"Long Black Road" -- a poem by Donald G. Redman

Long Black Road
by Donald G. Redman

The buzz is wearing off and I’m getting tired
but I remind myself I’m almost home,
so I lay on the pedal and quicken the pace.
I turn the heater down and crack the window.
“Radar Love” comes on the radio and I crank it up.

The asphalt road winds like an endless black river.
There’s no oncoming traffic and I’ve got the beams
set on high ‘cause it’s black coffee dark outside.
Yellow dashes scar the center of the road
like a heroin addict’s track marks.

The headlights shove the shadows aside like a snow plow
but it’s still hard to tell where the treetops end and night begins.
Black skeletons silhouetted against a black sky.
The road curves and I glimpse a deer at the wood’s edge.
It freezes and stares, its eyes indicting me.

I pry the Bud from between my thighs and take a swig.
It’s piss hot so I roll the window down and toss it out.
It lands with a metallic thud and skitters across the road.
I got more beer, but they’re in the ice chest in the bed
and I don’t want to stop, not this close to home.

The road is bent at the bottom of the hill,
just before it straddles a washed up creek bed.
Miasma as thick and dense as a cloud rises
up from the hollow and guards the bridge like a troll.
I dive toward it, my hand’s wet on the wheel.

Sad little stick crosses paying tribute to the dead
litter a patch of bare earth near the curve.
They glow in my headlights, telling me to slow down,
but my gut tells me to run like hell from this place.
The road beneath me vanishes abruptly under a cloak of fog
and I’m forced to ease off the pedal and tap the brakes.

Just ahead I see the mist swirling and coalescing
into a wraith whose delicate form is vague and yet familiar
like the woman who lurks around in my dreams at night.
Memories of a kiss settle upon my lips like dew on a flower.
I’m suddenly melancholy and mourn for lost things.

The banshee makes a gesture with her thumb like a hitchhiker
But I’m not about to give her a lift so I speed up
or I try to,
but I’ve entered a place where time crawls.
As I glide past her, she smiles sweetly beneath the tears
and splays her fingers to show me the bands of gold.
My heart sinks like a stone into a black sea.

I break loose of the fog’s grip and race from the bridge
only to slam into a young doe mesmerized by my lights.
My nose is busted up a bit by the airbag and beer cans are
scattered all over the road, some spewing like geysers.
I climb out of the cab to inspect the damage.

The doe’s still alive, barely, and kicks at the air weakly.
She busted out a headlight and mangled the hood up good.
The radiator hisses as coolant drips from a gashed hose.
Steam from the engine and the dying doe rise in unison
and blood and oil comingle into one big, black puddle.

I grab an undamaged beer from the road and pop it open
and pour it down my gullet like a frat boy at a stag party.
I crumple the can when I’m done and toss it aside
and scoop up another one before I tend to the deer.
I can tell by her eyes that she’s going into shock.

She makes a pathetic attempt to stand up when I sit beside her
and then she slumps back down and plops her head on my lap.
I gently stroke her fur and tell her how sorry I am.
She pants lightly and stares off into nothingness.
Life finally leaves her eyes and I fight back the tears.

I struggle back to my feet and I drag the doe off the roadway.
I’m overcome with grief and guilt for leaving her like that
and again I beg her for forgiveness, but I know it’s too late;
she’s already gone and nothing can be undone.
I break down and cry like a little lost child.
I'm never going to make it home.


The genesis of this poem stems from a dream I had several months ago. I posted details of that dream and subsequent “alfresco musings” Oct. 1, Dec. 2 and Dec. 16. The final product is a deeply-personal poem I’ve entitled “Long Black Road.”

Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All rights reserved

Using Photos for Inspiration

 

Photo by Roger Griffith, released into the Public Domain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dead_Leaf_retention_on_Beech_trees.JPG

I came across this photo of a snow-covered beech tree and thought that it could serve as an artist’s model, if you will, for practicing poets. I hope to return to this photo again and again over the next few weeks in hopes of drawing inspiration from it. I hope ultimately that it will spur my imagination and spur my creativity – and hopefully yours, too.

"The Dart and the Song" -- a short story

Illustration by Donald G. Redman

The Dart and the Song
By: Donald G. Redman


My dad always had a wise saying for every miserable thing that ever happened in your life. One of his favorite sayings was, “No point in crying over spilled milk.” I just wish one time someone would have told him that there was no point in cussing over spilled milk either, even if it was in the backseat of the car. It’s called an accident.
Anyway, my dad would say all sorts of things in response to disasters, like if you were popping a wheelie on your bike and you accidentally went back too far and crashed and busted your leg or something, he’d say something dumb like “What goes up, must come down.”

One of his favorite things to say when you got a raw deal but somebody else came out on top, like say you walked a hundred miles to the corner store to cash in some Coke bottles and you put the money in your pocket, only you didn’t know your pocket had a hole in it and all your money fell out and somebody else found it, he’d say, “Finder’s keeper; loser’s weeper.”

Wait, I got what I wanted to say mixed up. He did say “finder’s keeper” a whole lot, but that wasn’t his favorite thing to say. Let’s say you’ve been saving some cookies to eat for later, but before you can get to them somebody else – like my dad – finds them and eats them. If you complained that somebody ate your cookies, he’d say, “Tough titty said the kitty, but the milk tastes good.”

I never understood what that was supposed to mean and I guess I never thought about it too deep because I was always in a state of shock that my dad would be blabbing the word “titty” for the whole world to hear.

I swear I had the most pornographic father in America ‘cause he always managed to bring up “titties” in everyday conversation like it was a everyday word. For example, if you whined too much he’d call you a titty baby. He’d be bird watching in the backyard and swear he saw a “titmouse.” One time I was helping him fix the car engine and he was complaining and all because I wasn’t holding the flashlight right and he looked up at me and said, “Son, you’re about as worthless as tits on a boar hog.” He told me that all the time.

My mom said there was one word that best summarized most men: Titicaca. I was confused when she said it was one word because it sure sounded like two words to me. “Titicaca,” she went on. “That’s their two favorite subjects.” She could see I was embarrassed that I got stuck in the middle of this conversation and she assured me she wasn’t being trashy at all and that she was referring to Lake Titicaca and that it was a real place. She said an old comedian from back in her youth used to joke about Lake Titicaca all the time and it would make her laugh.

The comedian’s name was W.C. Fields. He was big back during the Depression. That’s when my parents grew up – during the Depression. That anybody said anything funny back then sure surprised me. My parents used to go on and on with stories about how miserable their lives were growing up and I could see why they called it the Great Depression because let me tell you, their stories sure were depressin'. I couldn’t wait for them to quit yammering on about how hard life was and how we didn’t know how good we had it and all, like I had it easy sittin’ through these long lectures about saving string and pinching pennies….

So anyway my mom could see I didn’t believe her about Lake Titicaca and she went to a closet and pulled out this old dusty globe she probably got during the Depression. I think it was missing a continent. A old metal wire circled the earth right at the Equator and was held in place by a ancient piece of tape that was probably clear when it was new but now was urine yellow with age. The wire was sprung loose at one end and no amount of tape could hold it down. It flopped all over the place, making it impossible to have fun just spinning the dumb old globe around. You couldn’t pull the wire off otherwise the whole world would just split in half.

My mom used that dang old globe to point out to me where Lake Titicaca was. She also pointed out where Timbuktu was located. But our geography lesson got real ugly real fast when I asked her where Bumluck, Egypt was.

Only I didn’t say Bumluck. Think of the worst cuss word you could say that rhymes with “luck;” put “Bum” in front of it and that’s what I said. I swear I didn’t know it was a bad word, being tied to “Bum” and all. It sounded like it could have been Egyptian. Besides, I remember this little Chinese kid I played with at the YMCA; he was from Fukuoka, Japan, and it made sense to me that there might be a real place like that in Egypt.

Well, I’m here to tell you there ain’t no such place.

Man, she grabbed a flyswatter and really laid into me. (We had flyswatters all over the place for just such emergencies – that and yardsticks.) “Where did you hear such a thing?” she said, walloping me with that dang flyswatter. “Charles,” I said. That was one of my older brothers – I have three of them and Charles is the second-oldest. “He’s always complaining that you’re always sending him there on errands to pick up one thing or another.”

* I just got back from taking a break because I got thirsty and to be honest with you I kinda forgot the point of my story. I reread everything I wrote and that didn’t help. I’m half tempted to just wad this thing up and start all over. The other half of me – the half my writing hand’s on – wants me to just move on. I’m getting a cramp in my hand and it doesn’t seem right to erase everything just because I can’t remember what I was writing about. It’s like I injured my hand for nothing.

That happens to me a lot. I start telling a story and I get sidetracked and the next thing I know I’m just rattling on about something I didn’t even know I was going to talk about. My dad says my train of thought is permanently derailed.

I remember one time I entered an essay contest held by the Houston Library. We were supposed to write 1,000 words or so about why we celebrate the 4th of July. Well, I got started writing about them Red Coats and rockets and bombs and Black Cat firecrackers and watermelon and all kinds of crazy things and the next thing I knew I had written about a hundred million words. I put it all neatly inside a binder to hold it all in place and on the cover I glued a picture of Mount Rushmore I’d cut out of a “National Geographic” magazine and I drew a picture of the American flag behind it and added a title: “A Salute to America’s Four Fathers.”

Our neighborhood didn’t have a library. We either checked out books from the Central Library in downtown Houston or waited for the bookmobile to pass by. I couldn’t rely on the bookmobile to come and the Central Library was so far away not even Abraham Lincoln would have walked that far to return a book. He woulda just kept the dang thing and paid the fine later when somebody could bring him there. I asked my dad if he could take me, but he had to work or something. Mom said she’d arrange for Charles to bring me.

My brother thought he was a big shot because he could drive and was a senior at Smiley High School and had a girlfriend and all. But boy did he hate driving us around. Once we got in the car he started ranting: “I can’t believe mom is going to make me drive you all the way to Bum…” I stopped him right there. “That’s not a real place,” I said. “Mom told me.”

“Mom told you?”

"Uh huh,” I said. “I told her you say she’s always making you drive there.”

He suddenly got all quite and put the car in drive and took us toward Bumluck, Egypt.

We lived just outside Houston proper, in a place called Humble. Now, if you don’t know nothing about Humble you’re probably pronouncing it like you would humble pie, well, you’re saying it all wrong. For some dang reason the H in Humble, Texas is silent. You say it like Umble. I think it’s Spanish or something. Spanish people don’t say their Hs.

Spanish is all confusing to me. I remember failing a spelling test one time because I got my Spanish and English all mixed up. I spelled “umbrella” with a silent H in front like “humbrella,” and my teacher laughed out loud and went and hung it up in the teacher’s lounge so other teachers could laugh their heads off like a bunch of dumb old hyenas.

Why in the world anybody would spell a word with a silent letter in front sure beats me. It’s like that word “pshaw.” Now if you expect people to say it like “shaw,” then why the heck spell it with a “p” in front?

For the longest time I didn’t know the “p” was silent and I was always running around saying, “Aw peeshaw.” My old girlfriend, Rebecca Roach, set me straight one day, saying she couldn’t see herself going out with anybody who went around saying “peeshaw.” By the time I finally got it right, school ended for the summer and she was shipped off to her grandmother’s in Oklahoma so I didn’t have to worry about making her happy any more and spent the summer saying “peeshaw!”

To be honest with you I don’t think kids should be forced to learn a bunch of different languages. It’s too confusing and only leads to embarrassment. My mom was raised bi-lingual by her Swedish parents. She tried passing some of that on to me and all it brought me was grief. For example, without thinking I called fish by their Swedish name, “fisk.” “I went fisking with my dad today and we caught a bunch of fisk,” Boy, people sure would get a laugh out of that. No thanks. Just plain old fashioned English if you please.

Man, my little sister is messed up even worse. One time she was retelling this old joke about a kid named Texas who nobody believed was really named Texas. He was kicked out of school and all and later he ran into some drug-crazed hippie while in the park. The hippie gets all mad and stuff because the kid keeps telling him his name is Texas so he goes and stabs the kid. Well later that night the hippie goes home and his mother asks him where his knife is and he says, “Deep in the heart of Texas.”

That joke still makes me laugh. So anyway my sister is telling the joke and is messing it all up, saying the kid’s name is Houston. The funny thing is that she’s saying Houston with a silent H, like they do for Humble. So she rattles on about this hard luck kid named Ooston and then she gets to the punch line where the mother asks her hippie son where his knife is and he says, “Deep in the stomach of Ooston.”

Now that really slays me. Man I love telling that story. ‘Course the joke doesn’t work if you don’t know about Humble, Texas and all.

So my brother is driving me to the downtown library and glances at my essay resting on my lap with its patriotic artwork on the cover. “What’s that title say?” he asked. “A Salute to America’s Four Fathers,” I said. He yucked it up a bit. “Not Four Fathers, numbnuts. It’s For Fathers: F-O-R; not the number four. Boy, buy you books and send you to school and you still don’t know nothing.” (That was another one of my dad’s favorite sayings.)

Charles quit laughing and it got quiet in the car. At one point I was tempted to throw the whole dang essay out the window, but I started thinking about this dumb old commercial on TV starring some pitiful old Indian chief who’s standing by the road when some punks throw trash out the window of their car and it lands next to his moccasins and then the old Indian starts crying. My dad would probably have told him, “Tough titty said the kitty, but the milk tastes good.”

But I didn’t say that and I didn’t want to be responsible for making some pitiful old Indian cry because I was so thoughtless as to litter. Keep America Beautiful, I repeated to myself.

Sitting there on the way to the Central Library in downtown Houston I realized that I had been had by my uncle. He’s always playing tricks on you and joking and acting goofy and all. The guy has a totem pole he made himself in his backyard in Minnesota for crying out loud. I mostly like his jokes, but he apparently pulled one on me that took a long time to work. See, he had this postcard in his workshop he got one year while on vacation in South Dakota. It was a picture of Mount Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore is famous for these huge heads of dead presidents carved into a mountain. Only, I didn’t know who they were. Where I made my mistake was to ask my uncle. He told me, “Why, they’re our Four Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. See, one-two-three-four.”

It made perfect sense to me. I always heard people jawing on about our Four Fathers and I had heard those names before, like Washington and Lincoln and all. And nobody can see how people are spelling what they’re saying. It’s like the time my oldest brother’s wife had a baby and he called to tell us the news. My brother Bill and I were dancing around like fools cheering the fact that we were uncles. Well, my dumb little sister started cheering, saying she was an uncle, too. We told her she couldn’t be an uncle because she was a girl and that she was an aunt. She got angry with us and marched over to mom to set us straight. Mom said that we were right, that she was an aunt. Man, she started bawling and all. Turns out she thought we meant she was an “ant,” like a bug. See? She couldn’t tell whether we were saying “ant” or “aunt.”

If you ask me no two words should be able to sound alike. It’s like the inventors of English got lazy or something. I guess then nothing would rhyme, but who likes dumb old poems anyway?

Well anyway, me and Charles finally reached the crummy old library in Houston and I hurried inside while my brother waited for me in the old Falcon station wagon. I walked up to a desk in the middle of the place and took my essay with the messed up cover and handed it to a lady sitting behind the desk. She smiled at me and told me how proud she was that I was entering the contest and said my entry looked like a bit more than a thousand words. But she was polite about it and I thanked her and I turned to walk away.

I found out then why librarians don’t like for people to talk inside the library – that’s because even the tiniest noise echoes off the walls and bounces all over the place so everyone can hear it. I know because I heard the librarian laugh. I could tell she was trying to hide it, but I heard her. I knew she was laughing at my Four Fathers. I really didn’t care much for librarians at that moment. And I definitely didn’t like my uncle and his stupid totem pole and dead presidents, the 4th of July and that pitiful dumb old Indian who cries because somebody throws a wadded up essay out into the street.

I didn’t win the essay contest even though I was sure that I had written the best one. It was the Four Fathers thing that sunk me. I mean, couldn’t those people simply read what I had written and forget about the Four Fathers? Some people are too critical if you ask me.

A portion of my essay did make the newspaper, however. It was in the Sunday section of the Houston Chronicle, which apparently had nothing better to do than to rip off Art Linkletter. The newspaper people wrote a headline like, “Houston Kids Say the Darnedest Things,” and under it they reprinted portions of the kids’ essays submitted in the contest.

“You made the paper!” my mom said gleefully. She was standing at the stove cooking pancakes while the rest of the family was seated around the supper table chowing away. My dad was sitting at the table, too, waiting for his share of pancakes and reading the newspaper with both hands outstretched. He bent one corner of the paper with his finger and looked at me with an expression he usually reserved for those times when me and my brother Bill got fidgety in church. We called it “The Look.”

Boy, one time me and my brother really got “The Look” while we were in church and I think it was a real miracle we didn’t get a beating later on. See, we attended the Love United Methodist Church and I think it was kinda new when we started going there. I don’t know exactly, but I know why churches have stained glass windows – that’s so you don’t get all distracted looking out real windows and forget about Jesus and all. Our church didn’t have stained glass windows and that’s why I think it was a new church and wasn’t finished or something. Either that or we weren’t giving enough money each Sunday to help pay for stained glass windows.

Anyway, there was a Shell gas station located across the street from Love United Methodist Church and you could see it plain as day from the church pews. Well, one day a bad storm passed through the area and damaged the Shell sign. The wind had knocked off the “S,” leaving just the word “hell” standing there proud as anything.

We saw it from the pew the next Sunday and that really tickled me and my brother. And then the preacher started preaching about sinners going to hell and all and I whispered to my brother, “I’ve been to hell…it’s just across the street from here and it ain’t so bad.”

That set my brother off to giggling and then me, too. I tried to suppress it, but that only seemed to make it worse. And then we spotted dad giving us “The Look,” and that straightened us up for a few minutes.

Then my brother had to add his two cents, saying he was so thirsty that he was tempted right then and there to “go to hell and back for a Coke.”

That really set me off which in turn set my brother off on a gut-busting laughing fit that we tried desperately to keep quiet. The thing about trying to suppress a gut-buster is that putting your hand over your mouth doesn’t do much good because all kinds of things can start spraying from all sorts of places. Sometimes I think it’s better to just laugh out loud and get it over with than trying to stop it. But we were in church, after all.

Dad really gave us “The Look” and I could tell the thought crossed his mind to yank us up from the pews and tan our hides in front of God and everybody. He was always threatening to beat us in front of God and everybody.

Somehow we made it through the rest of the sermon without laughing and to my surprise my dad made no mention of the incident as we walked back to the car after church. I think he saw the “hell” sign, too, and found humor in it. My grandpa, my dad’s dad, worked for Shell from way back during the Depression up to his sudden death back in the '50s. Maybe he was thinking about his dad when he saw that sign and forgot to tan our hides.

So on the Sunday the Houston Chronicle had published a portion of my patriotic essay, my dad was giving me “The Look.” I already felt bad enough about the Four Fathers and his expression only made me feel gloomier. He lifted the corner of the paper back up and resumed reading while I found a seat at the table.

“I cut it out and taped it to the refrigerator,” my mom said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Well, don’t you want to see it?”

“Why? I wrote it.”

My brother Bill couldn’t help himself. He sprang from his seat and snatched it from the refrigerator. “I’ll read it,” he said, returning to his seat.

“Don’t read it!” I shouted, trying to grab the article from his hand, but he was too fast for me. “O, I hate Uncle Buddy!”

The room got quiet. My fathered lowered the newspaper.

“What does my brother have to do with this?” my mom asked.

My eyes started welling with tears. “Well it’s all his fault. He’s the one who told me about the stupid Four Fathers and Mount Rushmore and stuff.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked.

“The Four Fathers. You know: Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Washington. Four Fathers. One-two-three-four. Ha-Ha funny! And now it’s all in the paper and everyone’s gonna make fun of me.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” mom said. “Billy, go ahead and read what it says.”

Bill cleared his throat before reading:

“When George Washington was a little kid he went and chopped down a bunch of cherry trees with a real sharp axe and when his dad asked him if he did it, he started bragging about it and all, saying he couldn’t lie about chopping them down. And miracle of miracles, he didn’t get a whipping or nothing. If I had done that my dad would have tanned my hide in front of God and everybody. George Washington sure was some lucky kid. I wish I had a dad like that; who wouldn’t cuss and all just because I cut some bark off some skinny old pine tree in the backyard with a busted up Boy Scout knife. It was a good thing, too, that George Washington didn’t lie because one day he was going to be our president and my dad says we already got enough liars up there in Washington D.C.”

I couldn’t believe it! Not one word about the Four Fathers. And to their credit the editors had selected one of the finer points in my essay. I couldn’t understand why my dad had been giving me “The Look,” but then I thought maybe I made him feel bad for not being more like George Washington’s father. I took a seat quietly hoping he might get me a axe or even a hatchet for Christmas.

Mom said she was going to get me something special for entering the essay contest and for putting forth such a great effort. A couple of days later we went down to the T.G.&Y. so mom could get some fabric to make curtains for the church windows and while there I reminded her of my promised reward for writing the essay.

She reluctantly agreed and set a ceiling on how much I could spend. It was a puny amount, but she was stuck in the Depression when you could buy groceries for five dollars for a whole week. She always complained that stores like T.G.&Y. should quit calling themselves Five and Dimes. “There’s nothing in here you can buy for a nickel,” she’d say. “And a dime won’t get you any further.”

I roamed along the toy aisle, eyeing the usual suspects: Slinky; yo-yos; tops; a deck of cards; dart guns; water guns; Silly Putty; Gumby; Wooly Willy the magnetic beard guy… nothing really interested me… until I saw it – a set of four darts. The shafts and feathers were made out of plastic (two red ones and two blue ones), but they had real sharp tips made of real metal.

I didn’t have enough to buy a dartboard to go with them, but big deal. I could throw them darts at anything. Heck, I could draw my own target and tape it to my bedroom wall and throw all day long.

Mom tried to talk me out of them, saying I’d probably hurt somebody, myself included, but after promising not to throw them at anybody, especially not at my little sister, and promising not to throw them at pets and animals, she agreed to let me have them. It was my reward for being a good writer and all.

Man, I had them darts forever. Sure, they got bent out of shape and were missing some tail wings and all and they weren’t likely to hit anything you were aiming at, but I had a lot of fun with those old darts.

But after a while I started losing one here and there until one day I was left with just one – a red one. I had forgotten all about it and only accidentally came across it while looking in old coffee cans in the garage for marbles and stuff to shoot with my slingshot. My dad had coffee cans scattered all over the garage, stuffed with screws and nails and drill bits and loose nuts and bolts. Every once in awhile something strange would end up in one of those cans like a Cap’n Crunch Fan Club pin or a Frito the Bandito eraser or a Rat Fink ring or a Boy Scout knife with busted blades and maybe sometimes a dumb marble. That’s what I was looking for when I came across the red dart. It was inside a can with rusted jigsaw blades and stuff.

It brought back memories of all the fun I’d had with my darts; the games my brother Bill and I would invent, like a balloon popping race or playing bull’s-eye with our own targets stuck to a tree. I remember one time my dart missed the target and stuck in the tire of my dad’s car. It didn’t pop it or nothing, but just stuck there a little. I grabbed that sucker and prayed like a madman my dad didn’t see that.

Seeing the dart in the coffee can made me want to throw it again – for old time’s sake – so I took it out of the can and brought it to the front yard so I could throw it at this big old pine tree we had. The shaft of the dart was bent like a bow and I tried to straighten it as best I could. Stepping off ten paces, I turned to face the tree, eyed an imaginary target, and let the dart fly.

It arced like a rainbow and looked so pitiful, wobbling toward the tree. It missed the mark by a mile, but it stuck in the bark real good. After working with the shaft and throwing in anticipation of the arc, I was getting to be pretty good hitting my target. That’s when my neighbor Tommy McCurdy came outside. When he saw me flinging that dart, he rushed across the street without looking even once for traffic.

He was all red-faced and panting hard and all, gushing with excitement. “Whatcha doing?” he asked, though it was obvious to the whole world what I was doing.

“Nothin’,” I said.

He wanted to know if the dart was mine, how I got it, if I had more darts… he was so pushy he was getting on my nerves and I told him so. I told him “Gee, Tommy, it’s no big deal. Haven’t you ever seen a dart before?”

Of course he had seen one before, but not this close. His mom was real strict and wouldn’t let him own anything with a sharp point. He still cut with baby scissors, you know, the ones with rounded points that rip paper more than they cut. His mom says he’s too careless to have anything sharp in his hands. One time he gashed his hand wide open while peeling an apple with a butter knife!

Son, Tommy was as excited over that stupid dart as I had ever seen him. He begged me to let him throw it. I didn’t mind, but I didn’t want Mrs. McCurdy to see us and then start yelling at me. He told me she was hanging laundry out back and wasn’t anywhere close to see us.

I knew better than to let him throw the dang thing. It was too tricky. Well, he winded back like he was going to pitch a fastball and he threw it hard at the tree. He missed, of course, and it ricocheted off the driveway and hit our old Rambler station wagon under the rear door on the driver’s side. My heart felt like it was going to beat itself right out my mouth.

I rushed over to the car and kneeled down to get a closer look at the damage. Just a tiny scratch; nothing anybody would see unless they were on their knees. Even then they’d think nothing of it. I quickly retrieved the dart and stood up and sauntered real nice and easy like to the end of the driveway, acting like nothing happened. Tommy huffed and puffed behind me.

I told him he couldn’t throw anymore and that I was thinking maybe I’d throw the dart away on account that it almost cost me my life twice: when it got stuck in the tire and just now when Tommy threw it at the car.

Tommy begged me to let him throw it some more, promising to be more careful and all, but I held my ground. He asked me if I was really going to throw it away and I said I was still thinking about it.

“If you’re going to throw it away, I’ll take it,” he said.

Look, I’m not about to just give anything away. If I put it in the trash and he came along and dug it out of the trashcan, that’s one thing, but to just give it to him… that’s not right. He must have sensed I had my doubts because he said just the thing I wanted to hear: “I’ll trade you for it.”

I agreed, but on the condition he had something worth trading for. I let him hold the dart while we went to his house so I could see what he had. His mom was still out back hanging laundry, but Tommy stuffed the dart in his pocket just in case she snuck up on us.

His room was about the junkiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. He had stuff scattered all over the place: clothes, socks, shoes, baseball cards, a couple of Mad magazines, army men… it was a disaster. And it stunk, too. Tommy blamed it on their cat. A white, hairy thing he said was a Persian or something.

To be honest with you, I was kinda afraid to even look around at anything.

Tommy started digging through his closet trying to find something worth trading. He held up some dumb gyroscope. Nope. A busted up Man from U.N.C.L.E. pistol. No. A wooden airplane with a missing tail wing. Uh-uh. Rock’em Sock’em Robots with the blue robot’s head permanently jacked. No thanks.

While he continued to root through his stuff, I noticed on his dresser a portable record player and next to it a stack of 45 rpm records. We just call ‘em 45s. I have to tell you, I was pretty excited. See, up to that time I had never owned my own record. Sure, we had records, but they all belonged to my brothers and my oldest sister and dad.

I could go on and on about dad and his sorry record collection, but I’m not really interested in talking about Glenn Miller and all those other old-timey people right now.

He doesn’t have any 45s – they’re all 78s! Son, that’s ancient. Well, I really don’t know a whole lot about it, but my brothers all laugh at his records so I figure they know what’s what more than I do.

The point is that everybody in the house has records except for me and my little sister, but she was too young to count. And it doesn’t count that my mom bought me this pitiful song about Georgie Porgie and “seesaw Margery Daw.” Please don’t ask me to explain because I don’t know what that was all about.

I guess I might tell you my middle name is George. I’m named after my uncle; not the one with the totem pole, but Uncle George is just as crazy. Anyway, once kids found out my middle name they were always running around teasing me, saying, “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.” Even my brothers would sing that because they knew that I’d get all mad and stuff. A person can get sick of that real quick. Well, my mom must have been feeling sorry for me so she goes and buys a record… a record about Georgie Porgie! Now how does that make sense? It’s like my dad: let’s say somebody hurt your feelings and all and you bust out crying and what does he do? He says, “Now quit your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” That means he’s about to give me a whipping, but for what? Crying? And what will happen after I get a beating? I’ll cry. Doesn’t make sense. And neither did mom getting me that record.

It was all jazzed up to sound modern and these singers are all happily singing “Georgie Porgie,” and then they get to this part about him kissing all the girls but suddenly runs away when all the kids get out of class to play because “he saw Margery Daw” or maybe it’s “seesaw Margery Daw.” Either way it’s dumb to me. Turns out “seesaw Margery Daw” was some stupid song kids sang while on the seesaw. It’s probably from the Depression because I never heard of it before that dang record.

So mom plays it for me and is all smiles. I mean she was really pleased. What was I supposed to do? See, my mom is really a sweet lady and I really hated to hurt her feelings and all. Like one time I did something or another to get in trouble and my dad wasn’t around to discipline me and I guess whatever it was I did was bad enough that she couldn’t afford to wait for my dad to get home so she had to do it herself.

My mom rarely ever spanked us kids. She didn’t believe in it. But she sure did believe in letting dad beat us. Whenever we got in trouble her famous words were always, “Wait until your father gets home!”

But this time, for some reason she decided she was going to discipline me herself. Well, I was pushing nine then, and I wasn’t some little kid anymore. But that didn’t stop her. She grabbed a yardstick and started waling away. To be honest, I didn’t feel much of anything. I looked back to see if she was done and I saw how intent she was to punish me and I kinda felt sorry for her, so I started fake crying and all so that she’d feel better. It worked. She stopped, turned me around, hugged me, and sent me to my room.

I’m a pretty good actor when I want to be and so after that stupid Georgie Porgie song was over and my mom was all happy and proud because she had made me feel better about my middle name and because somehow that stupid song would tell everybody off… well, I acted like I really liked that song. “It’s a good song,” I said. My mom clasped her hands together and held them to her chest, her face glowing.

Anyways, I was in Tommy’s bedroom when I see a stack of records and I’m thinking maybe I am ready for a trade.

“How about this peashooter?” he asked, holding up a stripped tube that looked like a fat straw.

“Heck no,” I said, thinking about his spit probably all over it. “Uh…No thank you,” I said, remembering to be polite so he might be more willing to trade me a 45 for the dart. “I see all your records here. Maybe you have one I might be interested in…to trade.”

“You want a record?” he asked. “Which one?”

I told him I wasn’t sure until I went through them all. To my surprise, he was more than willing to trade a record for the dart. I can’t remember all the titles of records he had, but he had this one that I really wanted. It was “Happy Together,” by the Turtles. Man, I loved that song!

I tried to act natural and all. “I guess I’d be willing to trade my dart for this,” I said, showing him the record.

“OK.”

And that was that. Just like my dad says: “No fuss; no muss.” I took the record and walked back home so I could play it, but Tommy tagged along, begging me to play it later, after we threw the dart some more. I finally agreed and went inside to put the record up in case he changed his mind or something.

When I got back outside, he was throwing that dang dart at my pine tree and missing it, of course. I told him he had to go throw it at his own pine tree. So that’s what we did – we went to his yard so that he could throw the dart at his own pine tree.

After awhile he started getting pretty good with that dart and was anticipating the arc and all. I tell you, I’ve never seen a boy happier. I really think it was the first sharp object he’d ever owned his whole life.

In an act of real joy, Tommy hummed that dart as far in the air as he could, grinning like a baby playing peek-a-boo. Let me tell you, Tommy had a arm. He played on the same baseball team as me – the Jitney-Jungle Jets – and he was our star pitcher. So when he threw that dart he really let it fly.

Then he started quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.”

Longfellow was a old-timey poet and our class had to memorize one of his poems: “The Arrow and the Song.” That’s what Tommy was reciting when he hurled that dart. I used to joke that Longfellow should have been called Longwinded because a lot of his stuff goes on forever.

Tommy and I laid down on the grass and searched the sky for the dart. Honestly, that thing hung up there for a real long time.

We didn’t say much, but we were both so happy. My arms behind my head, I hummed the tune “Happy Together,” thinking how happy I was to finally own a 45. Tommy was happy, too, because he had a dart of his own.

My happiness came to an abrupt end when I suddenly remembered something my dad always said: “What goes up must come down.”

The dart! It was coming down. But where? I alerted Tommy and we both sat up and scanned the sky. Then we saw it. It was arching over the roof of his house toward his backyard.

“My mom!” Tommy shouted.

At almost that exact moment Mrs. McCurdy was finished with the laundry and was just entering the house through the backdoor when their Persian cat shot outside.

We saw the dart dip below the roof, out of sight.

Then we heard the loudest cat scream ever recorded in the history of our lives. That was followed by the loudest human scream we’d ever heard. Mrs. McCurdy was screaming her lungs out.

Suddenly we saw Tommy’s cat bolt from the backyard, right past us, with a red dart sticking out of its tail. We chased after the cat, which crawled up under a holly bush and Tommy reached in there and was able to grab the dart. I’ll never forget that cat’s eyes. They were wide open. They were huge and they looked wild and all with fear. Tommy’s eyes looked the same way.

Mrs. McCurdy caught up with us in the front yard while Tommy was trying to calm the cat down. Boy, she glared right at me and started jawing at me, saying I should be ashamed of myself and all. Tommy didn’t say anything.

I swear she almost made me cry because she was yelling so loud and all, and then I finally got the nerve to tell her what really happened – that it was Tommy who threw the dart. HIS dart. I told her about the trade and all.

I hadn’t made it to the middle of the street when I heard Mrs. McCurdy start laying into Tommy. Boy was he getting it good. In front of God and everybody. I ran the rest of the way home and went to my bedroom where I could still hear Mrs. McCurdy yelling and Tommy crying.

I closed my window so I couldn’t hear it any more and I put my new 45 on the record player and started playing it. “Me and you and you and me…No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be…The only one for me is you, and you for me…So happy together…” I never heard nothing better in my whole life. I loved that song. When it was over, I played it again and again.

I felt sorry for Tommy because he got a whooping because of that dart and he probably was going to get beat again when his dad got home. And I felt sorry for the stupid cat, too. But to be honest with you, I wasn’t sorry I traded for that record. I loved that thing and it was mine and despite feeling all bad inside, a part of me felt good, too.

You know, maybe that’s what my dad means when he says, “Tough titty says the kitty, but the milk tastes good.” It kinda makes sense – at least the part about the milk tasting good and all.


Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

Food as Art

One cannot begin to discuss the events of humankind without including food, be it the bison of Tuc D'Audoubert, the apple in the Garden of Eden, the Last Supper, the fall of Rome, the French Revolution or the Russian revolution of 1917 (“Bread, Peace and Land” was the rallying cry). Without argument, food has been and will continue to be at the core of the human experience.

Tom Standage does an excellent job in detailing the role food has played in shaping world events in his well-written book, “An Edible History of Humanity.” He cleverly describes food as the “invisible fork” that has “prodded humanity and altered its destiny.” Standage explains:

“To the discerning eye, food’s historical influence can be seen all around us, and not just in the kitchen, at the dining table or in the supermarket. That food has been such an important ingredient in human affairs might seem strange, but it would be far more surprising if it had not: after all, everything that every person has ever done, throughout history, has literally been fuelled by food.”

Understandably then, food, prose and verse have been married since the first word was committed to parchment. Our exposure to food and the written word begin at an early age with childhood rhymes like Miss Muffet’s curds and whey; Jack Horner’s plum pie; Little Tom Tucker’s white bread and butter; Peter’s pumpkin; and Sam’s green eggs and ham.

In the hands of a skilled writer, food can play a pivotal role in propelling a story forward, like Scarlett O’Hara’s fiery oath: “... If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.” Food can also be used quietly to explore a character’s cultural background. Amy Tan, for example, used food in “The Joy Luck Club” as a symbol for a mother’s love of her daughter.

That same idea of food as love and family was repeated in the Taiwanese film, “Eat Drink Man Woman” (and its remake, “Tortilla Soup”). Other books and films carrying on with the theme include the deliciously filmed German movie “Mostly Martha;” “Big Night;” “Like Water for Chocolate;” and “Pieces of April.”

Food is sensual and sexy as in “Chocolat” (more so the film version than the novel); “Dandelion” (originally “Tampopo”); “Woman on Top;” “Waitress;” and “Tom Jones.”

Food is sinful: “Vatel;” “La Grande Bouffe;” “The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover;” and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.”

Food is life-altering as “Babette's Feast,” “Julie and Julia;” “The Chinese Feast;” “Fish Fall in Love;” and “Ratatouille.”

And of course food can always be used as a shock factor, as in Günter Grass’ “The Tin Drum” when Oskar’s mother kills herself by gorging on fish and eels. Thomas Harris’ wickedly delightful Hannibal Lecter creates a howl with his recollection of a fine meal: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

In a terrific column on the role of food and literature, scholar Jonathan C. David explains:

“Because food customs call forth such a labyrinth of associations on the part of individual writers, and because the inherent sensuality of food involves not only the senses of smell and taste, but also the other senses, food is capable of evoking an avalanche of memories and feelings. Food imagery may appear, therefore, in literature as a source of deeply embedded associations that lead into the depths of individual and cultural memory.”

I found another enlightening essay at enotes.com exploring the ancient interplay between food and poetry: “Food has been a topic of poetry for many centuries and in many cultures; the notion that food writing and poetry writing are totally separate ventures is a recent development. Much of our knowledge of eating habits, culinary practices, and food taboos throughout history and around the world comes from poetry. Food in poetry also functions as a powerful symbol of spiritual and moral states, and at other times it is used as a sexual symbol.”

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) delves more deeply into the subject of food in art and life with a very insightful, educational, entertaining website, The Meaning of Food. A great resource site, The Meaning of Food “is an exploration of culture through food. What we consume, how we acquire it, who prepares it, who’s at the table, and who eats first is a form of communication that is rich with meaning.”

Included in that site PBS has a fun slideshow dedicated to food in literature, citing classics such as James Joyce’s “Ulysses;” Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote;” Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales;” and John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden.”

Whether writing poetry or for the page, stage or screen, don’t overlook the powerful role food plays in our daily lives. As novelist and playwright J.B. Priestly so perfectly summed up life:

“We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.”

If you don’t know how to cook, that’s okay. There’s no better time than the present to start experimenting and learning the “joy of cooking.” You’re life and your art will definitely benefit from it.

Here’s a great jumping off point where food and literature truly come together: “A Feast of Words: For Lovers of Food and Fiction” by Anna Shapiro. Shapiro has created inventive menus to accompany the pleasures of reading Proust, Dickens, Melville, and Charlotte Bronte. Over 50 recipes for such delights as Quail with Potaoes and Grapes ("Babette's Feast"); Lamb a la Robin (“David Copperfield”), and Meat Tart (“Ethan Frome”) accompany essays which expound upon the importance of food in such masterpieces as Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, and Jane Eyre.

Here’s to good cheer, good company and good food and great art!

Other resources:

Food in the arts

The Long History of Food in Art

Food and Eating in the Movies:

Better Food Writing: Adjectives

The Function of Food in Mediaeval German Literature

"Burying the Dead" - A poem by Donald G. Redman

“Burying the Dead”
By Donald G. Redman

You should decide what to keep and what to leave for dead
Before you pack all your crap in boxes and seal them up like coffins.
But I hadn’t done that; I’d crammed all my possessions haphazardly
Like an evacuee fleeing a hurricane.

I settled into a bombed-out apartment, my precious junk
Still in boxes strewn about like caskets after a flood.
A naked bulb dangled above,
Casting an ugly white light on the carnage below.

The windows were stripped bare so the whole world could see in.
The wooden floors needed to be refinished and
I thought maybe I’d do that before the furniture arrived,
But who was I kidding.

It was cold outside, gray, and getting dark.
A good day for a funeral.
But first I had to pry open those damned boxes like a grave robber and
Loot the valuables before I could dispose of the corpses.

A small box branded “Important!” laid disemboweled on the floor.
It had held the corkscrew I was now using to open
The first of several cheap bottles of red wine
I intended to spill that night.

But what good is it to mark where the corkscrew is buried
When you forget to label the crate with the wineglasses?
Screw it.
I’m not above drinking from the bottle.

I’d seen the winos on Camp Street do that –
Drink straight from bottles shrouded in brown paper bags.
That was back before the Warehouse District got so gentrified.
Before the World’s Fair came.

Every Friday as I left work I’d see them milling about Camp Street
With upturned grins and upturned bottles.
Come Monday I’d find them passed out in doorways or hobbling,
Battered, bruised and bandaged.

I shoveled through the box with the corkscrew
And dug up a portable clock radio and plugged it in.
Townes Van Zandt was singing “Nothin.’”
I walked to the window to peer out, but only saw my reflection.

I was well into my wine when
I unearthed a squat, metal penny bank.
It was from my youth, a safe to store my valuables
Though I apparently never considered money valuable.

My parents had been purging their house of artifacts
From our childhood, returning shit to their rightful owners.
The safe was mine and so I had the burden of carrying it
Around like a cremation urn.

The door was sealed shut by a tiny combination lock.
I turned the bank upside down and discovered I had been trusting in my youth,
Or I had been forgetful.
Printed in black permanent ink: 24-14-3.

I opened the vault and withdrew a plastic bag
Stuffed with envelopes in lavender.
I knew instantly what they were:
Love letters from a romance I had long left for dead.

After our relationship had returned to dust
I apparently had been unable to destroy the letters
And instead entombed them inside a toy bank.
That’s why you don’t let the living bury the dead.

It must have been out of morbid curiosity
That I opened the bag.
Almost immediately my nostrils were filled with
The intoxicating scent of perfume.

Like a lover preparing his beloved’s funeral attire,
My old self had arranged the letters neatly, orderly,
And placed them within the crypt in chronological order,
Embalmed in her perfume.

Nina Simone was casting a spell on me from the radio.
Perfume filled the air like hoodoo incense
And my old girlfriend was suddenly standing there,
A ghost in the corner of my room.

Maybe I was thinking I could resurrect the dead;
I slowly removed the envelopes from the body bag
And began reading the letters one by one,
Starting with the first letter I had ever received from her.

Of course she had promised me her undying love
And hearing her whisper those words once more
Made me want to believe all over again.
But they were after all just empty promises ushered from the grave.

And then came the letters from the bottom of the pile.
Based on her stilted responses, I must have been writing in anger.
I had been angry – she was throwing dirt on my grave and I was scared
Like someone being buried alive trying to claw his way out of the coffin.

Re-reading the letters lead me on a long emotional march
From a joyful Mardi Gras parade to a somber funeral procession
And she was there with me every step of the way,
Waving her perfume-soaked letters like a handkerchief in a Second Line.

When I was finished I was as broken and battered
As a Camp Street wino on Monday morning.
I piled off the bottle and opened the window
And fanned her perfume out into the cold dark air.

I killed her again later that night.
This time by fire,
Burning the letters in a funeral pyre.
Ashes returning to ashes.

I’ve gotten better at burying the dead these days.
I’ve buried a few more relationships since then.
A marriage.
My parents.

The hard part is letting the dead stay dead.
For if you don’t,
They will surely rise from the grave
And eat your heart out.



Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

Texas Poet Twists Newsprint Into Poetry

Austin Kleon is a Texas-based poet, writer, cartoonist and designer. He's found a creative way of making poetry from the newspaper. His first book, Newspaper Blackout, was published this summer.
Now this is a fantastic idea!
Video link follows:
Texas Poet Twists Newsprint Into Prose : NewsHour Poetry Series : Video : The Poetry Foundation

The genesis of a poem: Driving and Crying

Last night I had what I call a “thinking dream” – I’m neither fully awake nor fully asleep. I’m vaguely aware that I’m dreaming and can manipulate some of the images I see internally while adding commentary. I have these “thinking dreams” quite frequently.

I'm jotting down here the images and emotions I had in last night’s dream with the intention of giving shape and meaning to the vision in the form of a poem.

Driving at night on a winding, curvy blacktop road with tall trees shooting upward from either side of the road (Natchez Trace perhaps). Bright headlights, bright solid white line demarking the edge of the road and reflective yellow dotted lines down the center. A pickup truck. Ice chest of beer in the bed. A can of beer wedged between my thighs. Hot beer tossed can – the sound of a full beer can hitting the pavement – a thud? Reflection of dash instruments cast in side window. A ghost thumbing a ride. My ex. A deer – a fawn – leaping in front of me. A crash. Busted windshield. Full moon. Drag body to the side of the road. Look back, in the distance, standing in the middle of the road, the ghost of my ex. Music. “Driving and Crying”? Jimmy Buffet? Running scared.

And now the creative process begins...

"The Donkey Tale" -- a short story

The Donkey Tale
by Donald G. Redman

It was one of those magical mornings we’re all blessed with at one time or another. My brother and I stumbled out of the house bleary-eyed and trundled off toward the school bus stop when Tommy McCurdy yelled from across the street: “Hey, there’s a donkey in my backyard!”

“Pshaw!” I said (pronouncing the “P”).

“Honest,” he said. “A real live donkey just walked up in my yard. He’s in the backyard right now. My mom’s gonna feed him some carrots.”

My brother and I dashed across the street without checking for traffic and met up with about twelve other kids who had heard the news. We all crammed in his backyard and sure enough, there was a danged donkey. I knew then that my mom and the Reverend Patterson were right – Jesus does love all the little children.

Tommy’s mom, Mrs. McCurdy, was all worried and was yelling at us to be orderly and stuff.

Mrs. McCurdy was always yelling. Tommy’s little sister, Kaye, was my age and sometimes she’d hang out with me in our playhouse in the backyard. Somehow Mrs. McCurdy got it in her head that I was Kaye’s keeper and that I knew where she was every minute of the day. As soon as she would see me step outside of the house she’d yell from across the street, “If you see Kaye…” Every time she’d yell that, I would immediately cringe, thinking she was spelling out a really bad curse word, until she added “…tell her to come home.”

Then there was the time that me and Tommy threw a dart in the air and it came straight down on Mrs. McCurdy’s cat. Boy did she ever scream. You should have heard the cat scream, too. I didn’t actually throw the dart but I was with Tommy when he did it. Oh, and he got the dart from me in an even swap for a 45 record of “Happy Together” by The Turtles. But that’s a different story for later.

So it was not a surprise that on this day Tommy’s mom was yelling. She yelled at us not to gather around the backside of the donkey or we could get kicked in the head so hard it’d make our brains fall out or worse.

Tommy and a couple of other lucky kids, including my brother who had muscled his way through the crowd, were at the front of the donkey, petting its forehead and feeding it carrots. I was among the smaller kids forced to stand a few feet back from the donkey and wait our turn to pet it. But I couldn’t wait. I broke free of the line and reached out to touch the donkey’s mane. The donkey turned his head to look at me and for a brief minute I was lost in his eyes – eyes so big and watery you think you could swim in them. And then the danged thing bit me. Hard! On the stomach!

I yelled out in pain and pulled up the front of my shirt and saw teeth marks on my stomach. Bloody teeth marks! Boy, I was really bawling then. But even though I was crying and yelling real loud, I could still hear Tommy’s mom screaming even louder: “Sweet Jesus!”

Mrs. McCurdy ordered everybody to get off her property or else she was going to call the cops. She told me I might want to have my mom check out my wound, adding “I doubt you have to worry about rabies. That’s just a donkey for you – they’re either kicking or biting or braying.” (I thought she had said praying, and I thought that was just about the craziest thing I had ever heard – kicking and biting and praying – ‘til I remembered Tommy’s family was Pentecostal.)

My dumb brother took great delight in my misery and thought there was probably nothing funnier in the whole wide world than me being bitten by a donkey. I couldn’t find any humor in it, but I did experience a small amount of glee when my mom said I could miss school while he had to go learn something that day.

We never did find out where that donkey came from or where it went. Before the cops got to Tommy’s house, the danged thing just wandered off never to be seen again. The only sign we had that the donkey ever existed was the teeth marks it left on my stomach.

For days after the episode, I was the star attraction on my block. Everybody wanted to see the teeth marks the donkey left behind. My brother said he’d be glad to be my manager and that we should start charging kids a dime for a peek, but I didn’t feel right about that. It didn’t bother him: he turned a nifty profit by setting up a Kool-Aid stand in the front yard with a handwritten sign reading: “Buy 1 drink/see wild ass bite mark free.”

A couple of weeks passed and the bite mark faded away. My brother’s Kool-Aid stand went out of business and I returned to just being another kid in the neighborhood. The block soon returned to normal, the quiet only intermittently broken by Mrs. McCurdy’s lament: “If you see Kaye…tell her to come home.”


Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

Fiction in a Flash

I found an interesting site at Writing-World.com and thought it may be of interest to other aspiring writers. This particular article I’ve highlighted attempts to answer the question how long your story should be. Of late I have been keenly interested in attempting “flash fiction,” which allows for no more than 1,000 words, although 750 words is the preferred length. Growing in popularity is “micro-fiction” with a maximum word count of about 100, which sounds to me like the haiku of prose.

Katharine Brush

My very first exposure to what we today call flash fiction was the brilliant short story “The Birthday Party,” by Katharine Brush. The term “flash fiction” wasn’t in vogue then (it was written in 1946) and until the moment I was introduced to it I had never before read such a short, short story. But wow! What a powerful story it is; packed with such big emotions in so few words (314 in total). It still haunts me. Read it here.

I was again acquainted with sudden fiction in the early 1990s with a wicked collection of absurd stories in, “Wearing Dad’s Head,” by Barry Yourgrau. His book has been re-released through Amazon.com where you can find it and other works by Yourgrau, including his break-out book “A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane” and the outstanding “Sadness of Sex.”

There are scores of sites on the Web featuring examples of flash fiction, but I direct your attention to a couple of sites I thought worthy: FlashFictionOnline.com and the blog site FlashFiction.net.

The Noblest Form of Communication

The Handwritten Letter: The Noblest Form of Communication
by Donald G. Redman

I caught myself browsing ink pens while at an office supply store where I was supposed to be shopping for my daughter’s back-to-school supplies, but somewhere between packages of ruled paper and pocket folders, I’d wandered to the glass display of ink pens. These weren’t your standard pens, like for doing homework or balancing the checkbook or scribbling notes. No, these were Montblanc, OMAS, S.T. Dupont, Lamy and other notable, high-class writing instruments.

I’ve had a few quality ink pens in my life, the last one purchased nearly fifteen years ago. That’s a long time for someone who had once fancied himself a connoisseur of ink pens and who had hopes of establishing a collection of high-class writing instruments.

I hadn’t made a cognitive decision to quit amassing quality ink pens; however, I think that it has been about fifteen years since I last wrote a letter by hand. I once heard someone describe the handwritten letter as “the noblest form of communication.” I know it’s true; when it came to writing letters by hand I almost always used high-class writing instruments. It seemed that I wrote with more flair and panache when I unsheathed my Montblanc. Or so I imagined.

But with the arrival of the ubiquitous computer and printer, it wasn’t long before I started leaning heavily on the machinery to keep up with my correspondence. Occasionally, I would unsheathe a writing instrument, but usually only to sign my name at the bottom of a typed letter – with great flair and panache, mind you. And sometimes I employed the pens for inscribing Christmas cards and whatnot, but the opportunities and occasions to use the pens faded with each passing year.

The handwritten letters gave way to typed letters, which gave way to email letters, and even that has given way to text messages and Facebook status updates.

Browsing that day at the quality ink pens, I realized that it really wasn’t the pens I missed, rather it was the letters. I miss letters. Good letters. The sort of letter that’s three to five pages long, written front and back – by hand! I think I knew a lot more about my friends back when we shared letters. Today I know instantly that they’re going shopping or what they just saw while on vacation, but I know little more than that. When we used to exchange letters we shared all that day-to-day stuff, too – where we had been, what we had done – but always included somewhere in those pages was a deeper look into that person’s soul.

I recently read a book about John Adams and it contained voluminous excerpts of letters from John Adams to his wife Abigail, his kids, Thomas Jefferson, and their letters to him. They contained life’s banalities like what crops to plant, budgetary concerns, and petty gossip, but they nevertheless wrote with such magnificent style that even everyday tasks sounded majestic. I marveled at the sheer beauty of their words, their style and the depth of meaning – so open and honest and tender. Truly it was the pinnacle of letter writing!

I never penned anything so majestic, but that’s okay. My parents certainly thought highly of every letter I ever wrote them. My earliest letters were to my father, who traveled often and was always on the road, sometimes weeks on end. My mom made sure we all wrote letters to him to keep him up-to-date on what was going on in our lives and to tell him we loved him and missed him.

I wasn’t too good about doing that, but I fancied myself a pretty good storyteller, so my letters were always little stories. Sometimes they were lighthearted like the time I blended Curious George with Robinson Crusoe, and other times I wrote dark, brooding stories that I’m sure alarmed my parents, like the story about the serial killer strangling telephone operators.

I am able to recall these childhood letters because my dad held on to them. He and mom held on to just about every letter any of us ever wrote them. A lot of the letters were just plain, run-of-the mill “how-you-doing” kind of letter hardly worth keeping. Some were more personal in nature, explaining a failed relationship or asking for financial help or expressing confusion and loss. I don’t know why they held on to any of these letters, but maybe it was because they were always signed with love.

My parents had done everything by mail – fell in love, maintained a long-distance love-affair, proposed to each other, exchanged engagement rings.... They wrote letters to each other almost their entire lives and to distant relatives certainly their whole lives. After my parents died I took a couple of letters they had written to each other, just to hold on to a piece of them. There is a quiet comfort in seeing a loved one’s handwriting.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by his or her handwriting. In fact, here’s a whole science dedicated to it – graphology. I remember a parlor game we had that supposedly let you analyze your family and friends by studying their handwriting. I wonder if in the near future there will be any need for handwriting experts. No one writes today. Well, at least not by hand. And “penmanship” in the classroom has given way to “keyboarding.” Cursive writing is no longer being taught in most schools across the country.
Instead of the barely legible chicken scratch or the flamboyant loops and curls or meticulous Copperplate script, we receive digital typeset devoid of character.

I remember with great fondness a letter-writing campaign I had embarked on during the summer of 1976. I was a teenager working as a Boy Scout summer camp counselor and during a weekend furlough I met a girl at a dance and we struck up a correspondence that lasted all summer and longer. I remember with clarity the circumstances surrounding the first letter I wrote her: It was at nightfall and I was seated at a picnic table outside my tent, accompanied by a friend, who was also writing a letter to his girl. A Coleman kerosene lantern burned brightly between us, attracting all sorts of insects. My friend and I sat in silence, writing our letters while June bugs crashed like Kamikazes into the lantern’s glass pane.

I was writing to a girl for the first time to express my feelings for her. My friend was writing a letter to his girlfriend to call it quits. When we were done writing, we looked up at each other and shared a laugh: “I say hello, and you say good-bye.”

I received scores of letters from my girl all summer long, re-reading each one a thousand times. She even sprayed perfume on the letters, driving me even crazier. I have zero recollection of what we talked about in those letters, but I completely remember how I felt waiting for them to arrive, smelling them, and lying on my camp cot reading them again and again and again.

You can’t get a scented email or text message or Facebook status update!

Ink flows like honey,
Loops and curves promising love.
Dreams sealed with a kiss.

I’m a dinosaur. I have never been one to stay on the phone for long and I get antsy when the conversation lasts longer than ten minutes. Sure, it’s nice to hear the voice of a loved one or a friend, but once you hang up and the conversation is over, it’s gone. That’s the same with digital messages. I’m very tactile and need to feel something in my hands for it to be real. To be able to hold a letter. Feel it. Smell it. Fold it and unfold it and read it again and again.

Okay, I admit I do like the immediacy of today’s communication, but there is something to be said for the pain that anticipation inflicts upon you while waiting for a letter to arrive. There is oh so much truth to the description “snail mail.” Once you composed a letter and the mailman picked it up, it was a waiting game. The days would be agonizingly long while you waited for a response. You calculated in your head that if the person received your letter on Monday and responded that very day, she still couldn’t get it mailed until Tuesday, meaning that the earliest you could expect a letter in your mailbox would be Thursday. Hardly anyone ever wrote back that fast. It usually took five to seven days to hear back. Still, you checked the mailbox daily in anticipation of a response letter.

When it did arrive... O the joy! It didn’t matter if it was from your girlfriend or your grandma, getting a letter of any sort was always a cause for joy.

The other day, my wife and I returned home from an errand and as we headed toward the house she asked, “Did you check the mail?” My immediate response was, “Why?” She turned around and walked back to the mailbox while I proceeded inward. There’s no reason to check the mailbox any more; all my bills are sent electronically, the majority of party invitations are emailed, and I haven’t received a “real” letter in about twenty years. Nope, the mailbox might as well be a tombstone planted in my front yard.

I think the last handwritten letter I ever sent was to the woman who eventually became my wife. Sure, I still write notes to her inside cards on her birthday and Valentine’s Day and on our anniversary, and I guess that still counts, sorta. But I think she used to know more about me when we exchanged letters than we do day, lying next to each other in the same bed.

I think I’m going to get that Pelikan ink pen I’ve been eyeing, purchase some nice stationery and start composing a handwritten letter – first to my wife and then we’ll see from there... I have an aunt I haven’t written to in a long, long time... a couple of friends who don’t do Facebook... some cousins in distant lands....

Coppyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

"Burying the Dead" -- A poem by Donald G. Redman

"Burying the Dead"
by Donald G. Redman

You should decide what to keep and what to leave for dead
Before you pack all your crap in boxes and seal them up like coffins.
But I hadn’t done that; I’d crammed all my possessions haphazardly
Like an evacuee fleeing a hurricane.

I settled into a bombed-out apartment, my precious junk
Still in boxes strewn about like caskets after a flood.
A naked bulb dangled above,
Casting an ugly white light on the carnage below.

The windows were bare so that the whole world could peer in if it wanted to.
The wooden floors were faded and in need of sanding and refinishing and
I thought maybe I’d do that before the furniture arrived,
But who was I kidding.

It was cold outside, gray, and getting dark.
A good day for a funeral.
But first I had to pry open those damned boxes like a grave robber and
Loot the valuables before I could dispose of the corpses.

A small box branded “Important!” laid disemboweled on the floor.
It had held the corkscrew I was now using to open
The first of several cheap bottles of red wine that
I intended to spill that night.

Where I had been brilliant in marking where the corkscrew was buried
I had been equally stupid in failing to label the crate with the wineglasses.
Screw it.
I’m not above drinking from the bottle.

I’d seen the winos on Camp Street do that –
Drink straight from bottles shrouded in brown paper bags.
That was back before the Warehouse District got so gentrified.
Before the World’s Fair came.

On Friday evenings as I left work I’d see them lining Camp Street,
All with upturned grins and upturned bottles.
Come Monday I’d find them passed out or hobbling,
Battered, bruised and bandaged.

I shoveled through the box with the corkscrew
And dug up a portable clock radio and plugged it in.
Townes Van Zandt was singing “Nothin.’”
I walked to the window to peer out, but only saw my reflection.

I was well into my wine
When I unearthed a squat, metal penny bank fashioned to resemble a safe.
It was from my youth, a place to store my valuables
Though I apparently never considered money valuable.

My parents had been purging their house of artifacts
From our childhood, returning shit to their rightful owners.
The safe was mine and so I had the burden of carrying it
Around like a cremation urn.

The door was sealed shut by a tiny combination lock.
I turned the safe upside down and discovered that I had been a trusting soul in my youth
Or I had been forgetful.
Printed in black permanent ink: 24-14-3.

I opened the vault and withdrew a plastic bag
Stuffed with pale purple envelopes.
I knew instantly what they were:
Love letters from a romance I had long left for dead.

After our relationship had failed
I apparently had been unable to destroy the letters
And instead, entombed them in a toy safe.
That’s why you don’t let the living bury the dead.

Surely it was out of morbid curiosity
That I opened the plastic bag.
Almost immediately my nostrils were filled with
The intoxicating scent of perfume.

Like a lover preparing his beloved’s funeral attire,
My old self had arranged the letters neatly, orderly,
And placed them within the crypt in chronological order,
Embalmed in her perfume.

Nina Simone was casting a spell on me from the radio
And my old girlfriend was suddenly standing there,
In the corner of my room.
A ghost.

Maybe I was thinking I could resurrect the dead;
I slowly removed the envelopes from the plastic bag
And read the letters one by one,
Beginning with the first letter I had ever received from her.

Of course she had promised me her undying love
And hearing her whisper those words once more
Made me almost believe all over again.
But they were after all just empty promises made from the grave.

And then came the letters from the bottom of the pile.
Based on her stilted responses, I must have been writing in anger.
I had been angry – and desperate, and scared,
Like someone buried alive trying to claw his way out of the coffin.

Re-reading the letters lead me on an emotional march
From a joyful Mardi Gras parade to a somber funeral procession.
She was there with me every step of the way,
Waving her perfume-soaked letters like a handkerchief in a Second Line.

When I was finished I was as broken and battered
As a Camp Street wino on Monday morning.
I piled off the wine and opened the window
And fanned her perfume out into the cold dark night.

I killed her again later that night.
This time by fire,
Burning the letters in a funeral pyre.
Ashes returning to ashes.

I’ve gotten better at burying the dead,
Having buried a few more relationships since then.
A marriage.
My parents.

The trick is letting the dead stay dead.
For if you don’t,
They will surely rise from the grave
And eat your heart out.


Copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved Donald G. Redman

Burying the Dead, version II

This is the second version of “Burying the Dead,” an experimental work in progress. You will note mostly only subtle differences than the original draft posted earlier. I feel I’m fairly close to a finished poem with this draft.
DGR

"Burying the Dead"
by Donald G. Redman


You should decide what to keep and what to leave for dead
Before you pack all your crap in boxes and seal them up like coffins.
But I hadn’t done that; I’d crammed all my possessions haphazardly
Like an evacuee fleeing a hurricane.


I settled into a bombed-out apartment, my precious junk
Still in boxes strewn about like caskets after a flood.
A naked bulb dangled above,
Casting an ugly white light on the carnage below.


The windows were bare so that the whole world could peer in if it wanted to.
The wooden floors were faded and in need of sanding and refinishing and
I thought maybe I’d do that before the furniture arrived
But who was I kidding.


It was cold outside, gray and getting dark.
A good day for a funeral.
But first I had to pry open those damned boxes like a grave robber and
Loot the valuables before I could dispose of the corpses.


A small box labeled “Important!” laid disemboweled on the floor.
It had held the corkscrew I was now using to open
The first of several cheap bottles of red wine
I intended to spill that night.


Where I had been brilliant in marking where the corkscrew was buried
I had been equally stupid in failing to label the crate with the wineglasses.
Screw it.
I’m not above drinking from the bottle.


I’d seen the winos on Camp Street do that –
Drink straight from bottles shrouded in brown paper bags.
That was back before the Warehouse District got so gentrified.
Before the World’s Fair came.


On Friday evenings as I left work I’d see them lining Camp Street,
All with upturned grins and upturned bottles.
Come Monday I’d find them passed out or hobbling,
Battered, bruised and bandaged.


I shoveled through the box with the corkscrew
And dug up a portable clock radio and plugged it in.
Townes Van Zandt was singing “Nuthin.’”
I walked to the window to peer out, but only saw my reflection.


I was well into my wine
When I unearthed a squat, metal penny bank fashioned to resemble a safe.
It was from my youth, a place to store my valuables
Though I apparently never considered money valuable.


My parents had been purging their house of artifacts
From our childhood, returning shit to their rightful owners.
The safe was mine and so I had the burden of carrying it
Around like a cremation urn.


The door was sealed shut by a tiny combination lock
I turned the safe upside down and discovered that I had been a trusting soul in my youth
Or I had been forgetful.
Printed in permanent ink: 24-14-3.


I opened the vault and withdrew a plastic bag
Stuffed with pale purple envelopes.
I knew instantly what they were:
Love letters from a relationship I had long left for dead.


After our relationship had failed
I apparently had been unable to destroy the letters
And instead, entombed them in a toy safe.
That’s why you don’t let the living bury the dead.


Surely it was out of morbid curiosity
That I opened the plastic bag.
Almost immediately my nostrils were filled with
The intoxicating scent of perfume.


Like a lover preparing his beloved’s funeral attire,
My old self had arranged the letters neatly, orderly,
And placed them within the crypt in chronological order,
Embalmed in her perfume.


Nina Simone was casting a spell on me from the radio
And my old girlfriend was suddenly standing there,
In the corner of my room.
A ghost.


Maybe I was thinking I could resurrect the dead;
I slowly removed the envelopes from the plastic bag
And read the letters one by one,
Beginning with the first letter I had ever received from her.


Of course she had promised me her undying love
And hearing her whisper those words once more
Made me almost believe all over again.
But they were after all just empty promises made from the grave.


Re-reading the letters lead me on an emotional march
From a raucous Mardi Gras parade to a somber funeral procession.
She was there with me every step of the way,
Waving her perfume-soaked letters like a handkerchief in a Second Line.


When I was finished I was as broken and battered
As a Camp Street wino on Monday morning.
I piled off the wine and opened the window
And shooed her perfume into the dark.


I killed her again later that night.
This time by fire,
Burning the letters in a funeral pyre.
Ashes returning to ashes.


I’m getting better at burying the dead,
Having buried a few more relationships since then.
A marriage.
My parents.


The hard part is staying away from the graves
Once you bury them.
If you don’t, the dead will surely rise from the ground
And eat your heart out.

copyright 2010 * Donald G. Redman * All Rights Reserved