Down Easy With Dessert

A serving of the chocolate lava pie with vanilla ice cream would be necessary if I were going to go through with this. He always made me feel so inadequate with his high achieving M.B.A., his 653 hours of available sick leave and his perfect dental records. I feel a little disappointing, but this is the perfect opportunity for me to move on.
“Are you stressing about something, Jacie?” He asked, lowering his fork to the starched, white tablecloth. I picked Café Balabans for this occasion because it is his most favorite place to eat in the West End. It has always seemed a little pretentious to me; the Pasta Mauri Mauri and all. I prefer my ground beef cooked. But this was a regular haunt of his boss, and Preston looked forward to the moments we would run into him.
“Why would I be stressing?” I stuffed a piece of chocolate lava pie so big into my mouth that a little drip of chocolate oozed from the left corner, and I had to swipe it with my tongue.
“You know I hate it when you overeat”, he began, “I’m beginning to think you’re doing it to spite me.” It’s like him to think that it’s all about him.
“Actually,” I started.
“Ah, you are stressing.”
“I’ve been offered a job at a university. It’s an associate professorship; tenure track.” I explained.
“And what’s your excuse for not taking this one?”
“Actually, I will take it.” I said.
“Oh, then they must offer snacks.” He smiled a little at his own quip, and I thought, you jackass.
My weight was not an issue in the beginning, but he saw me as one of his projects. It was his intention to have me in the gym five days a week. First, he said I was being passive aggressive, then finally just down right stubborn when I’d called to say I had to meet with some collogues or students after work. Then on the days when I simply went straight home to work on my book, he told me I was just being plain lazy.
“The position is in Boston.” I loaded another scoop of chocolate and made room in my mouth for the ice cream. “I’ve already had my things moved from the apartment”, I told him.
“What are you talking about?” He was taken aback.
“While you were at work today, I got all of my stuff. I’m not coming home with you Preston.” I stuck my finger in the chocolate on the plate and licked it slowly.
“And you were going to tell me when?” I could hear the crescendo in his voice. His nose was flaring just as his boss walked into the restaurant with his wife. Now I knew he would not make a scene.
“After dessert.”

Literary Starts

So, tonight was the launch party for our university's fifth literary journal, in which I have a couple of poems and a short story published. This isn't the first time I've been published in the school's journal, and actually I was the prose editor for the first one. It was a eclectic gathering of collegiate literary types, both students and faculty, with an opportunity for me to read, again, for an audience. More and more now I'm trying to take advantage of those opportunities to speak in front of people with the hopes of working through the fear. It's not a celebrated journal; my school is just a small, state university south of Atlanta. But besides it, my work has not been published anywhere else. So I just wonder, is this how the literary greats get their start, on small, obscure college campuses? Let's hope so.

One of the poems published was the one I began this blog with:

Summer, 2006

Twirling, whirling,
A rotund, spiral of rainbows
Culminating in a fuzzy, memorial blur of
Burning ashes dangling from waxy,
Bubble lips, stained with Crayola red lipstick,
Back porch bar-b-ques, chicken and ribs
Piled high on Mama’s good platters,
And, Uncle Poindexters greasy fingertips beneath
Her dress pinching her chubby butt.

She used to be a fat lady in a circus,
With all her deformities readily on display
In the bemused, clash of colors that Miss Millie patched
Together from the drapery of the old Majestic Theatre
In Jasper County, and the discarded
Sparkling, scraps of the skinny girl on the trapeze.
Sewn in too was the memory of Hillard’s
Bucked teeth, mocking her interest in him,
And, panties with the days of the week
Not in her size.

~sbnl

That word, that word,
Like a Signifying Monkey we
Claimed that word for ourselves to prove
Your barefaced use of a sign which you created just for us
No longer had the power it once possessed.
But we were wrong.
The word, subtly evoking seeds of self loathing,
The word that defiled hip-hop,
Has gained the momentum of a backhand slap
Descending from, it seemed, the highest point in a
Civil rights kitchen, to the fleshy jawbone
Of the youthful mouth from which
It scarcely materialized.
We have given that word more power than before,
For now they blame us for that word,
And they use that word, expressing their own defilement,
To reclaim the power they once possessed
Over our souls.
That word, on the brink of their psyche, at the tip of their tongues,
Like a stallion at the gate, eyes bulging, teeth exposed,
Recalling for them their glorious, colonial dream,
Salvaging the politically repressed rage of tormented souls,
And wounded egos.
More powerful than we knew,
That word.

~sbnl

Open-ended Discovery

On this excursion to see if this thing inside me is real, I am tiptoeing,

almost child-like as I am coming to realize how threadbare I must become as I

submit to words; past, present and in the ether. Literature is a fast

moving vehicle, upon which I will have to grasp hold of tightly, but with my

eyes dilated, and my mouth opened wide, sucking in every dimension of theory,

its metaphors, its adjectives and dangling participles. Lurking somewhere

in all of this exploration and query are my own words and expressions being

remembered, rediscovered, and created. They are sometimes frightful and sad.

Sometimes they are ambitious. And, sometimes they are nonsensical.

They are serious and lopsided and full of micro waved, popcorn induced ideas

about spirituality. They are riding on warm, brackish ripples of

apprehension and testimony. Yet, they are uniquely my own and

unapologetic. I own this. I own them, and they me.

Non-Traditional Student

Pushing ambition at six p.m.
Upon a rickety cart filled with dusty rags,
And toilet bowl cleaner,
Leaving little room for either.
The stench of contentment all around.
Balancing anxiety and fortitude
On a tray of vodka martinis,
Aching eyelids, resilient smile.
“Would you like an apple pie with your order?”
Three semester hours, or an internship?
One week of overtime,
Will buy the book for Calculus Two.
Aspirin eases tension from a tired body,
Pizza calms the angst of a History test.
Will offspring’s value the sacrifice?
Snooze buttons award nine more minutes of rest.
Ambition pushes at four a.m.

~sbnl

Summer, 2006

Twirling, whirling,
A rotund, spiral of rainbows
Culminating in a fuzzy, memorial blur of
Burning ashes dangling from waxy,
Bubble lips, stained with Crayola red lipstick,
Back porch bar-b-ques, chicken and ribs
Piled high on Mama’s good platters,
And, Uncle Poindexters greasy fingertips beneath
Her dress pinching her chubby butt.

She used to be a fat lady in a circus,
With all her deformities readily on display
In the bemused, clash of colors that Miss Millie patched
Together from the drapery of the old Majestic Theatre
In Jasper County, and the discarded
Sparkling, scraps of the skinny girl on the trapeze.
Sewn in too was the memory of Hillard’s
Bucked teeth, mocking her interest in him,
And, panties with the days of the week
Not in her size.

~sbnl