leaving in ones and twos, unparking cars and blending out. You’re allowed to sit here with her, but not too long.

She’s sleepy, growing remote. She stares a while, and smiles a bit, at scattered butterflies. You wonder if she remembers, years ago, back when she could, she’d painted splendor onto simple canvas for the first time in her life, signing backwards D’s brushing displaced N’s for months before she stopped. Her journal had been a thread of prayers only God might understand. Years ago, back when she knew. Scrap papered under photographs, elapsed from mind in closet clans of keepsake boxes labeled plainly or not at all.

Of all the arts, she’d liked singing best, and with her, you sometimes sing. Where no one knows and you can be, just be between you and her. She sometimes laughs at that a little, and makes faces as you sing. You get her back, though, gentle tickles that make her start and glare. Just like your father, you. Her eyes are smiling as she glares, just like years ago, back when she knew.

Now on the porch here, on the phone—the best device you ever bought, for these moments above all other thoughts—you find Frank Sinatra, and he begins to sing. Blue Moon, he sings, in ricochets of sweet scattered sound. Blue Moon for her, the song she sang famously and wondrous well, years ago, back in her youth.

By and by, she picks it up. A little sluggishly. An echo off his canter, almost wordless and remote. She follows as she’d followed your face, latching clear and dogged onto sound, the hum of likeness in her mind, of time and place familiar. And in her pauses, she cries. Scattered. Like maybe she knows and maybe she doesn’t, that he’s gone and gone is where she’s turning. She doesn’t stop when he does, singing on a minute longer. Her eyes let go of memory last, after the fade of sound. Staring, like tracing paper faces in her mind.

   “That sounded nice, Mom.”

She glances over. She smiles. Maybe. Like maybe you’re not even there.

Some minutes pass. You don’t play him again, and she doesn’t sing. You speak of other things, a little cheery and a little forced, bringing present back from past, sifting memories back to ground that was more of here and less of then. Back to where you know and stand. Back to her right now with you.

A nurse walks in. Some family heading out: father, mother, with their children waist-high waving arms and fighting mother as she rubs their hand with cleansing gel. Wasps are sending shivers in your ear, now too close, then thankful far. She pays no mind but watches butterflies float over green, frail wisps of dappled yellow stark against discolored bush too dry and needing rain.

“Aren’t they pretty?”

“Yes,” she says.

Sometimes, it clicks.

Back in the ward, you lead her to her private room and brush her hair pretty. RNA’s dealing dinner trays to supplicants crying “Mom,” and “Wait,” and one who cries unendingly, “Someone get me out of here.” It’s suppertime. And work for you. Tomorrow, next, and day after that. These moments are too few.

   She leans in as you wash her face, cold paper cloth in hand. You leave your hand there, lingering, but when it’s gone, she’s gone, as well, back to where she’s been.

"I’ve gotta go now, Mom. I’ll be back in a minute."

You’re lying now. Maybe she knows. Maybe it works. Tomorrow, soonest. Maybe days.

She smiles a little. Sheepish. “Yes, probably,” she says. As if you’re asking an opinion, she says. Casually. You reach for that with your smile. She ricochets off your warming face and giggles some while with you. Laughter’s the same, sounding good.

Some days, it’s easy leaving. Some days, it matters less and less. These days that come less and less.

The RNA sees you. The RNA who likes her, nodding goodbye. This is when you can leave. It’s okay.

The door to her room stands open. Patchwork paper faces collage the wall. Bed is railed, ready. Blue-wrapped mattress in disposable sheaths. Rocker with a clan of bears. White stuffed tiger at window sentry. Offwhite blinds tilt catawampus. Sunset on discolored grass past the common porch. Outside, the trees pour down. Leaves bleeding out. Scrap paper.

“I wish I were the way I was," she’d said.

Years ago, back when she knew.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 4/3/11

Two Tails

an episode

(3)

[Some weeks later.]

The Sheep was hungry.

Starving, in fact.

Ey vaguely recalled previous thoughts about grass. About eating grass (or was it leaves?) instead of meat. Ey hadn't minded much, either way, but ey remembered a feeling of sympathy for Meaty Things, like the old Cow that had stared at them from across the pasture some miles back and had listlessly ignored the Dog's yappy curiosity. This patch of weeds, however, seemed quite different from what eir image of Grassy Things had been. It was quite a depressing thing, indeed, to think that this was it. Eir diet for the next… Just how long did Sheep live, anyway?

Ey didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Thankfully, ey could do neither, so ey bleated, instead. It was a lonely bleat. More lamb than ram or outraged ewe. It felt weak in eir throat, but nobody was listening, not even the Dog.

There was a daisy among the weeds, bright yellow and cheery. The Sheep knew this color meant something to em. Something happy, something that felt far away. Something that ey knew should have a face and a name, but eir brain could not make the connection. Perhaps from the time spent in a strange body. Perhaps from lack of food. Somehow, eir brain had lost its way. Despite the hunger pangs that cramped eir belly, ey did not eat the daisy. Ey looked down at it with eir slit-eyed gaze and bleated again, softly.

Another bleat answered em, loud and harsh. The Sheep instinctively scurried away off of the highway, and realized what that sound was the moment eir hooves hit the lumpy gravel of the shoulder.

Sure enough, a Car passed by seconds after ey got out of its path. And good thing ey did, for the Dog would have bowled em over had ey been standing there. Legs churning, ears back and tail flashing, the Dog looked like a rounded lump of muscle, struggling vainly to keep up with the Car. Ey was barking fiercely. The Sheep could hear em crying something about "sib" and "kill," but the bark was too hoarse, too wild, to make out the rest.

Another Car rounded the corner in the distance, headed swiftly towards them, swifter than the last. The Dog pulled up ever so slightly in eir mad run and bunched eir hind end to make ready to pounce. The Sheep grew panicked and called out eir first word in two long days: the Dog's name.

The Dog heard eir bleat, and, as Dogs do when they have abruptly become slightly Sheepish, broke down to a trot before nonchalantly heading back eir way. Ey stopped to sniff at the ground, leisurely, as if this chase and the Sheep's agitated reaction to it had all been part of some mischievous plan. Or perhaps the Dog really was sniffing at another Dog's scent on the ground. The Sheep could no longer tell what was acted and what was real.

Sheep were followers, as the Dog had long teased em, and panic was too ready to claim em now. The Sheep knew this. Ey anxiously shifted on eir hooves, glancing back between the Dog and the road behind them. There was someone else in eir brain, someone ey used to be. Someone not a Sheep. Someone who'd gone to sleep.

Ey tried very hard to think.

Very few words remained clear in eir brain, and only two that ey was certain were important to know. One was the Dog's name. The other was for something ey could no longer picture. The Dog had spoken it many times with an air of trust, and it felt, now, like a guiding post for the Sheep on their quest.

Mom.

The Sheep remembered what the Dog had said, the last time ey had mentioned this word.

Mom will know what to do.

The Sheep couldn't remember what "Mom" was or what type of animal it might be, but it seemed as if the Dog considered it a Safe Thing. As if ey felt this "Mom" thing was even more powerful than emself. And the Sheep thought that must make it very powerful, indeed. For the Dog had fought off the hungered wild Dog and its mate in the first night they'd found themselves stranded. Ey had guided the Sheep around the Snake near the creek, and kept watch all night against the Car with blue lights.

"Mom" can save us, the Sheep thought, and watched the Dog roll on the ground.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 3/28/11

(This is from our classroom exercise. I don't know how good these are, but it was a lot of fun to go over the top with it.)

ORIGINAL

When it rained today, I had two thoughts: of starving lions overseas and people drowned where I once lived. It was cold, and I took a jacket, and I had two thoughts: of polar bears on thinning ice and people homeless in the snow. I didn't speak of cold or wet again, but I'm sure to forget this feeling weeks from now, or months. I wish I could staple memory to my mind or set my brain to vibrate an alarm once or twice a week to remind me: "Today is someone else's hell."

ACADEMIC

Upon observing the heavy precipitation that overcast the day, I considered, in turn, malnourishment among lions in the sub-Saharan region and the death toll of the recent earthquake in Northeast Asia. By and by, the temperature dropped and upon gathering my jacket, I considered, in turn, global warming as it concerns the survival of wildlife in the Arctic and Asians suffering hypothermia. I refrained from further discussion on the manner of my discomfort; however, it is certain that I shall lose this transient thought to less remote concerns, be it a fortnight or two, or even several rotations of the moon from this hour forth. Given the capability to do so, I would attach this knowledge to my brow, or, that excluding, set the mechanism of my brain to sound its alarm of remembrance at select hours throughout the week. To say just this: "My fortune should not exclude me from the realization that others are less privileged today."

ROMANTIC

The downpour drenched its wretchedness into my very soul, and I was overwhelmed by the tragedy of lions hungering in rags of bone, and the poor people of Asia swept away by ferocious tides of windswept Earth. My room grew chill, and I reached shivering to my soul for the gentle embrace of my dearest husbands gift to me, my sweet mink canopy. Oh! The terrible anguish I endured in that moment for the polar bears walking winter's last march, and those poor Asians huddling together without the tender comfort of their mother's roof. I could not speak again of suffering, no, my throat was swollen shut. I knew I shall forget this pitiful hour and turn again to my own life's sheltered wants. But if I could, I would stab this fleeting charity into my bosom, and brandish the bells of mercy like a siren in my brain. That I might never forget: "I am blessed. Alas, poor world!"

12-YEAR-OLD

It was soooo wet outside, like whoa. I didn't wanna go to school. I mean, c'mon! But Mom was like, "Think of the starving lions" and "There are people in Asia dying" like she always does. So. Friggin'. Random. And I was like, "So?" But of course she got mad and pushed me out anyway. And it was freezing cold, too! But she was like, "Think of the polar bears dying!" and "There are people in Asia freezing!" Seriously? Like, she's not even joking. Like, totally hardcore. Over bears and some dudes in China or whatever! So I was like, "Yeah, that really makes me want to go to school. NOT." And she loses it, like, "Why do I bother? You'll forget it tomorrow." (Duh.) But I wouldn't, 'cuz she'd take Dad's staple gun to my head with it or something, or, like, put an alarm clock in my pillow to give me nightmares, just to tell me: "You got it easy!" Yeah, right.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 3/28/11

(I apologize for copious use of adjectives and adverbs.)

Two Tails

an episode

(2)

[Some days later.]

They lounged silently in the overgrown pasture under the large oak. It had been three hours since they had last stopped, and the Dog finally relented to the Sheep's request for a moment to rest. The Sheep sat with eir head drooping low, breathing quieter now than minutes ago. Ey spoke rarely in the course of a day, though when ey spoke, it came out in a clear and easy bleat. The Dog fretted over em, just a little bit. Ey emself had so far had plenty to eat, playing Lassie for the crowds at Burger Kings and KFCs, but the Sheep hadn't eaten at all. The Dog was sure the monstrous blob of wool hid very bony ribs.

The Dog decided that now was the time to play Parent. Pep and cheer.

"Eat, drink, rest," ey announced. "Those are Big Things. Very important. Okay?"

It sounded very inspirational to em, but the Sheep only stared. A glob of wool with shuttered eyes. The Dog continued, struggling to recall the speech they'd heard when they had first left home some months ago. "Stay sharp and alert. Be ready to run and fight and… and stuff. Very important stuff. Sleep when--um, sleep in turns. Be--"

"Why are you having such trouble remembering what Mom taught us?" the Sheep asked suddenly. "It's only been a few weeks since we turned. Dogs are supposed to have better brains than Sheep."

Put like that, the Dog didn't quite know how to answer the question, so ey confronted the insult, instead.

"I am smarter."

"You're losing it," came the bleat.

Now, it was true that the Dog's vocabulary was slipping. Somewhat. Just a little bit. Hardly enough to notice, really. A rough bark could blur the edge nicely. A steady whine could completely cover the gaps by inducing a temporary deafness in eir audience. Ey was growing quite good at that. But what the Sheep perhaps forgot was that Dogs are excellent judges of tone and mood. And the Dog clearly heard that this bleat jiggled in the Sheep's throat more than it had previously.

Eir own bark became sharper in response.

"I'm using mine more!"

The quip didn't turn out to be quite the witty retort that the Dog had planned. Ey wanted to say something far more demoralizing, but ey could only stare blankly as seconds ticked by. Eir brain could no longer recall how to phrase snark in compound sentences. Ey'd never realized what a gift it had been. Ey doubted the Sheep would appreciate the loss.

No, of course not. Sheep had no patience for fun. The Dog was being frowned at. Familiar sibling eyes were made further alien and vaguely sinister by the Sheepish slits. With layer upon unkempt layer of once-white wool now corded with dirt and grass, the Sheep looked like a glob of grey matter left out in the rain.

I can't believe we're related.

"Brains aren't a non-renewable resource," snooted the Sheep. "Brains don't come with an expiration date. You can't run out of brains."

The Dog glared but could not speak, and in the absence of eir reply, the silence stretched out painfully. That a Glob of Grey Matter should say this to em felt the cruelest cut of all. Ey had never felt so fluffy and small. Ey tapped eir ridiculous tail against the grass as eir mind worked to latch on to something. Anything. Ey was certain ey was using eir brain more, just certain of it. After all, the Sheep just sat and walked and sat again all day long. Ey barely even spoke. Still, the Dog had to wonder why this Brain business seemed so darn easy for the Sheep, because, for pete's sake, weren't Dogs above Sheep on the food chain? That had to count for something. Nobody said, "Just look at that incredibly badass Sheep!"

Then again, this particular Sheep had proven eir brain. Ey had been right about the Bats last night, after all. Not the cool kind that sucked blood--the Dog remembered those--but the everyday kind that were rabid and lived in caves or abandoned barns going bump in the night. The Dog had known that in eir head, ey had, but instinct to eat had overridden eir smarts. It had taken the Sheep to stop em from chasing the Bats. That was becoming a trend.

The Dog stared across the tall grass at the slit-eyed Sheep and felt very fluffy and wrong.

Fugly-eyed smartass.

Defeat made a Dog cranky. And a Dog loaded with Complex Issues will become downright pissy.

So in the absence of a witty retort and in the fine tradition of both Man and Dog, ey took a cue and lifted eir leg.

"Hey!" The Sheep scampered away, eir bleating frenzied and indignant.

The Dog's aim had always been perfect. And the Sheep was trapped in eir woolly sponge. Sucks to be Sheep. Perhaps the Sheep would beg some kind farmer to shave em now and look less like a waterlogged Brain. Two in one triumph. Not bad.

The Dog couldn't laugh, not like ey did before. But eir open-mouthed pant had the same effect on the Sheep, and ey knew it. Ey flaunted it broadly as the Sheep stumbled off, stomping a disgruntled path across the old pasture. The Dog brandished eir tail high over eir back like a flag and trotted forward in a jaunty gait as ey followed after, keeping eir one-Sheep flock ever in front of em.

It wasn't until some minutes later, when a paw landed in something soft and moist and steaming hot, that the Dog remembered their Mom's warnings on karma.

Life wasn't very fair at all.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 3/21/11

Two Tails
an episode
(1)

The Sheep and the Dog sat side by side and gazed down at their reflections on the surface of the lake. There was no denying that they looked quite different, indeed. One of them was horned (but not noticeably, you understand) and shaggy (quite a bit) and gray (or maybe white; it was hard to tell). The other one was quite smaller (but not dainty, of course) and fluffy (despite the muscle underneath) and a uniform mix of black and white. One was a Sheep. One was a Dog. There seemed to be no way around that.

It was a very long moment before either of them spoke.

"This must be a dream," the Sheep bleated in disbelief. "I can't be a Sheep."

The Dog sat silently for a moment. Eir ears twitched. Then: "I win!"

The Sheep already hated the sound of that yip.

For some time, they sat in silence. The Dog wagged eir tail contentedly, just a bit, but also quite nicely. Back behind em, where it was less noticed but for the thump thump of that bony fluff against the Sheep's bald back leg.

The Sheep sulked.

Ey would never laugh at a pumpkin-spinner's song again. Although ey had not been the one to laugh out loud, not ey. That had been eir sib, of course. Always ey. But ey promised very hard that from this day forward ey would never ever so much as smirk again at pumpkin-spinners and their songs.

At length, the Dog stirred.

"Could have been worse," ey yipped, conversationally.

Not likely. The Sheep couldn't imagine a worse thing to be, than to be a Sheep.

"You could have been turned into a peanut," the Dog continued, "and had a chipmunk shell you to death."

It was a long time before the Sheep trusted emself to speak.

(Don't ask. I have no idea. There's this whole saga of Sheep and Dog in my head, and I don't know from where.)

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 3/21/11

Antoine Dodson Doodles in Art Class

Revision 3

(Now trying something completely different. Well, sort of.)

My portrait mugs the internet.

An overgrown meme, a bias breeder.

They say I’m out of bounds,

unaccountable to common cadence.

--Yeah, me.--

Effeminate, I’m called. Hollywood’s old Sissy

back in prime time luminosity. Woman-ish.

--That’s right, boy.--

Sexless and two-toned like a Top Model menagerie

cut loose for time, spectacle and boneless design.

--Get this, uh huh.--

A face in bent motif, backdraft hair, intrepid teeth,

my body freefalling from a crack binge high.

--They say--

I’m an ungainly gesticulation.

Every movement maims momma’s baby daddy,

like he’s with me too flap, too slack,

self-portrait of dick, gender bent, in crayon-wobbled lines.

--Girl, please.--

Effeminate is not my name for me.

Paint me a face, Rembrandt. Interpret my cacophony.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 3/14/11

My brother and his former wife come, bringing their babies, and my mother, she’s so ecstatic, she runs along the front of the house, along the stone pathway, to call her husband to greet them. She’s running too fast, though, and she trips on the stones. Sits there on the pathway and cries. Childlike. I go to her and see if she’s hurt and tell her she’s okay, it’s nothing, don’t worry about it. I’m treating her like a child because she’s crying like a child, but I think months later, in these moments that linger in the brain months late, that she wasn’t that far yet. Not far enough. Just enough between aware and not. How does the decay of identity feel? No one else can know. Disease eats them alive. By the time she knew, she could no longer say it.

I keep notes from her from that time, when she could still write. I keep those notes here with the rest, her scratched-out misspellings of my name, of milk and cereal and other groceries, of thoughts she had. Scrap paper. Crumbs. She was holding on.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 3/14/11

This is the light outpouring of some pent-up emotion that just keeps building up in me about Japan and Americans' perception of Japan. It spilled out into my poem about Hiroshima, into my story about my Mom, my stories that I haven't posted, more poems. In any case, in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, there was a lot of talk about "stoicism" and such. I have a lot of friends in Japan, all safe but it has been exhausting to deal with the unending daily worry, and I don't know if it was a way of dealing with this stress, but I found myself thinking in anthropological ways about the impressions people have of how calm and dignified the Japanese people are in this crisis. People have criticized Japan many times for having such a high suicide rate, for the oppressive nature of proverbs like "the protruding nail must be hammered down," but the very same influences that create that statistic and such proverbs are reflected in how they are responding in this crisis. It makes me angry that they are even positively stereotyped as being better suited to handling stress. It feels somewhat as if they are being dehumanized as "closer to earth" or even somehow machine-like in their response, when they aren't biologically programmed to be any better at handling stress than any other member of the human race. The internalized controls of their culture are deeply rooted and very rigid, the "community before self" mentality that permeates every corner of their lives, but I think people glamorize it from a distance and forget that it's just as difficult for an individual in Japanese society to be courageous and selfless and patient as it would be for an American individual. We brush off the fellow humanity of other people in so many different ways, groups and individuals all, even in glorification. So many people become Other and Else.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 2/28/11

Desert Sun

The sun is passing over. Again.

Every day, again, the sun sheds its skin

—its scum, really, not unlike soap,

the kind that dials exfoliation up to nine—

on soil and rock.

Parched soil and jagged rock.

It seems to think they can be courted

to forget the misery of its central hour

and remember it kindly in the night.

But suns are pretentious like that.

And the rocks, they say, “Piss off,”

Only they can’t talk.

So every sunset they wait.

They wait for the sun to tilt off course.

One day it will tilt off course

Where the jagged rocks wait

And poke itself in the eye on the way down.

Night is the sweeter season by far.

Night is on their side.

Night hides them away from restless winds.

Well, not really, but it’s the thought that counts.

Night is benign. Moon is gentle.

Unlike the scummy sun, which stretches

And yawns and leisurely lights itself a match at the end of each turn

For a job very well done.

The rocks, they say, “Piss off.”

And soil sheds burnt sand in its eye.

Only the sea acts indifferent,

but it has it easy, being cool.

No, the sun isn’t terribly popular in these parts.

Every day, it laughed off the single-digit salute

and baked its leisure ever on westward.

(I have no idea where this came from. One day I was just watching documentaries on the desert and thinking of how the rocks and sand must feel, if they felt anything, and it started to be a story but I didn't have any real narrative thrust to it, so it became this weird poem thing instead.)

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/28/11

This is something I wrote randomly in my notebook while I waited for another class to start. I don't know what I'm trying to say or why, but anyway, this is what I wrote down concerning Japan. I wrote more about truly random subjects, but those might be a little too weird, even for me.

I am American, born Christian in Japan. I am Japanese, grown Buddhist in American. I am not biracial but in the brain, I am abnormally infused with scattered perception and pressed on both ends to drift stagnant if not perfectly straight, but I wobble onward in foreign precession. “You take on where you are,” they say; “you become what you eat.” My diet is riceballs tuna-shelled and soy sugar-licked. Flat-fried patties as inches thick as you like and boiled curling beef in mustard dip. Cucumber salads and summer bowls of white-noodled bliss. Smoking crocks of garden yield and deep fried shrimp in batter fields. I’m not raw, not all through, and I don’t twist my knives in testosterone shows. My best meals are home boiled eggs and meat on rice, white rice, plain and sticky. I’ve never seen a dark-skinned face on a woman in Japanese art. Men are drawn honestly if they’re born the same.

(p.s. I have almost completely written myself to a standstill trying to get a plot for the short story.)

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 2/21/11

Trolley and the Ghouls

(Edited, prose version)

Only trolleys promised the ghouls, at night shut down from human touch, a free ride through the town and unregulated belly fills. They run silent from curtained crypts and sewer lanes, the ghouls, somewhat discombobulated. They discard the wilting peel of twice stretched dust in sunset hues and sift through firefly sieves butter-melting soft into the gibbous waning murk. They sweep at last against the lacquered frame of the trolley car, small eager bumps up the patterned steps into the air-fresh and cushioned cab.

With garbled growling, the engine spits on, coaxed by papers weighing coin. Inside the box, light flicks on, fluorescent sunlight without scorn. Disjointed clapping off and on. The ghouls unwind cheerfully as the trolley cab lurches forward on long-forgotten sidewinding tracks through backwoods streets and depot lanes. They jostle on, the trolley and the ghouls, who stretch and stretch resplendently under the fluorescent flecks. From gangling gnarls of fading whine--vague as April morning mist--they bloom to lucid joyous shifts of wail, no longer mist but structured bits of startling brawn, with face and fist and hair like twine.

Now through winding coffin lanes, they rove, where their cousin air weavers rush to and fro, and perchance too late to slow, making circus eyes and circus mouth to see the ghouls alive, up close. They gather ash and scatter dust, from moon's first yawn to moon's last gust. The trolley putters on till night concedes to dawn, when ghouls scatter back to curtained crypts and sewer lanes and trolley yields back to human will. For moon makes more soup than sun, and wails more kin than whine. So trolleys promise ghouls the night, to come to life, to wail in coffin lanes, to harvest the ghosts of the circus-brained, who pass from ash to ash again under the trolley wheels and return to form at night again, as ghouls to join the reaper's throng.

(This still needs a lot of work, clearly. I think it would be better as a short story than a poem or brief prose piece.)

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/21/11

Antoine Dodson Doodles in Art Class

(Edited Version)

Today was either cataclysmic or divine. My portrait mugs the Internet, and I reap the pixilation of my face. I’m an overblown meme, a bias breeder. Enunciation spins too fluently, twisting like honey off thorns. Precarious and out of bounds--they say--unaccountable to any dictionary of common cadence. Effeminate, I’m called. Hollywood’s old Sissy back in prime time luminosity. Woman-ish. Sexless sap’s pockmarked sketch, two-toned like an asymmetrical exhibit in a Top Model menagerie, cut loose for time, spectacle and confused design. Boneless face in bent motif. Backdraft hair. Intrepid teeth. A freefall crack binge high collage of limp wrists and neutered face. Biceps curving outside male intent, lips flailing loose of God’s blueprint--they say--like National Enquirer fathers giving milk. Ungainly gesticulations, maiming my father’s configuration. Flapping too much, too slack--they say--freefalling off my mother’s blush. Sexless sap’s self-portrait of gender bent in crayon-wobbled lines. Effeminate, I’m called. I’ve no textbook for a face but pockmarks, flail and gender print like leotards across tongue and dick. Effeminate, I lack title and precision--they say--and action figured me to familiar edge. Effeminate man--they say. Sissy fetters and muscle fail. Instant laugh and sharp recoil. But effeminate is not my name for me.

Paint me a face, Rembrandt, and interpret my cacophony.

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 2/14/11

Hiroshima

The crane calls me home. Hiroshima,

with my checkered mats of loose-leaf green,

I feed her in the snow and rain. Spring yields

and summer rains pelt my newborn rice into coin.

Aged farmers in pairs, in their married cadence

bent through years into jackknifed broken form,

turning newborn rice into coin.

They call me home. Hiroshima,

my pink petal silks in spring cobweb

all the patchwork market ways.

Folding willow trees line my streets

and sway like silk creased gowns.

Red bobbins and violet combs,

for black-haired bonnets in elegant form,

dress my daughters in wedding folds.

They blend into the August paper twists

folded up in rainbow stuttered steps.

—They said it was the rain.

They said it was the seeping wind.—

Once a year, remembrance of the bomb.

In good faith, West pardons her sons,

and mine are left blunt-edged, quiet.

My vertebrae stands upward bare

and breaks the blue-sealed sky catacomb,

like tree limbs sketch-mark the winter gray.

Sketch marks across rainbow-frosted grays,

paper twists of crane lining building bones.

Shadows burrowed in my yellowed ribs,

these cement shadow stairs, death-frosted

stairs famous to West for gawker's guilt.

I burrow in today, burrow out the casket wall

to sons and daughters buried too short, too young

under the atomic mushroom wing.

The remembrance of their ash lingers here, bare

through yellowed casket ribs and rainbow twists,

at once too anonymous and too precise.

The day only ends in breathing,

—once in, now out, again and out—

till night folds in and ribs unclench.

—I found it was the rain.

I found it was the culling wind.—

The crane calls me home from this.

With ruffled mask of grey-white rust

she feeds me in the rain, the winter rain

and carpets of snow unfolding across my vertebrae

to seal asleep until I begin again. Spring yields

and summer rains pelting newborn rice into coin.

The broken cadence of my farmers, aged in twos,

turning green rice carpets into coin.

I am as was, will be.

Of wet carton carpet greens,

pink cobweb grace and folding trees.

I lie awake

with my paper rainbow folded wings.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/14/11

Epitaph for a Possum

Here lies a myopic mom

--unkindly evolved--

Hrududowned and done

Pancaked to memory

By the common barrage

Of shift-made squeals

And tactless gears.

Epitaph for a Flea

Here lies a Malingerer.

Hand-plucked ganglion

Pinched through.

Born without autonomy

And slain for it, too.

Random Freewrite 1: Week of 2/7/11

The laundry thumps. Almost done.

I remember this, the litany of decontamination.

My voice never raised but your heart would faint.

I remember our most romantic evenings

spent in sterile hospital cells of your vacillating puberty.

The buzzer’ll ring soon. Not soon enough.

Cleaning feels maternal somehow,

cold-pressed onto me like prehistoric fossils of mistake.

Some men hug not to hold but to burrow into muscle

like ticks bloated on strength.

They say things change to remain the same.

I’ve got towels to fold yet, and a bed to make.

When the laundry's done, I'll be good to go,

as well rid of you as of static hell clingwrap sheets.

(The first line was all I got done in the classroom prompt. Then I spoke with Professor Edwards after and took her fantastic line "prehistoric fossil of mistake" and tried to wrap my feelings about this breakup into something that felt a part of outdated gender roles to me. He based his proposal on the fact that I cleaned his house for him once, from top to bottom. So that's where this came from. There's probably more I could go into; I need to work on expanding and then stripping down.)

Random Freewrite 2: Week of 1/31/11

This was prompted by the line in the freewrite we read last week: “only trolleys promised ghouls.” I can’t seem to get it to express exactly what I was seeing in my head when I read that line, so I keep going back to it and working at it. The freewrite exercise last week might help me if I just set aside what I’ve written here and try it from a fresh perspective. I might try that at some point in the future and give this one another go.

Silent run the ghouls,

somewhat discombobulatedly.

They discard the wilting peel

of twice-stretched earth,

and sift through firefly sieves

butter-melting soft,

to brush the common frame

and catch the patterned hull

of the lacquered scuffle box.

Garbled growling engine on,

coaxed by papers weighing coin.

Sunlight without scorn flicks on

if rather disjointedly.

Forward, then. They jostle on,

and stretch and stretch

resplendently

from gangling gnarls of fading whine

to lucid joyous shifts of wail.

Now through winding coffin lanes

where air weavers rush to and fro

and perchance too late to slow

making circus eyes and circus mouth

to see the ghouls up close.

Moon makes more soup than sun;

wails more kin than whine.

Silent run the ghouls,

surreptitiously.

Now in ones, then twos,

and so forth, on and on,

one might say duplicitously,

for want of company.