Facing the Sun

It's Easter Sunday, and though I'm not a Christian, I've always appreciated the season and the promise of renewal and uplift it brings.

Our fellow writer and friend, Richard Levangie, had neurosurgery this weekend to remove a pituitary tumor that's wreaked havoc on his body for more than a decade. His wife Kristina has been kind enough to let us know that he's recovering well. Yet in spite of a distinguished history as a journalist and award-winning writer, Richard's debilitating migraines and fatigue have left him unable to pursue his career with as much fortitude as in his pre-tumor years. His friends have stepped up to help him and Kristina with expenses as he continues to recuperate and regain his strength.

29 talented writers--including project spear-headers JA Zobair, Wendy Russ, and Stephen Parrish--have contributed to an anthology of poetry, short fiction, and reminiscences titled Facing The Sun. You may donate any amount of money to receive this anthology in pdf format via email. I've taken my time in looking through this lovely collection and have been deeply impressed by the talent of the contributors and the beauty of the photos and formatting. For your donation, you will also have your name inscribed on the "wall" of the site's sidebar. I've recognized so many familiar names up there already. It's just one more reminder of the incredibly generous and impassioned community of which we're all a part.  

Richard's done a lot for that community. He was one of the first people to interview me when my book was published, as part of his "25 Questions" series. He and Kristina designed my beautiful book "postcards." He's the kind of guy that takes as much delight in the success of his friends as he does in his own accomplishments. I'm happy to see so many people giving back to him now.

Please consider a donation. It's a beautiful day for new beginnings.  

The Lascaux Review

(If this cow horse isn't pregnant with a new literary review of hugely 
awesome potential, then I don't know my 17,000 BCE cave art.)

It's my honor and pleasure to announce the launch of a new literary journal, The Lascaux Review, a "showcase for emerging and established writers and artists." Stephen Parrish and Wendy Russ are at the helm of this new venture, and because of my deep-rooted faith in both of them, my expectations for Lascaux's future success could not be higher. They are just that good. 


My story, "Closer," was selected to be the first piece published in the review, which is something of a Leap Day miracle, possibly? Probably. At any rate, for those wondering: if you do have a piece accepted by The Lascaux Review, let me assure you that the editorial process is extremely professional and painless. Parrish has a sharp editorial eye, and he made my story stronger, for which I'm very grateful. 


And, oh yeah: they PAY! I was paid generously for my story from donations to the review, which is the first time that's happened since....well...


Ever. 


Seriously, I hope that many of you will consider a small donation. It's too seldom that writers and artists are compensated for their work, and I admire Lascaux for embracing such ambitions right out of the gate. I know they mean to make it grow. 


I also encourage you to submit. They are currently looking for fiction, poetry, art, essays and reviews. Submission information can be found here. 


I'm proud to be a part of this launch today. And I can't wait to see what the future has in store for them. 

Deleted (A&E)

Pulled for submission

Story inspired by a Huffington Post article I read the other day. Painting by Picasso: "Girl Before A Mirror."

Luna

(Photo credit here.)

We lived underground

in a circular room 

where you fed me words

o'er song and sand     

and with every vowel

I tore and tongued 

my belly grew more concave

until I was grown heavy,
but pregnant with silence. 

And before I could say when

the dread contractions set in  

as I found myself like   

the primitive daughter

squatting over a caveman’s 

flint, bones and fire

where I will give birth

to an opal moon

again and 

again.

*Thanks to our son for pointing out the nearly full moon to me last night. Sometimes I forget to look. 

New

The mashed potatoes were starting to stiffen in the bowl. 

“Stop your whining and eat your meat,” Angela said to the four-year-old, before turning toward the others. “Sorry, Nathan, you were saying?” 

“Just that when we were young, our lives were always ahead of us. Perpetually ahead, rigorously being plotted out. Now that we’re older, we look to the past and feel nostalgic. But I think what we’re really pining for is a sense of possibility. Of not yet knowing where we’ll go, who we might become. So we pine, even while feeling a little betrayed by the simpletons we once were.”

He took a pea from his spoon and held it between two fingers. “Do you know that chimps experience the greatest surge in serotonin during the anticipation of a reward, and not during the reward itself? Humans romanticize their childhoods in the same fashion. We project bliss onto our deepest ignorance.” He popped the pea in his mouth and shrugged. “I mean, what if the reward’s not so great after all.” 

“I beg your pardon,” their mother said.

“Your cooking excepted, Mom,” he said and they all laughed. 

The girl dropped her fork to the floor. Angela got her a clean one and sat back down. They felt the strength of winter in the blackness outside, and unconsciously moved their chairs closer to the table.  

“So where’s the sweet spot? The magical place where we’re anticipating and realizing all at once?” Angela said. “Is it in our twenties? Our thirties? When we’re falling in love?” 

He opened his mouth but their mother cut in. “Sorry, dears, but--” her voice rose--”did you take your pills yet, Pop?” 

They looked dutifully toward the end of the table, where the old man sat. He straightened up, patted the front pocket of his flannel shirt, and painstakingly removed five small pills, lining each of them on the table's edge before washing them down, one by one, with an equal measure of water and effort. They let out a collective breath when he slumped back in the chair, exhausted. 

“Everything okay, Grandpa?” Angela said, noting the barely touched food on his plate.

“Fine, fine.”

“But Mommy, I don’t want to eat it.”

Angela plucked the knife and fork from her daughter’s hands. “Here. Let me cut it.”

“No! I want to cut! Me! Me!”

“Fine. I’ll give you five more minutes, then no dessert. And for the love of God, don’t gnaw on it like that!”

After a minute, Nathan cleared his throat. 

“The sweet spot, of course, is unique to the individual herself. And it’s too simplistic to view it as some one-time phenomenon. If human beings define any characteristic, it’s tenacity. We will invent new illusions for ourselves at every opportunity. We will retreat into others’ illusions, if we lack the creativity to formulate our own. We will invent new lines in the sand, like the arbitrary marking of a new year and the blank slate it pretends.” 

Their mother put down her fork.  “Heavens. Is this any kind of talk for the new year?"

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Now eat your sauerkraut. It's good luck.”

“Right,” Nathan said, catching his sister's eye, who smiled behind her napkin. “Because luck's just a big ol' helping of metaphysical roughage."

“You're making fun again."

"It's a joke, Mom."

"Well, I don't care to understand it. Why the two of you have to look down on simple things . . . simple people--"

"Jesus . . ."

The sparring devolved into bickering. Nobody noticed the old man catch the little girl’s eye and hold it for a good, long moment.  He took up his fork in his left hand and pinned the side of pork to his plate.  Then, sawing with his right hand, he forced the knife through the meat until a piece broke free. He put down the knife, switched the fork from his left hand to his right and lifted the meat to his mouth, holding it there for a good, long moment. 

He looked at her and nodded. 

She seized her silverware, looking at the individual pieces before her. A spoon clattered to the table. She gripped the fork in her left hand and stabbed the hunk of meat. Then, with her right fist held tight about the handle, she moved her knife bit by painful bit until a chunk of flesh ripped free. She looked up in surprise and found the old man’s eye trained squarely on her. He took the meat in his mouth and began to chew. The girl sat a little straighter in her chair and began to chew, too. 

“Fine, fine,” he murmured to her, beneath the din. 

She and the old man ate in silence, her legs swinging freely beneath the table. And when she smiled at him, a little bit of meat stuck through the gap in her mouth where a new tooth was just coming in.   

   

For my Granddad, whose absence is felt at every family gathering.

Closer

("Traffic" by Jessica Brilli)

Brake lights on a highway. Not her favorite sight. It must be an accident. Or road construction. Either way, it wasn't right. Not when they were so close to home. Not after their day.   

She looked out the passenger window. A blue sedan pulled alongside as her husband tapped the brakes. The driver of the car was looking out. Their eyes collided in the semi-darkness. 

Toby, talking on his bluetooth, didn’t hear the sound she made. 

The years had altered his face, but underneath it, he was the same. Same eyes, same lips, same skeptical look arching into incredulity. Christopher. Toby nudged the car forward. Her hand reached out for a grip, a hold. A gap opened between Christopher’s car and the truck ahead of him. Someone honked a horn.   

She looked at her husband. She looked to the window. The gap was gone and there he was. 

A smile tugged at her face. He was smiling, too; almost against his will, it looked. She smiled more as his expression turned a somber corner. Her eyes said "what the fuck?" He shook his head and inched forward. 

Reluctantly, was it? She noticed the woman nodding off in the passenger seat next to Christopher and the two kids in the back, watching a DVD of Aladdin. Christopher pulled a full car length ahead of her and Toby. She could see his eyes in the driver’s side mirror, watching her. A green glow suffused the car. Then yellow. Then green again. The seatbelt was snug between her breasts. Too tight, really.  

Everything suddenly too tight. And oh God, this was happening. This was all right now.   

It made no sense. It made no sense that they should be here, three hundred miles removed from their Indiana life, in a shitty Columbus traffic jam, eleven years after the fact.  

Did he live here, too, then?  

“Nora said twenty, but I told her that was crazy.”

She didn’t know who her husband was talking to. That seemed significant. She hadn’t been paying attention. How long had she not been paying attention? The flashing brake lights were arrhythmic, dissonant.  

“Not reliable at all, no.”

Her foot pushed a nonexistent pedal. Christopher’s car was two lengths ahead. She couldn't see his eyes. Was he watching for her? He must be. He was. A stuffed animal of some kind had rigor mortis in the back windshield. There was a bumper sticker she couldn't make out on the rear left side. The license plate read Michigan. 

Christopher hated bumper stickers. 

Michigan?  

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Trust me.”

A car from their lane edged in front of Christopher. Toby took advantage. She gripped the arm rest and looked over. He wasn’t looking back. He was speaking to his wife, who had finally stirred. She tried to get a look--a good, gulping look--at the woman’s face, but Toby forged ahead. 

They should talk. They should have talked more. They ought to have talked. It was shudderingly obvious: how afraid she'd been to talk. It was not okay that they hadn’t talked. She had things to say. Surprising things she hadn’t given voice to. Silly, dormant things waking up all over the place. Brake-lights-on-a-freeway things.        

She eased back into her seat. Toby was coasting now. Twenty miles per hour. Twenty-five. The gridlock was breaking up. They’d be gone in a--

The seatbelt pulled her back.   

“Fuck!” 

She craned her neck, but it wasn’t necessary. He was there, next to her. Five feet away, if that.  Christopher. Chris. Her once-upon-a-time guy. His wife leaned across the middle arm rests, saying something to the kids. He looked over at her, sober now. His hands were tight on the steering wheel. 

“Sorry about that, man. We’ve hit a traffic jam here.”  

Toby was talking to Ryan. That was his Ryan voice.  

The cars were stalled. All that momentum had been a tease. She looked at Chris, and he looked at her.  Each second of looking felt long and compressed and awful and aching. His eyes held hers and would not be shaken. Her breath came fast on the windowpane. She wiped away the fog and touched the side of her nose. After a moment, he touched his own.  

It was their sign, their signal, their lighthouse at sea. Rescue me. For the love of God, rescue me from this man, this woman, this never-ending party banter. Take me home again. 

“Yeah? Same here.” 

She knew this was it. The once-in-a-lifetime chance. She didn’t care what cost. She wrote her words in the condensation just as his wife turned and gestured to Chris. The lane was clearing again. His jaw tightened, he nodded slightly, and the car lurched forward.  

She turned to the road, but kept her fingers on the window, guarding the backward thing she'd scrawled. Toby was talking about football now. He reached over and touched her swollen belly as they passed a broken-down truck in the median. The driver’s face was an impression of misery.  

She grasped Toby’s hand in her own and leaned back, the blood coursing through her, the highway lights pulsing faster and faster, the exit signs looming and sucking by. The world around her was dark and mysterious, endlessly dangerous and shockingly normal.   

Chris’s car started to accelerate, and he put more distance between them. This was it, then. In a moment they would be gone. Her eyes swam to the right and she could finally make out, in the roiling darkness, the bumper sticker on Chris’s car.  

If you’re close enough to read this, don’t be.   

Deleted (PL)

(Strahlenlinien by Wassily Kandinsky)

Poetry By Numbers

The starts were the worst. The gun would fire, and we’d all take off across the field like gazelles pretending to be lionesses, checking one another out from the corners of our eyes, elbows jostling, dirt flying into our eyes and open mouths. In general, I've found that legs don’t like transitioning from sweet apathy to full-blown sprint.  MY legs, at any rate, begged me to SLOW THE F*CK DOWN already. While the voice in my head could only repeat, “3.1 miles. 3.1 miles. 3.1 miles . . . ”

I think most runners start out as number-crunchers. The sport is rife with OCD-types. At first, you’re desperate to make it one lousy mile without stopping.  You celebrate when you do, but not for long, because one mile must, through some psychological law of momentum, turn into two.  You begin to wonder whether a marathoner might not be buried deep, deep inside you.  You start Googling how many calories a mile of running burns (and is that gross calories or net calories, and how does that compare to walking or gardening or scrubbing the toilet or....?).  You start approaching the bathroom scale not like a mortal enemy, but as a girlfriend with whom you’ve lately reconciled but are still a little wary of.  You start looking at that cookie in your hand and thinking, “It would take me 1.2 miles of running to burn off this stinking, good-for-nothing cookie.”  And then you eat it, anyway.  

The thing is, the fear started well before the gun went off.  It started a full day before meets, which always took place on Saturdays.  During track and cross country seasons, Friday nights were spaghetti nights.  I ate a big plate of the pasta (for the carbs) and got to bed at an hour too decent for any self-respecting high school kid. The problem was: I couldn’t sleep.  I’d stare at the green glow of my digital clock and think: 8 hours til I have to get up and do this thing.  7.5 hours.  7 . . .  


Sometimes, I’d wake up just before the alarm went off, in the dread silence of darkness, with my heart hammering in anticipation and my gut a quivering slush.  I rarely felt more alone in the world. 

The numbers obsession has gotten so bad with me lately that I’ve been daydreaming about buying this:  

It’s a Garmin watch. But really, they ought to call it A Runner’s Wet Dream.  This little baby has GPS tracking, tells you exactly how far you’ve run, your mile paces and splits, and what the heck your heart is doing (i.e. humming or exploding) at every step along the way.  I saw a guy at the starting line of my recent 5K wearing one of these bad boys, and got a little starry-eyed.  So it took up half of his forearm and vaguely called to mind a house arrestee’s ankle bracelet.  It has a fully-automatic training log feature.  Which means I could fully obsess about my numbers AFTER the run, too! And for the rest of my days, however many those number.

I’d usually see my dad stationed at the first mile.  He’d have his arm raised, staring at the watch on his wrist and chewing urgently at his mustache.  As I ran by, my spikes flipping up tiny divots of grass, he’d announce my time in a booming voice that would have embarrassed more if the pain had made room for it.  I was fast.  Somehow, in spite of my loathing for the sport, I was good.  Fear is a motivator.  I never knew how not to push myself.  I understood, by the time I crossed the finish line, my dad would have made it over there, too.  To not finish in the Top 10--or for my time to tick over, say, 23:00--meant that the fear was self-validating.  Because a stopwatch never lies.  

I have been running for 4-5 months now. I’ve gone as far as 6.5 miles and I had my first race in 18 years this past Sunday.  I finished in 25:09.  My father wasn’t there, because I didn’t tell my parents when the race was.  But I saw my husband and kids at the finish line.  Paul took some pics:

 (Pre-Race: Pain? What pain?)

 (Oh. THAT pain.)

(The agony after. Included as a 
"F*ck you" to vanity and because 

we have cute kids.)

Our daughter was particularly impressed with the awards at the ceremony afterward.  She got a kick out of the fourth and fifth place trophies, with golden sneakers sprouting wings from their heels.  The female first place finisher for this race was a high school cross-country runner.  With legs like a gazelle’s.  

There was the race my sophomore year in which I ran a sub-21:00 and placed second in the league.  Something happened during that race that was utterly unique to that day.  For that year's championship, we ran on a golf course bordered by a large hill and wood. I knew this course well. It had a loop we ran twice, and oh holy God, how I dreaded that hill.  The first time was bad enough.  The second time, with your quads seizing up and each breath like a blowtorch, was worse.  But not this time.  This time, I attacked the hill, and when I made it to the top, my stride lengthened naturally--like something simply unfolded inside of me--and I let gravity take over.  I could have run that hill over and over again.  I have never felt more at home in my body, more in control of my fate.  My eyes looked past the lead runner and out to the horizon, and my fear floated somewhere up into the sky behind me.  Runner’s high.  

I still have a hard time not pushing myself.  I ran this latest 5K as hard as any I ever ran in high school (if with less pliable legs).  But maybe, just maybe, I’ve gained something unquantifiable in the years between.  Maybe some runners start out as number-crunchers and, if they take enough strides, at their own deliberate pace, they can arrive at poetry. 

I like feeling my legs get stronger.  I like feeling I’ve been somewhere.  I like it when the river is shrouded in fog, and I run alongside it, my arm stretched out to the side, as if I might slice it, and the sun is a jewel left behind by the moon and I am just an animal enjoying the morning, like the river’s blue heron . . . solitary, if not alone.  

I think I’m going to pass on the Garmin.  Don’t get me wrong: I will always be number-happy--and a part of me is eyeing the Athens Half Marathon in April--but for now, I don’t want to think about racing or goals or how fast I’m running or what kind of cookies I’m feeling guilty over.  I just want to put one foot in front of the other, for as long as I can, and see where it takes me.   

There’s a street I love on the east side of Athens.  It’s a brick-paved road lined with big trees and old houses wrapped by large porches and gardens. I make a point of running down this street twice a week. Any more, and it would become mundane. Any less, and I would miss it.  The street is set on a gradual decline, and I let my legs kick out as I turn the corner.  I let gravity take over and the momentum flow through me.  The leaves are falling like a ticker-tape parade and they crunch beneath my soles.  It’s autumn.  And for a moment--though my head insists it’s chemical, that it’s merely endorphins doing their business--I know that my feet can surely fly.  

Small Houses

("Blue Star" by Joan Miro)

It’s early and I’m but half alive,

so I close the bedroom door to sit

with a book of poems and a cuppa 

for a morning reprieve, a little kick-starter. 

Breathe. Sip. Repeat if desired.

But the pages are put on hold 

by the sharp, plaintive 

voice of our daughter,

dulled by distance

but the keener for it,

so that I may absorb the sincerity 

of her reproach, 

if not so much the particulars.  

My husband responds 
with a deep vibrato; 

she falls silent, mollified. 

And my attention is drawn 

downward, to the poet’s name,

to the archway of the title’s “A,”

until the whump-whump

of our son’s pachyderm feet

takes the short measure 
of a short hallway

and I am fallen away.  

Another breath, another sip, I lean 
further in. I might turn on the fan, 

instead I let it be. Small houses

have their rewards.  

And the poems are what poems 
should be: a quiet cup where life steeps.

The heartbeat of a graveyard where 

someone may pass and press 

an ear, long after we’re beneath.

They are so good they hurt.   

The dying wail of the iPad game, 

signaling another clean defeat, 

and I attempt some stretches, 

testing each muscle to find its resistance,

that all’s as it should be, that I am, in short, up to par.

I am just thirty-five and these things are starting 
to become more important to me.

Probably because they insist upon it.    

And the birds don’t know they’re ribbons 

in the blue spruce outside the window 

and the sunlight, broken and recombined 

by the blinds, is a Sunday prayer for physicists. 

I count the seconds, switch the legs. The cup

beside me is nearly empty. It’s summertime.  

Our son runs down the hall again, 

and this time, his sister follows him.

One of them is laughing hard. I know,

from experience, how fragile it is.

The house and I hold our breath.  

And when I switch the fan to high,

closing my eyes to extinguish the light,

filtering thoughts from my mind like 
the leaves left behind, a bittersweet 

note seeps in haphazardly, 

unbidden, and swamps the place--

call it the sunlight, the dust it keeps,

the book of poems so good they bleed, 

children zig-zagging between laughter
and sobs, the shadow that falls 
when you stand outside that to which 
you most belong.  

And so I rise to fetch my notebook,

awake, awake, awake 

Alive.  

The Tavernier Stones: Amazon Bestseller

It's not every day that a friend's book is #3 #2 on the Amazon Mystery Bestseller list.  

After a year on the shelves, and some very positive press, Stephen Parrish's treasure hunt adventure novel has skyrocketed to the top of the charts.  

I want to see it go all the way to #1.  (ETA: It made it! Now onward to Top 10 Overall!)

Here's the deal: the book's Kindle price has been lowered to 99 cents.  You can choose to buy it for your Kindle OR you can download (free & easy) the Kindle app for your PC or Mac and get the book that way (also for $.99).  

I bought the book way-back-when for $13 and it was worth every penny then.  So this new price is an amazing bargain. 

However.  Steve, being the generous guy he is, will  BUY a review copy of the Kindle version for you, if you leave your email address in the comments.  You MUST, however, actually download the book in order for it to count towards sales.

I've talked about The Tavernier Stones on this blog before.  Steve has been actively promoting the book for over a year, in addition to supporting his friends' books and quietly critiquing and reviewing their work.  

You know what they say about karma?  

Nobody deserves this more.  Feel free to post a link on your blogs or FB, etc.  

Let's help it go to #1!