Saturday, April 25, 2015

True That: 3 Short Pieces on Weirdness, by Sue Crowley


1. 
My next door neighbor has an old wooden puppet hanging from the ceiling in her pottery studio. She calls it "Mr. Thing." I didn't realize that it was possible to have very powerful reactions to inanimate objects until I met Mr. Thing. He is ominous, scary, even evil. When I visit the studio, I ask her to lock it in a closet. You may think me silly and perhaps I am, but there is something off about Mr. Thing. He carries with him a history, like awful events follow in his trail. It gives me chills every time I see it.

2. 
When I was a little girl at Knapp Creek Elementary School, my best friend, Linda Felmlee, and I would walk to school early so we could sit on the swings and play for awhile before Mrs. Lundgren, the Principal, came out on the steps to clang her cowbell, signaling the village that school was open so get a move on. 

It was a lovely spring morning much like this one.  Suddenly, Linda stopped swinging and pointed skyward. "Look at that," she said. "Look." She was pointing at an oval silver shape that sat motionless in the sky above the houses across the road. We stared at it for several minutes, wondering and in awe. It was quite beautiful really. The object appeared completely still, it made no sound.
   
When we saw Mrs. Lundgren step out, we ran as fast as we could, shouting "Look!  Look!" But when we got to the bottom of the schoolhouse steps and looked up again, the silver egg in the sky was gone. Just gone. Mrs. Lundgren responded to our excited chatter about a flying saucer with a curt, "You girls are just imagining things."  As children, we knew our story would never be believed by grown-ups. 
   
A few years later when I was a teenager, our neighbor and my mother's best friend, Madge, was sitting at our kitchen table. Over coffee, she rather
sheepishly confided to Mother that once, a few years before, early one spring morning she had been outside hanging clothes on the line, when she saw a floating silver oval object suspended in the sky above her house. Back then, her house had been directly across the road from the elementary school. Finally, the grown-ups believed.

3.  
There are mysteries that cannot be solved.
     
I am talking about something that happened in 1957 or '58. Do you remember the kind of terrified that perhaps only a child can feel? Alone in the dark in their bed? I do. When I would wake in the night, the ceiling seemed alive with ominous shapes, shifting in the air above me. Though my big sister was sleeping only a few feet away, I could never bring myself to call out to her. 

Frozen in place, I was convinced that with even the slightest movement or sound those dark shapes would take form and descend upon me in an instant. Just opening my mouth to speak might alert them to my consciousness, my awareness of their being. Slowly, so slowly I would inch my blanket up to cover my eyes. Or just close my eyes and pray they would be gone when I opened them again.
   
One night, something different happened. I woke in the night and saw a man standing at the foot of my bed. He was dressed in robes and had long hair. He stood slender and silent. He was no ordinary man. I thought he was an angel, but was terrified nonetheless. I looked at him for what seemed a very long time. He never moved or spoke, he was a presence only. Eventually, exhausted, I fell asleep.

Friday, April 24, 2015

She Just Wants, by Susan Lesser


She just wants …

To lie in bed eating chocolates, dark chocolates, maybe a few will have nuts. Maybe she will also have an orange, and a cup of tea.

That bed to be a king-size bed with room to sprawl out with books beside and pillows behind, and, of course, the box of chocolates, some with nuts.

The pillows to be covered in silk, blue like the sky silk and green like emeralds silk. If there needs to be pink on the pillows, she just wants it to remind her of the inside of a seashell dredged up from the ocean depths, still feeling shy at finding itself in the sunlight. 


She just wants …

Books strewn over half the bed, books she has never yet read, with gold-edged leaves, that pulse there on the handwoven spread, inviting her to open the cover, and other books with thumb-worn pages and mellow spines that already know she loves them and they will always have a home. She just wants to take her time deciding.


She just wants …

A cat, or maybe two, curled up at the foot of the king-size bed, cats that purr when she wiggles her toes against a rounded feline tummy. 


She just wants …

To have someone else to pay the bills and boil the carrots, to fold the laundry, to call the vet, to send the cards, to sweep the green and white floor clean for today.

To have someone collect all the bits of a day and put them in a basket just outside her closed door, to hold them there for safekeeping, for tomorrow.


She just wants …

Someone else to answer the phone, or as is most likely the case, to check the caller ID and let the phone ring itself out since the caller is, once again, Anonymous — Out of Area.


She just wants … 

To be Anonymous and Out of Area, there behind the closed door on the king-size bed with the box of chocolates, dark and dreamy, and the Books-in-Waiting. 


She’s just wants …

The sky-blue and emerald pillows to cradle her, and the cats to look up and yawn and stretch and go back to sleep.



NOTE: This piece is inspired by a collection of poems called "She Just Wants," by Beverly Rollwagen

Friday, April 17, 2015

Auditory Hallucination, by Stacey Murphy


Willow at the edge of the marsh

wiggles her toe-roots in the cold mud

as the sweet racket

of thousands of peeper frogs

washes through her branchy fingers

and the continuous trilling

gently coaxes the bark from the ends

of buds and their beginnings

with a chorus of

“At long last,

we have made it.

You are safe to grow again.”

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Something from Utah, by Carol Miller


I take down the salt glazed teapot from a high shelf,

admiring blue fish patterns brushed on the cream background,

remove the perfectly fitting lid

and spoon a tablespoon of fragrant green tea into the mesh holder.

Tea for two.

I pour the hot water

over the dried leaf fragments,

replace the perfect cover

and brew.


The tea was bought in Salt Lake City, Utah,

carried east on Delta Airlines and gifted to us.

We were thought of in Salt Lake City —

that this selection of green tea flavored with walnuts, 

a dusting of coconut and a whiff of pineapple

would make us happy and content.


===
This poem was inspired by “Bounty," by Robyn Sarah

Thursday, April 2, 2015

After Midnight, by Stacey Murphy



After midnight,
The water tumbler
In the dish drainer
Shifts ever so quietly, subtly
Toward his favorite plate
Who is standing on edge,
Facing away from him
Toward the microwave,
Its lighted numbers
Casting a spaceship-glow green
On both of them.


After midnight,
I kiss the sleeping little boy’s cheek
And he groans and mumbles
Just like the old man
He used to be.


After midnight,
Dancing in the dark
If only in my dreams


After midnight,
Only the owls
Hear the first geese returning


After midnight,
Warm, flaky aromas from
The corner bakery


After midnight,
Only the owls
Hear Jupiter’s bawdy joke
And Venus’ twinkly laugh