Thursday, June 17, 2010

Hipster Dude

The thirty-something man wore those mid-60s glasses that only looked cool when Malcolm X wore them,a too-tight thrift shop orange knit shirt,a brown soul patch on his chin,and a bored expression.

I sat a across from him at a writing workshop,where people are supposed to participate and say what they like about the writing others share. Although there was ample opportunity,he said nothing,didn't even smile or give someone an encouraging nod. Maybe he was so used to being ironic and sarcastic that the idea of providing positive feedback was alien to him. Maybe he was too busy thinking about zombie vampires--he mentioned vampires twice when he read aloud--to tune into regular people.

I thought about what he'd look like if it really were the mid-60s. If he were a company man,he'd be clean shaven and neatly groomed,wearing a dark suit and white shirt like all the other middle-class,middle-management men with whom he worked. No doubt he'd have a pocket protector and a white handkerchief. He'd shine his black shoes regularly. He'd be mildly polite but condescending to the secretaries in his office,even though they were the ones who did most of the work. He'd come home to his wife,2 children,a dog,the evening paper, and a martini with a green olive.

If he were a beatnik,he'd have a goatee,and perhaps a black turtleneck and black pants. He wouldn't be bland like Company Man; he'd have an opinion on everything from West Side Story to Dr.Strangelove,from Under Milk wood to On the Road. Beatnik Cat would be ready to discuss Ginsberg or Rimbaud or Sartre,would gladly attend a Brecht play,and could tell you what Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement were up to. His circle of friends would be other non-conformist white men like himself,and maybe a woman who wore a black leotard,admired his poetry, had a rent-controlled pad,and could play chess like a man. They'd go to jazz clubs,discuss records they read about in High Fidelity,and talk contemptuously of conformist Company Men.

So 21st Century Hipster Dude: wake up and smell the soy caramel latte. Get away from your laptop and zombie vampires. Have real conversations with people. Ask questions. Read books by Howard Zinn and Alice Walker. Listen to Democracy Now! Develop a passion for something,and maybe you'll learn something,and not be so bored with life.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

From Participant Zhyra Palma's Prompt at 2010 AWA Training

The summer I learned Jesus was Everywhere
from the well intentioned Sunday school teacher
I lay night after night
with my flannel gown
and one piece long johns
and socks
and refused to let my fingers
find my tiny nipples or run down the smooth inside
of my thighs, rub the fuzzy soft hair
growing between.

It embarrassed me that He would see me
so vulnerable,
so full of myself.

That he would see me rock on my pillow
on the palm of my hand
one finger pushed deep inside
two fingers
my silly mouth
growl from my chest when the
orgasm washed me clean
the new ocean smell spilled into the room.

How dare He sit on this bed uninvited,
spy on my girlhood,
steal something pure and right?

Sunday, May 30, 2010

The more I fly, the less I get done on planes. I used to read up on current events, finish up all the mid-19th century novels floating around the living room. I'd write a card to my grandparents, then fill out all 20 postcards that I dutifully send from every adventure. Of course, I always send them from home, it's cheaper and more reliable. I used to think about my to-do list, make a grocery list, write a cover letter, stare at my resume.

But lately, I stick in my industrial orange ear plugs, pop some Benadryl and Dramamine, down a mini-bottle of Sutter Home Cabernet or two, and enjoy the blackout. No screaming kids, no yelling, no complaining, no thinking. It's no place, no time, no reason or rhyme. Not even a french mime. Just clouds and green circles of crops, and little rivers no one can even reach by jeep. I feel all that, I don't see it. In my mind is a confusing stew of celebrities coming over for a sandwich, a talking bunny, soothsayer honey bees, trying out for the high school volley ball team--whatever strange labyrinths the medications and the alcohol wish to wander.

Oddly, a 3-hour flight can seem longer than a 13-hour one to me. I can't explain that one.

When I land, I always try to track down my husband, but he's always re-booking irate people or pulling away the ones too drunk to board. Amateurs. You don't swallow any drugs or alcohol until you're ready to board. It times just right that it doesn't hit until you're pulling up into the air. Don't pull tantrums at the gate. Have dreamy sleep in the sky.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Corner Place

The called me Gil Mok ddahl. Gil Mok daughter.
My family owned Gil Mok,a restaurant in Los Angeles.
That's Korean for The Corner Place.

People come there for the house specialty: dong chi mi gook su.
It's been called "a party in your mouth."

Did my parents create that dish?
Do you like to cook?
People always ask.

No,a big woman named Yang Soon Chi is the creator.
I heard she came to Los Angeles from Korea
with a wok
a killer recipe
and a dream for a better life.

And no,I don't like to cook.
I want to be a forest ecologist.

Why you want to do that? my relatives demand.
Get accounting degree,get good job,buy house.
Marry nice Korean boy,have beautiful children.
Make parent happy,have good life.

No,I say.
No. No way.
No how.

Natasha Beck
Portland,OR
August 2009,revised May 2010

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Richmond, VA

Myth goes there are seven doors out, only then
escape without return.
Mine of course was Churchill, sleeping with one arm
still tied to the bedpost
a draft on my face
a man at my legs,
while my true love lay alone on Grove Avenue
wondering where I'd got to.
Digging his own way out with broken spoons.
Yours, then,
was the final door- easiest door-
the needle that bruised the skin,
the bubble to blood
the rise to unbroken flight.
My fingers grip your ankle,
release the man.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Licking Her Wounds

Licking her wounds
New found freedom of bare chest
Heartbeat so close, delight
A woman without her breasts

Newfound freedom of bare chest
As a girl child, born again
A woman without her breasts
Is fully sensual, free of weight, liberated

As a girl child, born again
Without shame, openly exuberant
Fully sensual, free of weight, liberated
Memory of suckling baby, objects of infatuation

Without shame, openly exuberant
Fetish exonerated, "boobs" they are called
Memory of suckling baby, objects of infatuation
No longer a sex object, freedom

Fetish exonerated, "boobs" they are called
Heartbeat so close, delight
No longer a sex object, freedom
Licking her wounds

Boston

Swan Boats in the Public Garden,
Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall.

Taxis take sidewalks,
dart around double-parked

cars. Drivers follow the rules: horns
first, sign language second, breaks

a last resort. Cobblestone streets,
Cambridge across the Charles.

A city where the word sure is five
syllables long and Can I park your car?

doesn’t translate to the page. You must go,
experience the language, accents, attitudes,

see potholes in winter large enough
to house a family of five. North End,

South End, Italian, Irish, integrated,
segregated, Boston.

Flashbacks

The memories arrived in little staccato notes, lingering in the air, in front of the window of her eyes, un-scheduled, interrupting. She had tried to censor them, to re-direct them, but they seemed to obey some higher order, some greater regulation.

She had read that the great successes in history had controlled their thoughts - with meditation, with focus, with directed and determined thinking: no space or time for guilt, regret, or memories of tender scenes with those now gone. A practiced art, a determined skill, mental muscularity. You could call it 'concentration', and 'linear thinking', and 'compartmentalization'. But those words were not true. The truth was throw away those dragging, clinging weeds of memory and exist in the here and the now.

There had been times when she was sure she had mastered this, at last, her mind finally maturing, taking command of her reality. But then, suddenly - boom - a flashback would thrust its way into her sight to show her the power of her non-control: his chin as he threw his face back laughing; a smiling man laying in the hospital bed, rapturous with the powerful drugs, yet aware of the miracle of his life - before the true trials began.

She thought of them as flashbacks and did her best to move them off her inner screen as quickly as possible. Click, she would think, delete. Then click again, and again.

She dedicated her mind to seeing the bees and flowers - today, only, and the soft feel of rain - today, only, on her skin, and the soothing sounds of frogs, and distant city traffic, and running water and the peacefulness of the breeze moving the top of the red maple tree - today, only. To be a perfect instrument to experience the wonder of the world.

And then, renewing her instrument, breathing in the clean air, she felt her breath enriching her blood with oxygen, which rose to feed her brain, wherein the complex gray tissue sat, the tissue that had taken millions of years to invent and refine. The tissue where savored former flowers and bees and trees resided, alive and fresh. And real.

And she saw that she was her memories and that they were her.

Winnemucca

We broke our roadtrip rule that day:
Off the road by three o'clock at a motel with a pool.
We were ready to get home.
After the ticket in Yankee Blade
You swore you would never complain again
When I told you to slow down.
Promises are made to be broken.
Black thread of road in blackest night
Connecting mountain to mountain
Through long prairie grass.
We almost killed a cow.
Couldn't see her in the road.
When we stopped at the restroom
And I ran in
I understood what trust was--
You in the running car behind the wheel,
Me with my pants down in nowhere,
Ten miles out of Winnemucca.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Odd Jobs from Jenn's Tues. memoir

I really don't remember how long it was before I removed my head from the sand to take a peek at the wonderful world of telemarketing again but believe it or not, I wound up answering another tiny classified ad for magazine sales.

They'd been quick to point out that these were popular, reputable magazines, I guess just in case anyone was worried they might end up selling porn. In retrospect, maybe that might have been an improvement.

The office was located just outside of downtown LA in what might have once been a cool building. Now it was just another faceless run-down low rise. I don't remember what the actual outfit was called and I'd be amazed if they were still in business.

It wasn't much of a workers paradise, but the guy showing me around seemed pleasant enough even if he was a little gung-ho. After the Leukemia lady gung-ho was fine with me. And as far as truth in advertising went, they did actually sell magazines. I'd only heard of a few of them like “Jet” for instance. They were all geared towards different minority communities with names like “Asian weekly” or “Chicana”. Okay, so far so good.

After filling out the requisite piles of new employee paper work I was shown to my little area, one of a handful with a battered second hand desk and a simple black telephone. There was a long legal size 'cheat sheet' with a suggested rap that was supposed to be a real crowd pleaser. Where it started to get confusing was the list of suggested names we were supposed to use for each magazine. Apparently we were supposed to use an alias for each one. A matching 'minority' alias.

It went some thing like

Hello Mr/Ms /Mrs---------- this is-- (see below right)* from-- ( see below left)

*Adrian Gonzalez
Chrissy Chung
La Shonda Williams


*Chicana
*Asian monthly
*Jet


Eeeeyew. How totally humiliating for all of us.

Looking around me, none of my fellow workers seemed to have a problem with it. Seasoned hustlers, I watched in amazement as one woman not only hopped from name to name but accent to accent as she racked up the sales. She looked like the girl next door, if the girl next door weighed 300 pounds.I sit with my black telephone and my leads dialing for dollars and counting off the minutes 'til it's time to leave.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

I remember driving to Oklahoma with the Oosterwijks to camp for a long weekend. It was October, not really the time anymore. The mornings in Dallas were hard-edged with frost. Layered in my standard grunge flannels, for once the uniform would be functional. Dad got a dusty sleeping bag from the garage. I took my Walkman with my stash of favorite cassettes: Cure, Pearl Jam, and U2. The Oosterwijks were Dutch and considered quite scandalous, disseminating Harlequin books to the neighborhood girls. However, they were Catholic, and this was a Catholic-Jewish neighborhood, united against the Baptists.

We drove out to Indian country and pitched our tent in the woods. We roasted apples and bananas in the fire. I hear a lot of waxing poetic about skies choked with stars--but I tell you, when you are a child of light-polluted megacities, the first time you behold that explosion of diamond lights against the velvet coal, you will freeze in place. It was the most frightening thing, all those stars. They vibrated, they were hot and cold, they were hurtling at me from the past, their light would suck out my eyes. And it was quiet, so damn quiet. The horrible stars, like beautiful demons. I’m thirteen, I don’t get scared. But I want to cry, all this darkness, this eerie quiet, the stars blazing in expectation. What the hell do they want from me?!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Writing Process

I write daily. Sometimes it's answering emails,contributing to an online community forum,and sometimes it's writing in my journal. When I'm on a roll it's all of the above. It's like physical exercise: the more you do it,the faster and better you get.

I need to be mindful of my hands,to take frequent breaks so my hands don't throb from arthritis and carpal tunnel. Yoga releases the tension in my hands,neck and shoulders.

When I'm working on my novel,I may stay focused for 4 or 5 hours; the time zips by as I'm absorbed in my work.

Meanwhile,the laundry and the dishes pile up. Clumps of fluffy black cat hair dot the carpet in the computer room,gifts from Jasmine,who sheds so much I joke about collecting the fur and making a sweater.

Jasmine and her partner in catnip,Oreo,are my writing companions. Sometimes one of them will leap into my lap as I click away on the computer. Other times they curl up on shelves or on the braided carpet,silent witnesses.

To keep moving forward,I need to camraderie and support of writing groups,both on-going and drop-in. I love the sheer joy of writing and then sharing our words on the page.

Write on!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

A Postcard

Dear Marian,
Buenos Aires reminds me of Depot Bay--the seafood restaurants, the fishing fleet, the sidewalks filled with vendors.

We have much to talk about.

This morning, the salt spray woke me up from my dream about you. I was riding you like a seahorse. You were galloping me around the ocean floor.

Do you miss me? Do you remember the day I left you?

It was two Tuesdays ago, and you were sitting at your desk, paying bills. We were done with fighting by then, I think. You had already crumbled my heart like a stale cookie. I think the moment you stopped listening to me was the afternoon before, when Carla called you, when Carla betrayed me.

I can hardly breathe in Buenos Aires, air perfumed with cigarette smoke and anorexic Argentinian women. I like my women like you, Marian, solidly placed on the ground, unafraid of food.

My uncle sends his greetings, asks me why you are not travelling with me. He thinks a wife and husband should be together. I tell him you hae a visa problem. I hope it will make him dislike you, but it only seems to intrigue him more.

Damn you, you are an intriguing woman, but your intrigue has destroyed me. I do not wish my best to you. I wish us to share the misery equally, as we have done with everything else.

Tomas

Sunday, March 7, 2010

I Did Not Start That Fire

I did not start that fire, but I roasted marshmallows in its sunny flames. I didn't start the rumor, but I enjoyed telling it to others. I didn't lie, but I didn't offer you the truth. I didn't start the endeavor, and I'm not going to stop it either.

I did not start that fire, but I'll push you in and say you tripped. You are famously clumsy, everyone will believe me.

I did not start that fire. Wait, maybe I did--just so I could rush in and save you. I've always wanted to be a hero, even if it was only for 10 seconds on the local evening news.

I did not start that fire, but I'll mischievously fan its flames. I like chaos. I like to see men panic, all their fake bravado draining away fast like the blood flows from a big boar hung up on a hook after the slaughter. Oh, I like fires. They say they are necessary, cleansing, very healthy.

Everyone is very scared of flames, of snakes, of evil sneaking up on them, unaware, while they are scrubbing the sink. That's a funny image, thinking you have won the war on entropy when the fire--my fire--gets you by surprise.

Friday, February 12, 2010

A Cold and Hungry Mountain

Raed called on Saturday while I was out.
“What did Raed's message say?” I asked my husband.
“He said it's urgent, I'll call him tomorrow,” he answered.
“Oh, do you think something's wrong?”
“No, he sounded cheerful, I think.”
“Maybe Simone is pregnant, or maybe they're finally coming to visit us?”

Sunday, coming back from a jog in the park, I heard muffled Skype voices from the study. When Chris came in he said, “Benjamin died.”

Benjamin, I remember meeting you and your girlfriend at the time at the little town in Switzerland. You were both accomplished skiers. Chris and I would only dare to try snow shoes. I couldn't understand your girlfriend very well and assumed my German skills were lacking. Chris later told me that nobody could understand her at times, she spoke a difficult dialect.

You were the kind of person who knew the use of every little thing at REI. You were a teacher, although I think you didn't like the rural area where you found a job.

You died doing something you loved, but what if you were cold? What if you knew the end was coming, and watched your fingers turn black? Did you think of your mother? But instead of that--I hope the mountain took you quickly.

A Real Charmer

Nigel lived on charm, easy affability. He looked better with a beard and when he let his hair grow longer, into silky dark lustrous whirls. Men loved going to soccer games with him and dueling over an Xbox. Hearty slaps on the back greeted him at pubs. No one ever noticed he never bought his own cigarettes, but he was a voracious social smoker.

Women loved him, period. He had heartbreaking cheekbones and peerless ivory skin. Married or not, their greedy fingers fished out for his under tables. As the wives winked at him without actually winking, the husbands waited for Nigel's impeccably-timed punch lines.

Nigel finally went home to his basement studio off Littleham Avenue. It was spoiling and dirty, as he had left it. He set down his battered suitcase amidst the gray squalor. He ran his beautiful hands through his luscious hair and was startled to be alone with himself again, at his actual address, with no plan of action. What now, what now he obsessively thought to himself.

Slowly, he went through all five pockets of his worn North Face parka. A battered ticket to the Central Park Zoo. A wrinkled receipt for two lattes at the Kant Café in Berlin. A small stub of a receipt to The Naam in Vancouver, BC. Half a cigarette, the other half broken off and lost. A tiny blue notebook filled with phone numbers and a well-marked calendar. He was a duck who migrated to keep himself well-fed and amused. Red lint. Key to a forgotten door. Someone else's Nordstrom gift card. A San Francisco library card. A shopping list with the following items: mangoes, pink champagne, green olives, water crackers. A pocket-sized rendition of the Prague bus system.

He pulled out these fragments, he excavated pieces of his life, an actual lived life, but everything was askew. He held the latte receipt from Berlin for a long time. The once perfect white paper with clear black letters had become gray and smudgy and shiny.

If you really looked at him, over a long period of time, you'd have noticed the bags under his eyes were getting heavier. But he never stuck around long enough for anyone to notice his history.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Imagine a pair of shoes...

They are square-toed black boots, the kind that would hurt you badly if they decided to kick you. I was that kind of man. My hair was black and bushy, my beard was unkempt, and I tended to stink. That's mostly because I worked hard all day, but partly because I drank most nights. I had no education, and living that life just makes you mad at everything.

I was bad to my dogs. I feel bad about that now. They were the ones who loved me, so they tended to always be around for me to kick them, which I did, with my big black boots.

I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and worked at the slaughterhouse, so killing and hurting was as normal as breathing to me. I'm not saying I liked it--I didn't--but it's what I did every day and I didn't know any life other than the bawling of cattle and the stench of the entrails.

I married Polly when we were sixteen. I am proud to say I never laid a hand on her in violence. She was a good wife as wives go. She bore me six sons and a daughter, and she kept them out of my way, so I hardly ever laid a hand on any of them. That's a good thing.

We lived in a log cabin about a half mile from the stockyards. My father helped me build it. It was the last thing he did before he died. Polly made nice curtains for it and did her best to keep it clean, but it was still a dirt floor with a privy in the back and that constant stench of dying cows.

The biggest thing that Polly and I diagreed on was church. I know she worried about my immortal soul, but the last thing I wanted to do on my Sunday was listen with a hangover to that preacher drone on. She stopped nagging after a couple of years, but she never stopped asking. Of course, I made it to each child's baptism so I guess that was my compromise. I figured the whole household would be in position to pray that I wouldn't go to hell.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

If You Were Here

If you were here, Mom, I don't know what you would think of me. People have been telling me to find you for 12 years now, ever since I turned 18. Everyone is curious, and I am too, but I am more scared. I keep thinking of great excuses to not look for you. I heard a couple years ago that the Catholic Childrens' Home Services agency shut down, so I thought maybe they'd lost my file.

And I always think, maybe I'll wait until next year, maybe I'll do something impressive and you'll think “Wow, my daughter really has her act together.”

But maybe I don't have room for disappointments, no more room for more crazy family members.

However, all of my selfish considerations don't take you into account. Maybe you want to find me, the child that abruptly ended your childhood. Maybe my grandparents want to know me.

As for Chris and his family, they've always wanted to find a certain Claude Miller of St. Louis, a black American soldier, a quartermaster stationed outside of Stuttgart. But Chris' dad isn't interested. Let sleeping dogs lie. I don't want to bring up the ghosts of the past.

My own grandfather I've heard was a fair, blue-eyed German army doctor. How funny it is to think the two unknown grandfathers were on different sides in the war.

How many of us really know our parents, our grandparents anyways? One in every seven Americans don't really have the fathers that are listed on their birth certificates. A lot of us don't really know where we came from. But I guess it must matter, everything else in life is so uncertain, where do we stand if not on the backs of our ancestors?

Monday, January 18, 2010

Dead in the Russian Snow

When we first moved here, mother took the blue mirror cross that hung over her bed in our old house and mailed a nail for it in the new bedroom of me and my sister. We had to leave the center of town because mother started hosting the black American soldiers. The villagers kept harassing her, so she found an abandoned farm farther from town and closer to the military base. Ever since mother got the letter that father lay dead in the Russian snow, my school mates grew distant from me. Irmgard and Ulrike used to be my best friends, but now they say they can't go pick cherries with me. They say mother is now a fallen woman. I am the oldest, and I help watch my younger sister, Yvi, while mother laughs all night long with the soldiers. I miss father, and mother says it's alright to cry as much as I want. The soldiers give me chocolate bars to comfort me.

At school, the other children said they had no sugar and no flour and no chocolate. They ate cabbage. Just watery cabbage soup. They dreamt of cake and cookies and bread and butter.
“We have all that,” my sister told them proudly. “The black Americans bring lots of supplies to our mother.”
“That's because your mother is a whore. Your father probably wasn't even frozen in the Russian fields before she started being a nasty whore!”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “My mother's not a whore! And we eat cakes made with a dozen eggs and honey and half kilo of butter every day! We still have meat! You wish your house smelled of Thueringen sausages!”
The school yard was silent.
“I'm sick of seeing your dirty rags and of listening to your empty stomachs.”
I grabbed Yvi's hand and we marched home to the farmhouse full of food, laughter, and father's handkerchief still rests under my pillow every night.

Fear

Prompt: A time when you felt fear...

Champaign, Illinois, Spring 2002, bitter cold, screaming wind outside, a turgid hothouse of jewel-toned sweaters inside the bar. It's another weekend night, I'm there with my gaggle of fellow grad students getting as fucked up as I possibly can. I'm so lonely, I hate this place. Even though I'm getting paid to work on my PhD, I've never been so unhappy. Everyone has let me know they assume I'm on scholarship for being Native American. This is the Chief Illini school. Most people here are assholes to me.

We've all had enough. I'm dizzy, I need air.

“Guys,” I say, “I'm gonna go wait on the cab outside.”

It's probably 20 below, but I'm on the deserted street sitting on the bench like it's a balmy Fourth of July.

I listen to the wind howl.

A black car pulls up in the alleyway.

I'm so wasted I can hardly remember my name. I love this feeling. I want to forget myself.

Four huge men step of the car. The exhaust pipe steams as the engine still runs.

Where the fuck is our cab anyways, I'm thinking with annoyance.

“Hey sweetie, why don't we go for a ride?”

“What? No. I'm waiting for my cab.”

“All alone, are we?”

“Fuck no. My friends are inside.”

I'm bluffing confidence. My friends are in the martini hothouse, it's loud, they won't come out until I go fetch them. I am alone.

“You should get in the car and party with us.”

“No fucking way.”

They are closing in on me.

I hate the Midwest. It's scarier than I ever felt in East LA, in the barrios of Tucson.

Being a tinge bulimic, I can vomit on command, and I do so. I spew all over them, their expensive shoes in the snow. The contents of a night out steaming like oatmeal on their pant cuffs.

The bastards curse me out, but they leave. I am laughing hysterically.

Now my friends are finally here.

“Where's the cab?” they ask.

Pantoum - Thursday class poetry exercise

Pantoum – poetry exercise


I see traces of you everywhere

the apartment holds artifacts of your daily life

So many years we've now worked opposite ends of the clock

Sometimes you reach for me at night as we both sleep


the apartment has evidence of your activities

your soccer clothes lay upon library books

sometimes we reach for each other while dreaming

I eat dinner alone every night


your dirty clothes stink up the library books

we share a marriage, but not daily life

you eat breakfast alone every morning

our friends are all strangers to each other


we are married, but don't share a daily life

post-it notes and text messages are the glue

our friends are strangers to each other

they say distance makes the heart grow fonder


sticky notes and voice mail are the glue

all these years we've lived in separate hours

distance makes the heart grow exhausted

There are traces and proof of you everywhere