On her blog, Carol Peters, writer and MFA student, has many recommendations for what sound like some excellent books on craft. Her latest rec is linked here: The Eleventh Hour.
by Myfanwy Collins
The neighborhood dogs are merciless in the heat, barking, barking, barking like the caw, caw, caw of the crow that wakes you up each morning. The one on the corner has a bark like a smoker’s cough—cloying, endless, painful. You want it to stop.
But the heat ticks on and dogs bark and everyone waits for the day to end.
The tongue, shriveled and wrinkled, had soaked up all of the moisture it was going to inside that mouth of hers.
“What are your plans for the summer?” the dentist asked, maneuvering the pick into her rotting molar.
She spasmed in pain, fought the urge to grab his wrists and pull his hands out of her mouth, and wondered just how many dentists had been injured by an involuntary punch to the head. It might be prudent to fashion dentist chairs with mental patient wrist straps.
“We’re taking the kids up to Acadia in August,” the dentist nattered on, unaware of the imminent danger of patient-fist to crotch.
Pick, pick, pick. “Going camping.” He stopped and looked at her, apparently waiting for a reaction. She smiled as much as one could smile with lips stretched wide. “Do it every year.” Resume picking. She shut her eyes then and let tales of blueberries and tidal pools drown out the sound of metal scraping teeth.
“Yup.” Pain searing through her skull. “You were right. This one’s going to have to go,” the dentist said, smiling and shaking his head. “Sure you can’t afford the root canal?” She shook her head as the dentist inserted the dental dam and prepped the needle.
Wherever there is night, the dogs of the world join voices in one giant chorus, rising above the land like a cloud of locust.
In fear of the coming of the second son, they are calling out their dead.
“We are not seeking redemption,” they sing, “rather our relief.”
#
Later, she would wait for the bus on a heat-shimmering sidewalk. At the back of her mouth was a patch of cotton soaking up the blood to help it “congeal” and then “cover over.” In her hand, a plastic baggy with more cotton, which she was to switch in whenever the first piece became too blood soaked.
She tucked her tongue back and the cotton sponged against it. A gag.
Up the street there was nothing but an endless line of cars, a shimmering mirage.
#
There is the pant, pant, pant of the dog in your room at night, sitting by your bed, watching you for movement. You feel his breath on your cheek. That breath is all pain and comfort.
It is your breath.
#
When the bus arrived it was seatless. She stood with one hand on the railing, woozy, body weaving and bobbing like a buoy with the motion of the swaying sea bus. She counted the potential stops to hers.
Eleven.
Out of the corner of her eye, a man seated at her hip was smiling up at her. No contact, even if he was trying to offer her his sticky spot on the plastic seat. Avoiding eye contact was the name of game. Do not make friends. Friends follow you home. Friends call you up late at night and ask for forgiveness. Friends have expectations. Do not make friends.
Tongue sponged against bloody pulp at the back of her mouth but there was no way to change the cotton now. Everyone would see. And what would they think.
But maybe it would serve him right. Force him to watch as she extracted a glob of blood from her mouth. Who would be smiling and offering seats then?
Nine more stops.
#
There is the dog that belongs to no man. He marches along in a straight line and stops from spot to spot, sniffing and avoiding all eyes.
You try to pet him but he glances at you like you are a piece of shit. “You do not move me,” he says. “Simply put, you are nothing.”
#
Three more stops. Blood from sodden cotton leaked into mouth proper. At the back of her teeth was a gushing, gagging river. The blood inched down her throat and she coughed with tight lips.
Someone nearby opened a window and hot air rushed in, overtaking her tsunami style, blasting her backwards and swaying.
Everywhere she looked there were lights—shining as reflected sunlight in windows, piercing out through eyeballs, snaking in through a chink in the bus door.
Even though the heat of the day has embedded itself in the pads of their feet, they will not give up their song.
The smoker’s cough barks and barks and you wish it would just die. Vocal chords thrum against each other as taut elastic bands, tightening and contracting like a birth canal.
He is in your head.
The street, supposedly cooling in the dusklight, steamed up in grass cracked pockets. Someone was walking behind her.
Turn the corner and pick up the pace. Number of blocks to go: three.
The blood was now seeping down her throat in wave upon belching wave. She fell to the sidewalk on hands and knees and opened her mouth. It splattered before her in a pool of gore. At its center was a dark redblack blob—the cotton.
A hand on her back asked, “Are you okay?” She noted familiar shoes and nodded. “Should I call a doctor?” She shook her head and pointed to the plastic bag that, in her fall, had landed several feet away.
The man jogged up to it, grabbed it and walked back, cheap heels click-clacking the pavement. With dirt-ringed fingernails, he handed her the bag.
She sat back a little, resting on flattened feet and stuffed another piece of cotton into place. She stood then and with her hair as a shield and downcast eyes she said thank you and walked away.
One block.
Even in the darkest night, if you listen carefully, you can hear them barking in the distance. They are waiting for it all to end.
It is their only recourse. Their only defense.
#
She noted that the new cotton seemed to be doing the trick as she turned the corner on her street. With relief she saw the familiar red door that signified her salvation: the fan in the window on high, codeine from her prescription and a cold beer.
Up the steps and the door welcomed her home. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked insistently; there would be no rest tonight.
That’s right. It’s the shortest day of the year–or is that the coldest day of the year? It was 2 degrees when I woke up and now it’s a balmy 7.
Listen, try not to be depressed that the day is so short–as Allen reminds me, from here on in they get longer.
Kevin Larimer essay in P&W, THE CONTESTER: The Long and Short of Story Awards, gives a down and dirty review of what’s been going on with short story awards lately.
Nearing Autobiography
by Pattiann Rogers
(note: carol just turned me on to Pattiann Rogers and I must say I am in love with her poetry. thanks, carol!)
New works from: Carrie Berry, Randall Brown, Patricia Parkinson, Lydia Theys, Leigh Hughes, Bob Arter, Tonya Judy, Linda M. Donovan and more (including the announcement of the fiction contest winners! Hearty congratulations to Rusty, Richard and Kathy!)
I wish I had not read the headlines this morning:
woman in Kansas steals a fetus — seriously, WHAT is wrong with people???? This story is horrific and perhaps the most chilling are the details at the bottom which suggest that pregnant women are often victims of homicide.
Bush Named Time’s Person of 2004–this one speaks for itself.
Lilies and Cannonballs Review issue #2 is now available to order. Sorry to be pushy and self-promoting but there’s a story by me in this issue and they seem like very nice folks at that journal and, well, if you wanted to order a copy or something, that would be cool.
Okay. I’m going back to my cave now. Thanks.
Okay, this dream involves two of my friends–whom I will call X (a younger fellow, who has gone through some disturbing personal trauma this past year) and Y(an older fellow who has had a nice year), me and some other person who was faceless and nameless. Both X & Y are people I have worked with previously and both are friends with my husband as well.
Okay, enough of the backstory, here’s the dream:
I am walking up a slope/hill with X. We are chatting about something–I can’t remember what. There is a sort of tram off to the left of us but it isn’t moving. At the top of the slope we can see two cars: one is mine and one belongs to Y. As X and
I are walking up, Y and the mystery person are walking down. I am wearing a very ugly paisley, polyester dress and army boots (this is, unfortunately, an actual outfit from my past). The dress is big and frumpy.
Y is within a few feet of us and he yells out to me, “Hey! You look pregnant… with twins!”
I’m pissed and say, “I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that to me.”
Y kind of snorts and shrugs it off and keeps walking down the slope with this other person. X and I keep walking up. I’m fuming and keep saying how pissed I am at Y. We get to the top of the slope and I get in the car. X is outside and just about to open the door and get in when Y and the other guy are back up at the top of the hill. Y starts to get in his car and he’s yelling but I can’t hear him even though I know it’s about me.
X gets in the car and shuts the door but Y is still yelling. X tells me that Y said mean stuff about me, that my husband didn’t want to be with me anymore, etc. And he said he yelled it all in a Southern accent (Y is not southern). I should note, too, that along with not having a Southern accent and yet speaking with one, Y does not look like himself in this dream. He is very skinny and shorter than he is in real life. He almost looks like someone impersonating him and not really pulling it off.
The dream ended there.
Okay, so what do you make of that?
J.D. Daniels moving essay, Technical Difficulty, comes to me in perfect timing. I spent some time this morning discussing with friends what motivates/demotivates us from writing. My motivator, I said, is a desire to prove someone wrong–even if that someone is myself.
Daniels walks us through his evolution from young man in Kentucky, to college student, to writing teacher, to where he is now: “I write handbooks for the molecular biology department at Harvard.”
Actually, he starts there and moves us backwards. Back to that one perfect moment, where the seed was planted:
One day I found Fantastic Four #200, the double-length special in which Reed Richards tore off his enemy’s mask “and in the heart of the great solartron complex Doctor Doom was driven into madness by the multiplied images of his own destroyed face!” A pristine copy of this particular issue is worth a lot of money now. Mine has its resale price written in magic marker in the upper right-hand corner.
I paid my dime. I leaned against our storm door and I read my new comic book twenty times. Then I went inside and asked my mother for a favor. Because her penmanship was better, she wrote my name in blue ink under the title—The Fantastic Four by Johnny Daniels—to show me how it was done.
All right, I said. Now let me try.
After reading this essay, I feel ready again.
I LOVE this:
It’s a Wonderful Life in 30 seconds (and re-enacted by bunnies)
Thanks to the wonderful Kieran for this link.
myfanwy collins 