Saturday, August 3, 2013

Coffeeshop Writers Group - Just the Four of us - My short story: Where are the Rattlers on Rattlesnake Road? - Poems: At the Feet of the Master - Lemon Fusion - My Shore House


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Last nite, I was exhausted but knew I had to work on a new short story. BTW, this woman is not me, but she's sleeping on my couch.

 Why must I write? B/c I had an audience. Four people who would read and critique my short story the very next day.

The hour was getting late.

How do I procrastinate? Let me count the ways.

New York Times, Times videos, staring out the window, Facebook.

Ah, I'll brew myself some tea. My sister Donna, the connoisseur of the Western world, was over yesterday and told me she thought my Bigelow teas were WEAK.

Falling under her influence as I often do - she has an outsized personality - I decided to brew some jasmine tea.

Well, it was delicious! Very flavorful. I had given it up b/c it contains caffeine.

What's a little cafffeine gonna do to me?

I'll be perfectly frank. Within a hour, I was positively hypomanic! 

I had no trouble writing the story. It practically wrote itself. I couldn't have been happier. The whole thing took about three hours - unprecedented - and I thot this story is superb, worthy of being published in a great literary journal.

Bullshit!
That was the hypomania talking.

I print out the story, staple the 14 double-spaced pages, and tuck it in next to me on my bed full of books and New Yorkers.

And fall into blissful sleep. 

I awake at 7, fix up the story and mail it to the Writers' Group. The object is to give em enuf time to read it before the meeting.

I should mention my sugar was 185 when I got there from the peach cobbler, knowing it would gradually decrease and I didn't need to eat anything while there. 

We discussed my story first. They liked it. I asked some questions:

- Was the rape scene realistic?

- Was it believable that her painting was "as powerful a piece of madness and despair as Monck's 'The Scream.'"

- Was it believable when she got the courage to cuss out the rapist?


Since our group now meets once a week, the 'deadline pressure' allows us to write more.

Linda Barrett read us another chapter in 'A Time for Love,' a science fiction novella where age requirements mandate an early death for everyone, on this overcrowded planet hundreds of years in the future. 
 Linda had her poem "The Bipolar Sea" printed on her T-shirt by Artistic Screen Design, who made our Mental Health Awareness Magnet. Her poem was published in last year's Compass.

Discounted copies available for this collector's item for $100 in the trunk of my car.

Laffin' Carly surprised us all by writing "A Short Essay about The Late Miss Virginia Woolf."
It was followed by a poem where a wife of 22 years questions if she still wants to remain married.
Allan Heller left us in terrible suspense after reading only three pages of his ghost story "Nothin' Strange Going On."

When someone gives Allan a suggestion, he sez:  Duly noted.

He gave us all some websites on which to try to get our stories and poems published.

Look! Here's his story "Stones in a Creek."

90 percent of the time, said Allan, his work is rejected.

But, hallelujah, baby, it's the other 10 percent that counts.

The clock was ticking and I still hadn't written any poems this morning.

After procrastinating, I had 50 minutes left to write the poems.

I had five ideas and wrote about four of em.

Ahem, let the reading begin.



LEMON FUSION

On one of those cooking shows
where they do the impossible
and make you go downstairs
in the middle of the night
to root like a rabbit
in your refrigerator
a sensible-looking man
held up a lemon
an ordinary yellow lemon
and cut it to shreds
enclosed it in a glass jar
with salt, sugar and
vinegar 

"Put it in a dark place," he said
looking at me as I rode my
stationery bike
"The chemicals will do their job
Reactions will begin immediately
In half a year your lemon will be
like custard, more delicious than
your palate ever dreamed"

Inside, the explosions begin
one small cell thrown up in the
air like a juggler tossing
bowling pins in a circus tent
the glass sides sprout designs
like a Picasso
noisily, though there’s no one
to hear it,
the center blows apart
a Krakatoa having nowhere to
go, caught in a glass womb,
with an ear-splitting rumble.

So, too, five billion years ago,
the earth was formed, chained
to Mother Sun
Our lemon must wait in  fetal darkness
and await and explosions yet to
come, before she, too, is released,
a captive chrysalis reborn to
life as a dessert
fit for the
discerning palate. 



MY SHORE HOUSE

Long Beach Island
Cape May
Ocean City

A perquisite of modern life
is a visitation at what is known
as a “shore point”
let the sand blow in your face
the ocean lick your wounds clean
and the shells offer you a glimpse
of death made beautiful

I defer.
My house is my shore house.
Devoid, now, of children or pets,
I roam around these sweltering days
of August
The screened-in back porch is where
I take my meals
Meow! says the new stray cat
my daughter-in-law would
instantly bring home
Scat! I call as he peeks
in the screen door
and rushes off under the
unkempt forsythia

I lay down in my reading room
windows cranked open to allow
the halting breeze to find me,
snap on the fan and
pick up Nelson deMille about
spies in Russia but
after two frightening chapters 
I switch to the New Yorker
teetering in two unread stacks
like a collapsible Eiffel Tower
on the carpeted floor.

Too many choices for bedtime.
What kind of night will it be?
A tough one requires the soft living
room couch and a movie on the laptop
Otherwise, unencumbered by sand
in my eyes or the smell of salt water
clinging to my face
I catapault myself into bed
it’s one of those high ones
Princess and the Pea style
sold only at Sleepy's
After a dozen false starts
sleep finally snatches me in its
huge butterfly net.

 


AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER

I was fat then
with my lithium thighs
and double chin
put on my best
fat clothes and drove over
to meet him in the lobby
of the mental health facility
where I counseled people
sicker than I.

Under my arm was
a manila folder I’d
stolen from the agency
filled with dozens of my poems
     When the Hummingbird Hums
     Neighbors
     Houses on the Corner
waiting for a poet famous in our town

I nodded to the new janitor in the lobby
decked out in white longjohn shirt
and huge glasses revealing owl eyes
that bored through my head

Walked over to the window to see if
he was pulling in.
Seven a.m. he said was the only time
he could come

Illicit lovers, I thought, turning back
to the janitor, tall legs ensconced in jeans
our eyes meeting in understanding
I tapped my folder and opened it up
he grabbed it eagerly
my Homer, my Ovid
"I'll look 'em over," he said
in his professorial voice,
"and mail them back."

I watched him mount his truck in
the parking lot. 
When they came back they
were filled with stars and ex-
clamation points.
A poet famous in our town.


Chris Bursk, PhD, born 1943. Read more here.

3 comments:

  1. Enjoyed all three poems, though I will forgo the lemon custard thing. I don't get why it wouldn't just get mouldy? I enjoy your poems always. They transport me into different worlds than my own, though I ALWAYS find some commonalities, but also love catching a glimpse of what goes on in your interesting mind. I would like to visit your "shore house" one day and would like you to visit my sbode, though mine is far from being my own "shore house" at this time. One day it will, I hope.

    By the way, re last post, I am hooked on a jasmine tea offered free at a VN Restaurant nearby. They brew the tea, put a few thin slices of fresh ginger in it, and then a little slice of lime or a spritz of lime juice. Try it. I bet you'll like it.

    Coffee also makes me hypomanic-my body brain and my crazy heart too.

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  2. thanks for stopping by, iris. your jasmine tea sounds wonderful, with that little slice of ginger.

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    Replies
    1. Try it and thanks for the pleasure your blog always gives me. I like to think of reading it as a little visit with a friend I haven't seen for way too many years.

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