A Story written line by line.

A Secret


Sh! It's a secret she said, skipping into the rain away from him, dropping her umbrella behind her. Hey! he said. He jumped up and started following.

Pouting, he reached for her, running and grabbing at her but could not catch her. She darted into the door of storefront smelling of dust.

She looked around laughing, hiding behind bookshelves and turning off & on an old lamp. She snapped her fingers and whistled, tricking him. She was here she was gone.

Hello nurse, she said. He hid behind an old grandfather clock and watched her wave money under the young woman's nose. You think $5 will be enough?

he sneezed, & she threw her head back laughing then skirted by him down the steps, breezing by him as if on air. The steps made no sound.

They ran for an hour, through the park and the garden, the light was getting low. He grabbed at her and said I am no longer a boy!

Make a wish! she said, looking at him deeply with her bright eyes, lashes wet from the rain, her hair dripping. I have no candles he said.

tears started running down his face in frustration. Why are you running? he yelled. Stand still for a minute so I can see you! I want to see you!

Time seemed to drift slowly after that. There was a bridge, and and old man & woman. Laughing and crying. Things began to get difficult.

The lights went on and the city streets were illuminated. The cobblestones were gray and bumpy. His head began to throb & his nose bled.

Still she laughed, & ran away again & again. The weather was hot & humid, damp. He felt feverish and began to shiver. His boots were wet. His toes were cold.

She looked beautiful in the dusky light. Her hair was both sticking to her face & billowing like a cloud. She could not stand still.

Little electric lightening bolts were bouncing off her, & it was as if she was dancing even when she was standing still, gracefully poised.

They ended up at a house at the end of a long lane. The street was dark, but she was light-filled. He grabbed her hand and said STOP, Please

He was gasping as if he were drowning. He felt his lungs exploding, he brought her close to him and felt her chest heaving up and down. STOP!

He whispered in her ear I want you please I want you right now. He smelled her hair, her neck, she smelled like grapefruit and honey,

like Christmas morning or 4th of July. Stop he whispered and began to unbutton her blouse, stop. She looked into his eyes and slowly began to fade.

The lines of her head and arms and legs appeared to erase before him, her hair becoming lighter and lighter her face whiter & whiter.

Until at last the only thing left was her eyes and fingers and her belly where his arms were wrapped around her. One by one her fingers

disappeared and then her burning eyes one at a time closed and were gone, lastly her lips, where he kissed her and then in a flash she was gone. He stood alone in the street, dark and eerie.

The wind started softly howling, whipping up around his feet, and away in the distance he heard laughing and the tinkling of glasses and a snapping of fingers and quite distinctly in his ear he heard Shhhhhh, it's a secret...

Sweet Baby to Be..

My Dearest 1st Baby Grandchild,

I just found out about you two days ago. You are growing in your mother's stomach, made from my son and another woman's daughter. With God's will you will be born in April in the spring when the rain comes and the grass grows and everything begins to be alive again, and the earth smells like dirt and flowers. Your parents will both still be 28, born one day apart from each other during the summer solstace. I do not know much about your mother yet, but I hope to get to know her well. Your father was my little boy, and I watched him grow and raised him from the time he played in a sand box, until he became a man living on his own. I was 22 when I became his mother, and will be 50 when I become your grandmother. Nothing could bring me more pleasure and I feel as if you are inside of me. As if I can speak to you already, your soul floating through the atmosphere, gracefully yielding and spinning, until it lodges firmer and firmer into your mother and comes out strong when you leave the womb kicking and alive.

It's very late as I type this, and I cannot sleep though I am tired. The rain just stopped, and I can almost hear the stars twinkling up above. If I listen quietly I can hear the birds in the trees, and the distant roar of cars on 280. It's the beginning of Autumn, almost October, 2008. I pray for your safe entry unto this earth, and wish you welcome.

all love and peace. Goodnight sweet baby.

Eating Alone for 6

I'm sitting here while my dinner is simmering, Odie & Popie watching me, and I want to get the recipe down quickly, which is why I'm typing erraticly. And my spelling is off. I'm listening to Neil Young..."You are like a hurricane...I wanna love you but I'm getting blown away...before that moment you touched my lips that perfect moment when time just slips away..."
and it's a perfect September night, a few nights past the Harvest Moon. I have a feeling I might eat alone. But this is a beautiful dish, and it should be shared. What are you doing? come on down. I swear, we'll just eat, and we'll just be friends.

I'm making an Italian Fish Stew and typing in between..

Ingredients
6 cloves of garlic, peeled
5 Hot Turkey Sausage links, cut into bite sized pieces, organic
1/2 sweet onion, chopped & peeled
4 chopped nice red tomatoes
1/2 can of Jersey Fresh tomatoes chopped from Whole foods
1 jar expensive italian jarred sauce from Whole Foods (I love Daves Gourmet - DG - Red heirloon)
1/2 lb calamari tubes, fresh, sliced into rings
1/2 lb scallops, cut in half
1 piece firm white fish on sale (this week I'm using Skate - which was on sale and it's firm - buy enough to feel a small piece to how many people are eating and cut it into that many pieces)
1/4 lb cleaned and cooked shrimp
small jar crab meat, cooked
organic green pitted olives
basonigal (basil)
olive oil
sea salt
ground pepper


ok, first pour about 3/4c olive oil into a hot deep skillet, and when that heats up, add the garlic, until browned. Then add the sausage, and cook until 3/4 way done. Then add the onion, cook that until almost translucent, and its browned and smells great, then add the chopped up tomatoes, cook those until soft, then add the chopped tomatoes in the can, and the jarred sauce and simmer until the sausage is almost done - a while. It's great already. You could eat this and be done with it. But we're not. Then add the calamari, and cook that about 5 minutes, add the olives, then the scallops - another five minutes, folding the mixture around easily in between additions. Keep the flame at a medium pace. THEN, if it's too thick add a little water...then taste the calamari, it should be nice and soft, and not too rubbery, then place the pieces of fish right on top of the whole concoction, and spoon a little sauce over it, put the shrimp in the pan, making sure it's covered, and THEN add your basil pushing it into the sauce, and cover the pan so that it simmers slowly over a very low heat. Then come and write something to someone. Or dream about your love for a while. Set the table, light the candles. Smoke a joint. You're almost there. I better go check the food....

So the whole thing is delish...I just checked it, added my sea salt and ground pepper, and very gently stirred it with a teaspoon, avoiding the pieces of fish so they don't break -- maybe you shouldn't be stoned for this! That's the deal, is to cook all of the unbreakable foods first, starting with what needs the most cooking first. So, that means sausage, which in a dish like this you can't cook too long, and ending with the white fish.

And THEN, when it's all ready to go, and you are about to heat up the frozen rice that I am addicted to and you get a nice bag of it at whole foods, which takes 8 minutes to cook...so you're cooking your rice, and you make a nice round spot in the middle of your stew, and take the drained can of crabmeat, and put right in the middle, spooning a little sauce over it, to heat it up. It's already cooked.

Voila! Table's set, make sure you have some nice italian bread, some Italian soda, which I love, or wine which I cannot drank (damn!) and you're ready to go. Oh, some candles.

I'm all alone...
this is so sad. But alas, tomorrow I will take the huge amount of leftover's to my mom's house and we'll have it for lunch. And then I'll have it for dinner tomorrow night. And by then others will discover it...This is what I like, food over and over....

..and maybe I'll freeze some.

You know where to find me. Come eat...

Mangia! Ciao!

The Harvest Moon

Dear Papi,

Tonight there is a harvest moon in the sky. It is big and round and golden orange, like a picture. The wind is cool, and swirls around my ankles as I sit in the garden, smelling the sweet scent of honeysuckle, and lemon verbena, spearment and basil. It is the end of summer, which means the beginning of fall.

Every harvest moon I think of you. I can remember many different journeys, looking out the window and thinking of something you said or did or having the feeling that something good was going to happen. As if we were going to run off. Oftentimes you moved right through me and I could feel you, as if you were part of my skin, and throat, and chest. If I took a breath, you would breathe with me. All this in the car driving, looking at the harvest moon.

This is true a true story. It happens like this, the harvest moon. Where it attaches people to people. As if their fingertips are sewn together, or their shadows are connected. You don't even have to know each other. You just have to be open to the surprise.

Tonight from my bedroom I can see the moon illuminated through a large spiderweb on my porch. A big spotted spider has been building it, day by day by day. And I've been watching this spider spitting it's thread out and swinging from point to point, creating a lovely web to catch it's prey in.

Moon. Spoon. Croon.

Lisa

Daddy oh Daddy Sweet ole Daddy Sonnet

He were alive just
one month ago in
voice and skin spotted with
age and soft. In eyeglasses
and wristwatch, and
small neat hands to grab you in hello.
In flag pin worn in his lapel.
In teeth resting in a cup next to the bed,
in full head of sliver hair, in unshaven whiskers on his
chinny chin chin. On the weary look on his face,
and his watery blue eyes; his partched lips
drinking from a straw, or sucking on ice chips.
In his laugh, and a kiss
from his sweet ole daddy lips.
--lw 9/6/08

Pop

Every morning I wake up and take my pills and go outside to my garden and drink my coffee, do a little yoga, meditate. medicate. Lately I have been thinking about my Dad, who passed into the void on August 2nd, all of 80 years old. I have been seeing him all over the place, and unable to shake the feeling of sadness. On days where I'm not taking care of my mother, I am moping around, somewhere between her house and my house. Unable to move forward, unable to shrink backward, unable to just be.

Part of it has to do with the fact that I promised him I would write him his eulogy. He asked me and of course I said yes. When it came down to it I was unable to put the words on paper. There was so much to say about him but it was almost as if writing it would make it real. I walked around that day, the day of the funa-real with three different version, but couldn't do it. Maybe next time.

I loved my Dad so much, that I can't imagine him not being here. I like to go into his chair and feel him, his arms around me. He told me he would miss me. He has no idea how much I will miss him. And do.

The last few mornings for some reason the pain in my head is abhorant. (is that a word or did I just make it up?)Like now. I haven't been writing very much. My dad wanted me to write a book. He didn't really understand my poetry, although he did like the poem "Geese Clouds" very much. He thought it was about a husband and wife, which was quite intuitive...though it was about me and my dog. Same thing. It was chosen to be part of a collection of poems that were picked for the Austin International Poetry Festival a few years back. He was proud of everything I did. Although I'm sure I disappointed him from time to time, he made me feel like the prettiest girl at the dance, or the most popular girl in the class, even if I never really was. I'm single now, no husband after twenty years, no boyfriend..of my choosing I like to believe. But no matter what, my Dad was my guy, handsome, talented, funny, kind, sweet, a hard-ass, and a hipster. He's a hard act to follow.


Geese Clouds

Those are Geese Clouds, she explained to him,
The kind of milky clouds that attract geese in the winter,
You know, when it's gray and it gets cold out, like
in December the time of year when the geese should
be gone but they're confused because winter is slow
coming in New York, but slow going as well.
So the geese clouds lure the confused geese into
their slate night and purple winter sled as they
swim first out of the cold dense moss water into
the filmy air then the snow acts as if it's coming and the
Geese clouds freeze up and then change and shift
Guiding the drifting geese up to Canada where
they begin their journey South.
It's a reverse flight effect, just like when the key of
A doesn't work on your keyboard
and you keep smashing it and smashing it
Until you are just about to begin working in S and then
it works and you can begin your word journey all over again.
Get it, she said to him?
He rolled over. He heard it all before.
He's a dog, she thought.
What would he know about geese clouds?
--lw

Poem of the Day

Els Moor

op het dak van het huis met de windwijzer zet een reiger een steile vlucht af de gasten wandelen traag naar de tot aan de rand gevulde vijver dit is een middag en het regent ramen zijn deuren om doorheen te stappen een hond rent achter het kind op het gazon stemmen blijven hangen boven het gras het geluid wordt gedempt door het geluid van de snelweg de man die ongevraagd naar boven liep slaapt met het gezicht diep in de kussens op het feest is iemand onwel geworden op het feest loopt altijd iemand met een strop om de hals de vuilniszak hangt aan de klink van de deur het mes wordt in de cake gezet

on the roof of the house with the wind vane a heron takes off on a steep incline all the guests walk slowly to the pond that is filled to the brim this is an afternoon and it’s raining windows become doors to step through a dog chases after a child on the lawn voices stay behind above the grass the sound is muffled by the sound of the motorway the man who went upstairs without asking is asleep with his head deep in the pillows at the party someone is being sick at the party there’s always someone with a noose around his neck the bin liner hangs from the door handle a knife is stuck into the cake © 2006, Els Moors From: er hangt een hoge lucht boven ons Publisher: Nieuw Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2006 ISBN: 90 468 0015 6 © Translation: 2008, Willem Groenewegen- on the roof of the house with the wind vane

And from the above poem from Amsterdam, beget this poem from me...a true story.


The Sun Parlor

In the Sun Parlor the man with the blanket wrapped around his legs isn't dead yet. His mouth is open and his breath comes in whistles and stops, a slight moaning is heard from his chest, his top teeth are missing. His cheeks are sucked in where once he was fat with drink and jolly. His arm is swollen with fluid, his hand has a bluish tint to it.

Upstairs the daughter of the man with the blanket wrapped around his legs
sips coffee from a styrofoam cup. She reaches into a box on the nightstand
and pulls out a lipstick, swirling it up and down while she cradles the
phone between shoulder and ear and talks. Every now and again a sob escapes from her throat and she catches it by putting her hand over her mouth as if she is coughing.

A few rooms over from the dying man dinner is being served. Macaroni is being spooned into bright plates and the people around the table chatter as if nothing is different or out of place.
Another daughter passes the cheese. His son spreads butter evenly and deliberately over
a slice of crusty italian bread. The sun shines brightly through the old panes of glass in the windows. People are always eating in this house.

In the room where the dying man lies, a young man sits near the body, talking
softly. He recounts the score of the recent football game, talks about the draft choices from his grandfather's favorite team, tells the man about his new girlfriend.
Quietly he wipes a tear from his face. They are streaming steadily as the man's breathing becomes more and more labored, eventually pouring like water from a drain pipe on the ledge of the big old stucco house.
This is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. Everyone cries when they enter this room.

--lisa walsh