Haiku

Cars passing in the street
light the curtain, but darken
the wall behind me.

Story: The Fist

I used to wonder what you clutched inside your fist, that famous appendage of yours, knuckles beaming like halogen bulbs. I remember it was large and tough, as if cut from a mountain side, and many were the foe leveled by its might. Many the loved one too, though most the time you’d only intended to caress.

I remember resting upon it at night; how I preferred that knotty lump to a pillow, though the sleep was often uneasy, as were the dreams. I used to imagine myself caught inside its grasp at night, our breaths like two sets of wings beating against the darkened wall.

But though your fist was magnificent for a time, soon it began to crumble. The skin on your knuckles split and every so often there was this faint trembling, like the shifting of plates inside the earth.

As word of your fury spread, the fights became fewer, and you made a weekly habit of cleaning the dust from between your fingers with cue tips and a bottle of Pledge. Our most intimate moment, I remember, was one morning in bed when you let me hold it in my lap and wipe the dust myself, though I admit I may have gone too far in kissing your fingertips. I still am not sorry.

The one part we could not maintain though was your nails, which, closed so tightly, could not be trimmed and cut into your palms, though I slept on it as always. And finally, I remember the day they bore so deep one must have tapped a nerve, and the shock caused your fist suddenly to fly open, whatever was kept there instantly dissolving the moment it met the sunlight, and then how I swiftly took hold.

Censorship and Discrimination on Amazon

So apparently Amazon has this new policy toward "adult" material which excludes certain books from their online searches and rankings. To me, that much is annoying in and of itself, but embedded in this policy also appears to be a certain hetero-normative bias which classifies many books with GBLT concerns, from classic literature to anthropological study, as "adult" while books containing explicit heterosexual material are left untouched. If you are as upset about this as I am, check out this petition (which has more information on exactly what kinds of books are being censored) and if you feel so moved, sign it.

Poem: Recycled Shrine

There is a shrine in my house that was built
for the Virgin Mary, to house
the immaculate mother’s effigy and to honor
all in God which is feminine. But near completion
the builder’s own mother died
and it became a shrine to her instead.
When my roommates and I moved in
we did not know what to do with such a space
and hung a yellowed portrait of John Wayne
stoic and squinting in his many guises,
and now I wonder just who will have to die
to find a place there instead.

Success!

This is just a note to those of you following this blog that I have just had my first piece accepted for publication. Yay! A short story I wrote, "Terms of Use", will be published in the inaugural issue of an online journal called Vivid this October. It is obviously a young magazine and hopefully but a stepping stone on my path to bigger and better things, but in my present emaciated state any success falls like a drop of water on a desert wanderer's tongue. Wherever you are, be abliged to drop what you are doing for a moment and throw back a glass of your finest to me!

Writing Down the Bones

Last night I went to BookPeople to check out a reading by Natalie Goldberg. I'd read a book that she wrote a long time ago, I remember, and really liked it. Its title was "Writing Down the Bones", and it's one of those books on writing that do not emphasize craft so much as learning to invest yourself completely in your writing, with the goal that, upon finishing, you will feel "used up" in some deeply clensing way. It is about learning to write through your fears, past your prejudices, from the deepest and most fundamental part of yourself. Another good book I've found in this vein, which I HIGHLY recommend, is called "Writing from the Body" by John Lee.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this one thought of hers that I found interesting: She was talking about addictions and the power that one gains by writing about them. She said that if she had her way, every addicts' group would require its members to recall, in writing, their favorite experiences with their substance of choice. It may seem like an odd way of facing addiction, but Ms. Goldberg claims that this practice actually helps turn the addiction into a passion, which is really quite a different thing. An addiction diminishes you, but a passion breaks you open. What occurs, I think, is a peculiar sort of reversal that alters the writer's relationship to the substance by his utilizing it as 'subject'; that is, something that HE is appreciating rather than the other way around.

I really like this idea, and believe the process may extend beyond substances to the rest of the things we carry with us from day to day, locked deep inside our bodies: those memories, insecurities, and fears which diminish us and prevent us from living our lives boldly. If you're interested, pick up one of these books I've mentioned. You won't regret it.

*Note: I actually prefer John Lee's book to Goldberg's.