The Barefoot Princess

Kelsey felt like a princess, high up on her thrown, garbed regally in her blue silk gown. You had to excuse her lack of footwear—some princesses went around barefoot, probably. She should have done her hair. Too late now. Her public awaited. It was so wonderful to be able to use her prom dress again. She was perched on the very end of a white platform—she had to sit on the edge so she wouldn’t hit her head, he had said. It was roughly two feet in length and textured like harsh gravel. It hurt her legs. It had better not pull any threads. She sat high above a tank of water, sloshing and splashing, stirred by the last passer through its waters. She waved to Molly and Amber, through the yellow netting that protected her from poor throwing.

Corey was such a stick-in-the-mud. He was always, “let’s stop this, let’s go home.” They’d each only been dunked once. He definitely needed to lighten up. He was the one in a wetsuit. It was freezing up there.

And what was with this kid throwing? “You throw like a girl!” she taunted. Her teeth were chattering.

He fastballed another one at the target to her left. Wide right. He had one ball left. “I let that one go,” he explained. His friends laughed.

Her dress had better not fly up when she hit the water. Which underwear was she wearing? This was gonna be cold. She had almost dried-off sitting there in the wind. Should she have taken her earrings off? Too late now. How was Rachel doing? Perhaps she should check up on her after this—

WHAM!

She hated that sound. It was always shocking when you first entered. Maybe this wasn’t good for her dress, either. Too late now.

Kelsey the Incorrigible

“Kelsey,” Corey said, looking up at the sun and wiping a mixture of water and sweat from his brow, “I’m taking off the wetsuit!”

It was mid-June and he’d been following her all up and down the fairground for hours. He half-turned towards the Black Buick Le Sabre parked on the hill, by the school building.

“Can’t we please go just once more?” Kelsey asked, grabbing his thick, rubbery arm.

“I think we’re to big for this and—“

A loud thunk behind him foretold the splash and spray of water that peppered his back.

“—and I think we should get back to the cakewalk. Rachel’s probably lonely and bored out of her mind.”

“So, yes, then?” Kelsey was incorrigible.

“Well…”

“Great! One more and then we’ll go.” She moved to stand in line behind two skinny adolescent girls, waterlogged and shivering.
Corey obligingly shuffled in behind her as the first of the girls in front of them mounted the Tupperware stairs to the dunk tank. “This better be quick,” he said, shielding his face with one octopus-arm.

Thunk. Splash.

The line shifted forward, as the next girl clambered onto the spring-loaded platform. “Do you think they’ll let us do one together”?

“Um… we can ask.”

Kelsey took the hair tie off of her wrist and put her hair back. She handed him her earrings.

Thunk. Splash.

“I’m having so much fun! I could do this for hours!”
He furrowed his brow and pouted at her ascending backside. “Kelsey…”

Thunk. Splash.

He waited for her to exit the tank before taking his place.
Thunk. Splash.

“Now let’s go,” he said, shaking the water out of his hair. The sun felt even hotter after leaving the cold water, and his head hurt.

Kelsey said, “Alright, we’ll go and change, but then I want to do one with me in the wetsuit…”

Umbrellas and Seagulls

It is cold. A dry wind whips through the harsh terrain like a bull in the Corrida de Toros, enraged into a frenzy, howling out battle cries, terrible screams ever louder in the winter air, as it rattles the ground and shakes giant evergreens that sway like performers on stilts. It carries in its icy maw a whiff of pines and upturned earth and the promise of death. A scavenger-bird, starved by winter, caws in distress, fluttering and flapping, as it is carried off by a fierce gust, leaving behind only a scattering of footprints: a set of alphabet magnets, all the letter Y, stuck to a white refrigerator wasteland.

A clown of a traveler, white-faced and red-cheeked, scuffles his feet as he desperately struggles to take shelter under a large umbrella from the bitter breeze, a frigid mole that, with every panting breath, burrows deeper into his throat and lungs, filling his mouth with ice and snow, a cold sweetness to mix with the salty snot that runs down from his frost-bitten nose. He plods out nine steps. Each is slow and deliberate, requiring more effort than the one prior, and sounds as does an apple being bitten by horse. At the end of his trek, after harnessing every throe of hidden strength, he crumples under the shadow of his now-snow-covered umbrella and assumes the fetal position, frost-bitten and hallucinating.

The black umbrella above the traveler grows larger and larger until becoming an overhang of dark obsidian, wet and barnacle-ridden on the ocean shore, carved out by a relentless tide. Waves crash on seaweed-covered rocks sending cool ocean spray over his back. Gulls call out like children in a game of tag carried by an ocean breeze that chills the droplets of water that cling to his naked body. He shivers and looks into the cloudless sky at the birds circling above him, each flapping body a transforming glyph that cycles between M’s, and Y’s, seeming to ask the silent question, “Um, why?”

photo by Juan Riera

The Pardon

by Richard Wilbur

My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine
And a jungle of grass and honeysuckle-vine.
I who had loved him while he kept alive

Went only close enough to where he was
To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell
Twined with another odour heavier still
And hear the flies' intolerable buzz.

Well, I was ten and very much afraid.
In my kind world the dead were out of range
And I could not forgive the sad or strange
In beast or man. My father took the spade

And buried him. Last night I saw the grass
Slowly divide (it was the same scene
But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green)
And saw the dog emerging. I confess

I felt afraid again, but still he came
In the carnal sun, clothed in a hymn of flies,
And death was breeding in his lively eyes.
I started in to cry and call his name,

asking forgiveness of his tongueless head.
...I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.

Richard Wilbur's The Pardon really affected me because of the intimacy it's able to get with death--often a much euphemized subject. He talks of the heavy odor, the flies, a tongueless head.

And it's strange that in asking forgiveness, Wilbur focuses more on the neglect--leaving the dog in the thick of summer for five days--than on the merits of the dog.

Also, he's able to tell us all of this while adhering to a sonnet-like form. I think rhyming in poetry suggests a greater degree of mastery.

Uh, thanks,

Corey

An Umbrella in The Snow

A recently-shoveled sidewalk cuts cleanly between opposing snowbanks, dividing the landscape into three perfect, horizontal stripes of white, like some bleached-out foreign flag. Freshly fallen snow blankets the scene. The rugged and pock-marked terrain of yesterday’s trampled wanderings form into gentle slopes, hills and valleys under the new snow creating a hodge-podge of not-quite-foot-sized impressions that half-fill with the shadows of the rising or setting sun.

The would-be pristine landscape is marred by two sets of footprints, one, a jumble of flighty bird feet, small and Y-shaped that flit about the snowbanks’ rises and falls in the random roamings of a creature with a miniscule brain, the other, a series of shoeprints or bootprints, nine simple dance-steps that tango down the pavement. They stop before an umbrella, white and snow-covered, that rests in their path.

It’s a full-sized umbrella, the kind that pokes at the tip and hooks at the end. Fully spread apart, it spans the entire width of the walk as it delicately balances on the handle and on two of its ribs. Like the rest of the landscape, it’s only half lit by the sun and casts a dark umbrella-shaped shadow on the ground it occupies.

photo courtesy of Silah Güler, used with permission.

Introductions

Originally written, Tuesday, May 22.

Me? I’m a drummer. And a pianist—and, I suppose, a guitarist—but mostly, I’m a drummer. Now, don’t take that the wrong way. I’m not some muscle-head, barely-literate skin-smasher with toms the size of timpani. Sure, I’ve got strong arms. I’ve got to. That’s what comes of lugging six drums and four cymbals everywhere, up and down stairs, in to barrooms, out of barrooms, in to the car, out of the car—I know exactly how to stack a six-piece and two guitar cabs in a 2001 Volkswagen GTI and a ’91 Buick Le Sabre. I even know how many drums I can bring on my bicycle trailer—but, my strong-point is my ability to read music: I sight-read class A drumset solos (after a couple tries) and can nail all the horn hits on a swing chart at three hundred beats per minute (or two-hundred for the difficult ones). I can read Don Quixote in Spanish, too. I’ve never tried to read drumset music in Spanish, but, I bet it’s not hard. How can you tell if a note is Spanish you ask? The accent. Ba-dum Ching. I just came up with that. Not too bad for a Tuesday.

Hello and Welcome

This is my first post and it couldn't mean less.