I.C.U.

I stare at your mouth,
broken open for
some dark gathering,
open for business
serving only one question,
as your chest scrapes
more lung
to feed a heart gone hungry,
my eyes check the measure
of mortality’s true hand
carving through a parchment weary,
the jut and claw of
tendons spreading
liver spots and stubble
on a neck built

for what?

The hospital gown has
slipped off your shoulder,
and the bloodless skin beneath
strikes me as an innocence taken,
not given,
it’s too much for me to see,
I, your granddaughter,
once held on your good knee,
that blood flows down to me,
I’ve taken it,
hand over hand,
we’ve traced the genes
along the rope,
given them names,
wrapped meaning like covers
around leather-bound books
titled Harmon Genealogy,
when they’re all but
the dust of memory

You’re 94,
and that should make
it all right,
but somehow I still can’t
wrap my brain around it

And the heart monitor
goes blip-blip
around the countdown clock
inside my head
while nurses chatter
over the hospital stink
about premature thunder,
(drip drip goes the rain
outside, where people
drive cars instead of sleep,
I wonder if you dream),
and the nurses have moved on
to talk of broken parts,
and you once owned a
tool company,
I know this
I remember

When I was on the
other side of the
dark equation

You rolled them down
an assembly line,
counting the widgets,
counting nickels and dimes,
which you’d someday show me
in that little coin holder
that puckered like
my pink little mouth
every time you slid
it out
to buy me a smile
or to entertain
as we waited for
some thing that
probably came

And your mouth isn’t smiling now

But you’re 94!
And that should make
it all right,
it really ought,
but somehow I still can’t
wrap my brain around it,
and I probably won’t
until I’m the one with
the tube up my nose,
and I just can’t stare around it
anymore

Where is that line
separating wet and dry,
near and far,
dead from alive?
I’ve never been good
at believing in the
black and white
that often seemed
to structure your life,
I always wanted to
squeeze in some rainbows
somewhere in the
space between,
and you were all right
with that

If only I had let you in

But none of our tools
is good enough now,
my eyes see what is
right in front of me,
they drill down because
you do not look at me,
and that thinnest of
red lines lives not on
a monitor,
but somewhere
in that dark cavity
stretched for deep sleep,
and it is so thin,
but tight,
that nothing can sit on it,
nor wriggle through it,
not my fear,
my sadness,
this moment,
the rain

not even color
or poetry

My Granddad with his 

great-granddaughter

What Is

Take this rolling pin
and flatten me out,
get your fingers
all sticky and
semi-sweetened
‘cause I’m not thin
enough yet,
I still have
too thick
a pulse
that flutters
and quickens
like a
wet puppy dog’s tail
right before
the newspaper’s
black
thumps the letter
of his soft, runt
head

But even as
I squint
real skinny
for the shape-shifting
target of a
circular aim,
I laugh at all the
fat drama
for which I’m
committed,
with this
painterly choice
of purple words,
blossomed from
the semi-bitten
bruises of plums,
and rolled on
a world
that just is
what it is

what this is

A Season For Dreams

My new author website is up and running, thanks to hours of work and experimenting on behalf of my husband.  And I love the result!  He surpassed my expectations, and I'm very lucky for it.  Thank you, Paul. 

The site is really meant to promote my forthcoming book, Plum Blossoms in Paris, to people who don't know of it, or me, but I also had the opportunity to prattle on about how Paris has influenced my writing.  And to post an excerpt of the book for those who are interested. 

Murmurs stays right here.  While I will occasionally write blog posts on the other site, they will revolve around the novel.  I want Murmurs to remain a creative outlet primarily, and not a marketing mechanism.  With the exception of this post, of course.  Ahem.

Just for today, though, I will cross-post my first site entry here, too:

 

Prelude to a Story

I wrote my first story while I was in medical school.

Buried by exams and gross anatomy during my second semester, and unable to shake the cloud of formaldehyde that hung over me, I sought solace in that other half of my brain. The neglected half. It’s no wonder that my first story’s title would be “A Season For Dreams.”  I was sorely lacking in them. But storytelling was a new experience for me, and it was hard.  Not pathophysiology hard, no.  But a different kind of hard.  I was exercising muscles that had atrophied since the imaginative ballets we all stage in childhood.  And I took tentative, baby steps at first.  But I finished the story, and I enjoyed the process. The immersion.  It breathed new life into my tired hours.

Then I put the thing aside, and forgot all about it.  After all, writing was something other people did.  It was something my fiancé, Paul, did.  Me?

I was a reader.

And, as it turns out, I was something else.  I was not a doctor.  I quit medical school after one year, and considered myself lucky to escape with $20,000 in outstanding loans.  At least I owned my freedom and peace of mind.  At least I hadn’t had the chance to botch a diagnosis.  My new husband and I settled in my hometown of Athens, Ohio.  I got a job in a lab (more stinky formaldehyde).  We got a dog.  I got pregnant.  Bing-bam-boom.

Writing returned to me after the birth of our daughter.  Like so many new parents, I felt lost inside my own skin.  While I loved our baby girl intensely, I needed a refuge.  Something to call my own.  I started writing a novel titled Holiday.  And when I finished it a year later, I was lighter in the soul.  And hungry for more.

Plum Blossoms in Paris came to me during the summer months of 2005.  I wanted to write a book in the same spirit as the film, Before Sunrise, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.  A story about two people who were right for one another in every way, but who met in the wrong time and place.  Instead of Vienna, I chose Paris as a backdrop.  And I didn’t know my ending when Daisy first set foot on those cobblestone streets.  I hoped for the best for her and Mathieu, but I couldn’t guarantee anything.  I would see where they led me.  And be swept up in their romance for over a year.

And boy, did I miss them when it was all over.  I still miss them on occasion.  Old characters are a bit like ghosts who’ve decided to haunt other people.  You kind of wish they’d come around more often.  Rattle some chains.  Breathe a few more secrets into your ear.

Long story (very, very) short, the novel was eventually picked up by Medallion Press for publication in August, 2010.  My jubilation on receiving that news was profound, and still lingers.  It was a season for dreams, once more.  My heart swells to think of other people picking up my book, and slipping into the world I’ve created.  I was a reader, foremost.  That was my passion growing up.  And it’s still my first love.

But has anything else changed in my switch from “writer” to “author?”  No.  Maybe that’s premature to say, and perhaps I’m glossing over the busy (and discomfiting) work that comes with promoting your own novel, but I still say, “no.”  I never started writing with the goal of becoming an author.  I started writing because it was a precious escape from the burdens of expectation.  And to a certain extent, that’s changed.  Yes.  But that’s because I started demanding more from myself.  In prose and poetry.  Blog posts, too.  If I couldn’t be satisfied with what I’d written, how would anyone else be? And how in the heck would I fall asleep at night?

Writers are pretty self-indulgent creatures for the most part.  We write what moves us.  We write to reflect, and transcend, reality.  We write to communicate who we are. To stake a legacy.

And yes.  We also write to connect with others.

So thank you for reading.

I hope you enjoy my story.

D.C. al coda

Pulled.

----

This painting, "The girl and her

cello," is by Mats Eriksson.

New

“A new decade.”

“I suppose.”

“No resolutions, I take it?”

“People don’t change. Not really.”

“We’ve changed.”

“Not at the core. What changes over the years is awareness. We become more aware of our patterns, our flaws, our relationship dynamics. But fundamentally? I’m the same person I was at twenty. I just know too much now.”

“Isn’t that pretty fatalistic? Like we’re just computers recycling the same basic program. Ghosts in our machines.”

“We’re human enough to recognize that, at a certain point in life, we are largely powerless. Again, that terrible awareness. Of being boxed in. But our wants will remain our wants. Our compulsions laugh at all that mighty understanding.”

“Funny. My compulsions are all telling me to kiss you.”

“Yeah?”

“Bleakness just so happens to be an aphrodisiac for me."

“You’re pretty messed up.”

“I’m aware.”

“Ha.”

“No, what I’m actually doing is demonstrating free will. My free will wants to kiss you.”

“Does that line work on all the guys?”

“Pretty much.”

“But a midnight kiss is clichéd, expected. You’re just following someone else’s—”




“Sorry.”

“What for?”

“You’ve got lipstick right—”

“Here?”

“Mm hmm.”

“It was worth it.”

“I’m glad.”

“Sorry if I bummed you out before. I can be a morose drunk.”

“You’re not drunk.”

“Even worse.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I love you.”

“Why?”

“It’s my destiny.”

“Heady word . . . destiny.”

“Same thing you were talking about earlier. Just wrapped in a prettier package. But I’ll own these thoughts and feelings. I can’t escape them, yet they can’t be taken from me, either. I’m free to hold them. It’s like Goethe said. ‘If I love you, what business is it of yours?’”

“Hmm.”

“For instance. This conversation. It’s all in my mind.”

“True.”

“That kiss you wiped away? It never really happened.”

“No. It didn’t.”

“But in some sense, it did. Electrons brushed electrons. They relayed a story. I heard it. I felt it.”

“Those ghosts . . .”

“Chained to their machines . . . ”

“Will haunt.”

“And play.”

“My brain is starting to hurt.”

“Drink some more.”

“That’s the smartest thing you haven’t really said all night.”

“Ha.”

“I was wrong. You have changed. This is, hands down, the most depressing fantasy ever.”

“It’s not a fantasy.”

“No?”

“It’s a conversation.”

“Ah.”

“Happy New Year, darling.”

“Yes.”

-----

I've written a "New" story for

the last 3 years now.  Here are

the 2008 and 2009 versions.

Merry Christmas

A diamond day

kisses

the long skin

of night

with silent lips

of pear-shaped cut,

birthing the blood

of resurrection

in that most

sacred stone,

the human heart

------

Merry Christmas and

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Hug your loved ones tight,

and your kids (if you got 'em)

tighter.  I hope the warmth of

the season embraces you all.

Under the Pine

She waited for the moment.

No footsteps in the hallway. Her parents’ voices a muffled wave on the other side of the wall. The clock glowing 11:08 on her night stand.

It was time.

She grabbed Snoopy. Cracking the door, she scuttled down the hall, her shadow a silent leap ahead of her heart. Through the sheer curtains in the living room, she could see snow sink through the wonderlight. Swirling snow, tossed by an invisible hand.

It didn’t worry her. Rudolph’s nose was bright. He wouldn’t have any trouble.

He couldn’t.

The tree’s lights reflected rainbows in her eyes. She smiled with a candy-cane mouth. Excitement fizzed from some sleepy center up to dancing lips, and she clutched Snoopy tighter to squelch the squeal inside her chest. Her feet rocked from heel, to tiptoe, and back.

“Oh, boy,” she whispered. “Oh, boy.”

A crackling noise ran from her parents’ room, and up her spine. She scurried past the manger scene, and the piano bench, which still held a plate with two cookies. And the glass of milk to wash down a red star, a blue angel.

Dear Santa, I hope you have time to eat these. You must be very tired.

She crept toward the space she’d picked out. At the back of the tree, in the corner of the room. Where a tangled bow of light cords hid.  But if she hugged her knees, she’d fit just so.
 
Picking her way through the stack of presents, she thought of the Grinch, slithering his way around the other Whos’ houses, leaving crumbs much too small for the other Whos’ mouses. Her bottom knocked down an ornament, or two, but she didn’t bother putting them back up. Not now.

She couldn’t.

Almost time.  It must be. The sharpness of pine tickled her nose. Looking up, she inhaled the carnival of lights with eyes thrown open wide. Up, up, up they shot. Her head fell back on Snoopy’s tummy. Her fingers reached to touch fresh sap.

Sticky. Her dad told her that bugs could get stuck in it. Forever.

A door creaked. Footsteps pattered. She held her breath, but her heart was a drum.

Pa ra pa pum pum.

“Who’s eating the cookies?”

“My turn.”

“You did it last year!”

“All right. One for each of us. Claire was generous.”

“I’ll take the angel.”

“Fine. But I’m telling Santa you’re the greedy one.”

She saw them. Eating Santa’s cookies. She saw them. Something like sap squeezed up the tube of her throat. And burned.

Her mouth opened.

“I wish we'd gotten one more thing for each of the stockings.”

“Stuff more candy in. They won’t notice.”

“I just don’t want them to be disappointed.”

She pressed her lips together. Hard. Tried to make herself even smaller. Crumb-like.

Daddy’s glasses glowed gold through the branches. Very close now. Her breath whistled as he set the stockings upright against the presents. He adjusted the candy canes to hook just so at the top. His face softened into creases.

She could see a bit of grey in the stubble of his chin.

The hot stuff in her throat sank lower. Into the tender part of her chest. Daddy. It warmed her. The Christmas lights—a kaleidoscope of red, blue, yellow, purple—all blurred into gold.

“There. Perfect.”

She had to sneeze.

She was going to sneeze.   

“This will probably be the last year for Claire and Santa.”

“I’m surprised she hasn’t asked already.”

“She wants to believe. She always has.”

Snoopy’s ear tasted like dirty cotton balls. But biting down worked. She didn’t sneeze.

Instead, she would stay still and silent. As a mouse. Until her parents finished. And when tomorrow came, her smile wouldn’t waver, or break.

It couldn’t.

POP!

Popcorn

             popcorn

pop

             POP

                          POP!

Pierced by a needle,
cranberry kissed,
big belly laughs
spacing hearts
too tart
to pop
by mouth

Popcorn

             popcorn

pop

             POP

                          POP!

Bursting from its skin,
warm butter bath,
the movie man
scooping heaps
into
a striped
red bag

Popcorn

             popcorn

pop

             POP

                          POP!

Slathered by a scent,
holiday puffed,
a little boy
smiles large,
pressing
Mom’s heart
to go

pop

             POP

                          POP!

A Midsummer Night's Dream

We are on a picnic.  By the lake you grew up near.   I am wearing a summer dress, a few Hail Mary’s above my ankles, while you are getting burnt behind the knees.  You are feeding me the fleshy part of a peach.  The juice dribbles down my chin and melts into my neck.  A bee thinks I’m nectar, buzzing over breasts like arched petals, but it is your tongue tasting honey some minutes later.  In that soft crescent behind my ear.

The cicadas urge us on.  The woods pulse and hum.

Your hand disappears under my skirt.  My thighs part like gloves.  The rolling pressure of your thumb is the fulcrum upon which my life sees and saws.  You take your time.  Lips full above me, the sun a halo around your head.  Your eyes two magnets for an open-mouthed gaze.  My neck cranes for you, but you understand that anticipation is the soul of desire.  You want me to reach so long and sweet for it—for you—that when we touch, time is warped and confused.  And briefly breaks up.

I bend to the winds of a thumb and cupped palm.  I suck your name from the pulp on my tongue.  A skirt conceals nothing from trees and ice water.  I am open.  Undone.  Your hand is blood sunshine.  Evolution feeds on me, base pairs flipping and cartwheeling and slipping new bonds.

The thumb, the palm, is not enough. I want more.  I need . . .

More.

I ask you for it.

Please.

Please . . .

Your lips are sweeter than the fruit.  Your tongue tastes like my neck.  Your body, moving with mine, is a leaf flowing down a river’s song.

On a Sunday afternoon.


****


I take you to the water.

A part of me wants to tell you that this was the place where I learned to be a man.  A part of me is close to telling it.  But I can’t tell you that.

Instead, we skip rocks on the water.  And hunt for salamanders beneath the wet earth.   We lay down our blanket, open a wicker basket, and talk about why people don’t take picnics anymore.  You say it’s because they’ve forgotten how.  I say it’s because people believe in irony more than sentiment anymore.   Either way, we’re both feeling good, if a little superior.  Which I don’t mind.  Because let’s face it—we are right now.

I try to imagine what my boyhood self would think of my being here.  With you.  I think he’d be scared.  And electrified.

I could touch you all day long.  Your knees, round and brown from the summer.  Your pretty ankles, uncrossing like a broken promise.  The richness of your thighs.   The spreading dampness on your

white

       cotton

 see-through

         underwear

I am restrained because I sense you want me to be.  I am not a boy any longer.

When you finally reach for me, when you finally open to me, I want to push as hard as the cicadas.   I want to fill the forest with a storm.  I want, I want—

Instead, I breathe your name.

****

I answer you.


----

This is another excerpt from the new novel, since that's what I'm focused on right now.  I figured we could use some warmth, too, now that winter is setting in!

Note to Self . . .

 . . . this feels good. 

This may or may not be the final cover from Medallion Press, pending a request of mine regarding the font.  Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out!  The setting, including the background clock in the Musée d'Orsay, comes from an important scene in the novel.  And the cover artist was inspired by Matisse's "Plum Blossoms" painting in a lovely fashion:  

My favorite touch, however, has gotta be those crossing spoons.  Love 'em. 

The book's up on Medallion's site now, too.  You can even rotate it!  Which I've now done 3170 times.  Ahem.

I'm also hot in Canada.  

The book's not coming out until August 1st, 2010.  Yep, eight more months (it's been a year since I signed the contract).  But this certainly helped to make it feel more real.  Most of all, I was happy to think about Daisy and Mathieu again.  In my mind, they're as much a part of that museum as any painting.

Our characters do live on.