Wednesday, October 24, 2012

October Roses


Halloween's making me crazy and time-crunched, so I'm recycling again...I seem to write a lot of poems in/about the fall season for some reason...

October Roses

The stems keep only
faded green stars
unblinking in late light.
Hot pink petal witches melt,
staining the dirt. They scatter blessings
and kiss the foreheads
of the earthworms that hum
a baritone hymn, while the sun
skulks further south
each day, its chariot drawn
by corn-husk moths, escaping
towards solstice.

Observations, re: Halloween

I work in costuming full time.  Right now, we're pretty busy, of course, with everyone and their grandmother and their grandmother's dog needing a costume for the Halloween holiday next week.  Some of my observations, comments, and WTF moments from this season (so far):

1) Most improbable costume:  Gigantic man comes in. He is over 6.5', built like a linebacker, bald on top with a huge bushy beard, tattoo sleeves on both arms, dressed in biker garb.  What does he want to be for Halloween?  Papa Smurf.

2) WTF Moment #1: Customer wants to be a Klansman for Halloween.  As if that weren't WTF enough...oh, yes...he's black.

3) The sheer number of people who want to dress up at Katy Perry make me lose hope for the human race.

4) I have had seven requests for Big Bird (rented, folks--sorry!!), and I only have 1 Mitt Romney mask left.  Barak Obama has not been selling as well.  I am not sure if this is a good sign or a bad sign for the election results.

5) WTF Moment #2: Girl complains that slutty nurse costume is not short enough, and actually said, "I want people to be able to see my ass."  ?????????????????????????????????

Back into the fray this afternoon...

Monday, October 8, 2012

Wendy's Flashback Fiction

Who'd have thought my "characters" from "Driving Thru" (meaning my former boss and co-worker) would get me a win?  Won with this one last week on #MenageMonday at www.caramichaels.com.  Woot!



“Chuck, explain this.”

“I knew you’d call. Which part?”

“Start with what I found when I opened today.  What the hell happened on your shift last night?”

“Steve, these freaks dressed as Vikings showed up in drive-thru and wouldn’t leave!  Twenty of them!  Big scary beards, leather clothes, those horn hats—riding motorcycles!”

“Vikings?  In the suburbs, for God’s sake? ”

“YES!!”

“Charles, I don’t believe you.  In twenty years as GM, I’ve never heard a story THIS stupid from a closing manager.”

“But it’s true!  Steve, what can I do to convince you?  They ordered thirty-five triple baconburgers.  When I told them there’d be a wait, they got mean.  Five or six of them pulled up and threw bottles at the window.  We locked ourselves in the office!”

“And the side of the building?  Also Vikings?”

“When they ran out of bottles, they got out spray paint!”

“It says ‘Fuck you, burger bitches.’”

“I know, right?!”

“And the dead squirrels out front?”

“Ritual sacrifice.  Oh, God, Steve, the squealing was blood-curdling!”

“Do I want to know who overturned the grease barrel?”

“Midgets.”

“I thought they were Vikings.”

“They had midgets with them.  On the bikes.”

“Chuck, you’re fired.”
It's fall, so I was thinking about this one yesterday on the drive back from my parents' place, seeing all the shorn fields and autumn colors.  Love this time of year, but always feel sort of a wistful, "losing something" feeling in the fall as well. 



Dirge After Harvest

Fields stretch:
stripes on a pheasant’s tail feather,
dusted sanguine and sepia.
Gravel crunches as I slow the car to a stop,
and I see my breath smoke.

Dusk thickens, glows, reddens.
Half-blind, I take heavy footsteps
over the frosted plow-furrows,
shins bumping shattered cornstalks.
I am tugged toward sunset.

A flicker of motion,
and a fox runs from my headlights,
urgent.  I resist
the pull to follow it
into the broken maze of summer’s bones.

The sun strains at its pulley-ropes,
lowered by roughened hands.
An orange bucket drops
into the well of night.
I am drawn down with it—

searching for the sun’s circular ripples,
searching for water.