100 Poems Project. on your mark, get set, WRITE.

A good friend of mine Leo bond has proposed that the two of us colaborate and attempt to publish a book of poetry. The goal is to write 100 poems (50 each) and then compile the top 25 each and ship it off into the world of cold hard rejection. Wish us luck; it's going to be a long and rocky road, drenched with spilled ink. A Movement Towards God Murmurs of excited voices melt through the door of Father Daily’s class. “...revolutionary idea that people who Are not priests and nuns can be holy...” No one seems to notice. “...natural inclination toward God...” Breakfast while driving in the rain. “...perfection of the universe...” The voices move down the hall To melt into other classes. “...some will translate this as spirit.” Boy in orange sips his coffee. “...you are what makes the world what it is.” Boy with buzz-cut checks Facebook again. “...your ability to care...” Brown girl in corner watches grass out the window. “...and what is the perfection of love?” Girl with piercings raises her hand...

A summer's Worth of Poetry

Taxes

I push sales
i sink ships
i’m sailing out
mail to the government,
claiming my dependency
declaring i deserve
Pay Back -Bitch.

They lynched the poets
and tied their next to tanks
and dragged war into the
townhouses of middle aged America
Middle class suburban hysteria
A hot flash, A heat wave -tsunami
of yellow ribbons...
Strangling the oak trees
till the sap dripped out thick secrets.
I’ve been washing the stick off my hands ever since.

I’ve been stacking the tombs upon the sofa, postponing soap operas and cartoons till i dig up the remote control from out of the cushions... and that is the greatest metaphor of all.

I push sales
I sink ships
I am docking at the edge of channel 36
excepting, -expecting- that they will take what they take
and they take.
and they take.

Potato days

Three days have turned to one afternoon for comfort.
They’re sitting in a row watching television
Trying to escape the ruckus of their own lives.
All of them have been stood up by sleep
and eat pints of ice cream in self conscious remorse
Sinking into the couch cushions and
buckling down for reruns and hollow laughter.
And despite my best efforts I have sat down beside them.
None of them turned to me till a commercial,
and when they did all that was said from their throats
was just another harsh remark about another uninvited sunrise.

Lisa

Yesterday I painted a thin layer of darkness under her eyes
The oils dried impossibly fast upon her skin on that sunless day
She whispered to me through her canvas face how each expression
Felt more and more real
The greys of her cheeks sunk into the once familiar peachy color
And just before she went to speak, She licked her lips
Swallowed down the maroon of my freshest coat
Paint me young she said, paint me happy
And I gessoed over her eyes in thick unforgiving strokes.

Home Insurance

“I felt she was walking in a circle about me,
turning me end for end,
shaking me quietly, and emptying my pockets
without once moving herself.”

The things my mother never told me flood into the room all at once. The unspoken words of “what now” and “are you ready?” -“are you scared?” soaked the drapes and seeped into the couch. At this point re-upholstering it wouldn’t even be an option. After this, I wasn’t even sure if home insurance could cover this level of damage.

I hoped the baby would have her caramel skin and love the Phillies.
She hoped the baby would make it out alive... Fears I never knew existed were suddenly my whole life.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets, finding not even lint. I had nothing to offer but my mother’s questions, pooling at my ankles, ruining the pergo floors.

End of the Night

The whole building hums this time of year.
It is some off beat song from the early 80’s,
And the neighbors are rocking out in their crocks and jumpers
Waiting for the wrinkles to settle more deeply into their skin.
It is like all other mornings here on spring st.
The cats are looking out the windows
The hallway has been vacuumed twice over.
The newspaper is read front to back before 6 o clock rolls in
With all it’s glory and heat and chirping birds.

But i’m not there right now, Spring st. Has kicked me out again for another night by the creek. I watched the sun slink it’s way up and over south side Bethlehem, searching for me, checking to see if i’ve slept yet.
The evening lent itself to my imagination and poor eye-sight’s wrath. Pretending that the water was filled with snakes or that the ripples are actually the bobbing shoulder-blades of misplaced people.

When I get home I’m 72 again and listening to an old album work it’s way across it’s own aged surface, jumping over the scratches, sliding along the oil of a fingerprint.
And I’m in the kitchen rinsing out coffee mugs humming right along with the building to track 3 on side 2.

Colored Poems

Blue Bills
today,
which has already become
a different day.
I broke
down and turned on the heat.
The grays in my skin
have rose to the surface
on this occasion
of negative weather.
Two degrees below,
“i’m already frozen.”
solid
Bone marrow has
hardened into tomorrow.

Black Coffee
I am reading into this with a new level of depth. I took his words and put them into my morning's
coffee. In mourning I drank in slow painfully
hot gulps. It chard it's way down my throat,
leaving me tasteless and stunned that
even when reading them from the
bottom of the mug, beyond the
few and floating grounds,
they still say the same
thing. They still read
in the same stained
and bitter
tones,
“your mother didn't wake up.”

Orange Life
I’m managing my life time
like this:
delicately holding the lighter to the coal;
checking to make sure the sparks don’t light the spice rack on fire;
blowing it softly till it hits that perfect glowing orange.

Teal Trend
Now, I was one with the
flowingJerseycrowds.
Swelling back with the coming
of a new wave.
Trend.
My knees caught the breeze through
Their ripped
exposures.
My waist sucked itself back to a
Lesser dune.
A former self.
I road the teal seagulls bareback
by my hip bones.
My calf muscles quivered in
a clenched state of denim.
Cali wrap.
straight jacket.
Jeans -of the twenty eleven,
Now.
I was one with the Hollister Girls.

Amen

This is that salted feeling
And I’m walking in the fucking desert
In my jesus shoes,
Picking the rocks out of my soles.

I’m deeply engaged in some bizarre endeavor
Searching for a breeze some ease of air
The only think I know to pray for is to learn to breath
I fill my lungs with sand
and dissolved into the mirage of an American dream
I’m divorced and fat and wearing my shirt un-tucked to church
I’m sweating balls through the sermon and
Licking the salt off my lips after every amen.

Table Cloths; a Dry 2009

Between the first cup of coffee and the next
I had realized the day had already soured, -Black -Burnt -Bitter
I had realized the table cloth was too white.
I had realized he was gone.
Standing back to me at the counter, waiting for toast
The timer clicked impossibly fast.

I tried, desperately, to pull myself up from the fabric in some form of fighting contrast
white on white never looked so forgotten.

I tried, I tried, throwing rainbows over your shoulder to get your attention. To get you to turn. To get you

-But the day was too dry,
and last night was still swaying dangerously between the glowing hot bars
like the bread that just popped up the rushing toaster... Done. Pushed Out. Finished.

I sipped my coffee in silence and dissolved back into the tablecloth.

A Drawer By any other Name

This junk drawer is my vessel
I open it up on week nights and climb on in. Aboard
Amongst gum and paper clips and a roll of three year old scotch tape
We are emigrating to the new world order
Illegal immigrants
Docking on the silverware drawers boarder
The knives are not having it
The big spoons cradle the little ones for comfort
The forks fight for a better view of the intruders
The butter knives are away on vacation again

The paperclips gain entry first
Squeezing into the back corners trying to remain discreet
The scotch tape and I have a harder time
We beg our entry explaining how our drawer has overflown it’s territory and the
Threat of being discarded has grown eminent
It is here, it is now
The tape gets its green card to the butter knives spot and I am shut out.

Some Bizarre form of Ventilation.

I am turning the fan on for myself right here. Last October was probably the worst time of my life. It started with the car accident on my birthday and ended with my god son in the hospital. So much happened in between. My friend luke's appendix ruptured and he almost didn't make it. I god a stomach virus and lost a tone of weight. Everything was simply dreadful. This month, from an outward look, appears to be recreating a similar horrifying effect. It started with the fear of lime disease from a tick bite on my birthday and ended with the death of Joe. In between those two things there was a failed french test, the abandonment of my best friend, and possibly worst of all, having to put pumpkin down. This year I have something different. For some reason even with all of this going on, when people ask me how i'm doing I cannot help but say good, content, somedays i say fantastic. I don't know what you call this. He calls it love, but i think it goes beyond that. This is salvation. I think i have a family now.

here is something new i'm trying,
It is called "Some of the Chapter" It needs some editing.

The three of them are driving through a valley somewhere nearby. It is not important that they are nearby, because they could be far away and it wouldn’t change a thing.  They have the radio on loud -a station that’s tunes battle through thick static just to reach them. They are three boys, all friends. The first boy is different because of the way he feels, the second boy is different because of the way he sounds. The third boy feels different in almost every way, and each new way that he discovers is just as important as the ones he has known his whole life. He has been where both of the other boys are now. Together they are hurtling down, out of the valley. The first boy is driving, his fingers slapping against the wheel. The second boy is in the back belting the lyrics as they emerge from the chaotic fuzz. The third boy is in the passenger seat, knowing the tires are spinning towards something dangerous.   Each chorus seems to force them to go faster than the verse before.  This third boy knows something is happening, and yet doesn’t know how to stop it. The gas pedal must surely be flat to the floor. All at once he is angry and sad, and then neither of those two feelings. The three of them are no longer nearby; they are surging forward, closing in. You will not finish reading your chapter; there are merely three paragraphs till they reach you. If you read faster you can maybe get to the fourth, but it won’t make you any happier. 

It is a strange feeling -remembering what you’re own past smells like, a scent that at the time went unnoticed. Being away for so long makes the room seem awkwardly still. The furniture sizes you up, checks you out, up and down, and you’re adulthood is exposed. This is your childhood room. Why had your mother left it the way it was? It’s not like you were off at summer camp. She isn’t home yet, none of them are. This moment is yours, or at least it should be, but the room belongs to your childhood self, not this version. The bed springs creek as you sit down, screaming at you to get off, get out. All at once you are sad and angry, and then neither of those two feelings. You used to spend all your time in here. Your mother’s car is pulling into the driveway, and then you hear the sound of the garage door, and then you feel the same way you used to. This doesn’t make you any happier. 

You are sitting on the bus you ride to work every day. Today is different because there is a man across from you clutching against the rocking motions of the man weeping beside him. You should look away to give them privacy, you don’t. The one man is shaking, sobbing, wailing, flooding the bus, drowning out every sound, you will let the woman and children exit first if this gets dangerous.  You can already feel his anguish pooling at your ankles, ruining your dress shoes. The other man is also crying, though it is a different kind. His crying is deliberate. It is in a way that you would not have noticed if he had not been fiercely holding onto the other man. You assume that they are brothers, friends. They could be lovers. There are no tears; it is more like the howling of a dog outside. You’ve heard this yelping countless times before. The second man looks up at you. He sees that you understand this cry, and he is angry and sad, and you are neither of these things. This doesn’t make you any happier.  

The music is playing so loud that you feel as if your pulse has synced itself with it just to keep your blood from clotting. It is your body’s survival instincts kicking in. The same instincts beg you to hurl between your knees or find a doctor. But you cannot find a doctor and you cannot find your knees right now in this spinning room. People are forcing the walls to tilt inward. If you weren’t the quiet type you would scream at them to turn the other way. They are making you sick. She is making you sick. She has not stopped dancing since you arrived. She dances to your pulse. She is confident, but not beautiful. This makes you sad because you know that it makes her sad. Later, when she is alone, driving in the late night while her hair whips around in the wind and sticks to her wet cheeks, she will not be able to escape this fact. She will try to ignore it. The metallic of your nausea drips down the back of your throat and you wish you were not the one who had done this to her, but you are. You want to grab her and kiss her before she has to go off and be alone again. You are all at once angry and sad, and then neither of those two feelings. All you can do is watch her dance, and watch the hands that try to wrap their way around her while she moves. None can follow her perfect rhythm like you used to. Your head throbs, the music pulses, your blood echoes in your ears and you finally find your knees. This doesn’t make you any happier. 

You are holding the first person you ever made love to. This person is crying and begging for your forgiveness. They are astonished that after everything they have done, you have once again taken them up into your arms. They have a child with someone else now. They have left that child and that someone else to be with you here and now. They are telling you that you are the only person who has ever truly loved them. This makes you feel sad and angry, and just as quickly you feel nothing at all. You have just realized that you never loved them, it was a mistake. Now you cry in a different way. This crying is not for yourself. It doesn’t make you any happier.

The car wretches up over the side walk and the front end slices into the fire hydrant that is just in front of you. The fender is twisted into an impossible new shape. Cars are screeching to halt; their drivers and passengers are rolling down windows to yell. The driver’s side door is shoulder punched open, the boy who is different because of how he feels gets out of the car. He is bleeding. He is moving around the car towards the passenger side door. He is screaming.  The boy in the back, who is different because of how he sounds, is conscious. He doesn’t move. He looks scared. He looks bored. The boy in the passenger side does not get out. He is too far away now and cannot hear the screaming. The water is now pooling at your ankles. 

How i got into 6 colleges?

DeSales: I hate you.

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper,”
A quote from “The Hollow Men,” by T.S. Eliot, was scrawled slightly askew on the whiteboard. I, in my awkward uncultured sophomore state, found myself amongst the school’s “Lit Maggots,” members of a Literary Magazine club I had not known the existence of till that Tuesday afternoon.
I can ever so delicately describe that day’s first prompt write as one of the most horridly cliché things I’ve ever created. It was however, as I remember it, the starting “gun shot” of my writing frenzy and the constant shortage of ink in my pens. There never seemed to be enough resources to capture the words I desperately had to get on paper. Math notes, my agenda book, old receipts, and even body limbs quickly became volumes of poetry. Of course, none of it was running for the 2007 Nobel Prize.
Junior year was a turning point in my style. I got off the poetry turnpike and merged into short stories. I picked the brain of Ms. Brobst as often as possible in my Creative Writing class. Each story seemed to be under constant construction. Nothing was ever finished, only abandoned after multiple seemingly perfected drafts.
Then, in my final year at Parkland High School, I was able to take part in Creative Writing Independent Studies and AP English. I had the privilege of writing along side of my best friend, Sydney. Together we were editors of the Literary Magazine, and even collaborated to write a one act play that was performed at West Chester University last fall.
Overall I don’t exactly think of myself as a writer just yet. I feel as though I cannot give myself such a label, or any label for that matter. I am more or less just trying my best to effect and let myself be effected. I look for inspiration from the mundane and I seek to create beauty within normalcy, therefore the only label I own is “myself,” and I promise i’m only getting better at it.

TEMPLE: So far a day hasn't gone by that i don't regret loosing you.

Holloring into dew,
I speak to the molding air,
I could be Purple.
I remember innocence, the days when I would squander my time, wishing on every shooting star and folded potato chip that I could find. Crossing my fingers and earnestly blowing out birthday candles, I went through my years begging for seemingly inaccessible dreams to come true. I wanted to be Cat Woman, Tiger Lily, Mia Hamm, and good at spelling. What I wanted most, however, was to be Purple. Most of these goals changed as the irrational thoughts of my youthful mind developed new ambitions. Super powers were out of the picture and training Seeing Eye dogs popped in. Being Peter Pan’s best friend shifted into traveling the world. Professional soccer dissolved into communication with the deaf world. Yet, I still held on to the dreams of correct spelling and becoming Purple.
Here I am, writing in my favorite café, across from the wall mural I painted last spring, and realizing that through my experiences, and despite still spelling phonetically, I have actually met my criteria for the color purple. I have thrown myself into the media pool and dispersed myself as album cover art, advertisement posters, and, most prominently, illustration.
Not only have I sprawled out in the commercial art area but I have also gone and seen the world. With my travels I melted myself down; liquefied and then re-solidified into ethnically customized shapes; no one nation can claim me. Using cultures and knowledge gained, I created an intensification of my original components, the primary colors. Temple University gave me the red, the passion for life, art, and education. Pennsylvania gave me the blue, pure will power combined with prime locations, Parkland High School, Bethlehem, Philadelphia, and Allentown. So, just look for me. I am between all things warm and all things cool, red and blue, wherever you see purple.

MODIFICATION: Most children, at some point, take the time to call upon to the shooting stars, folded potato chips, wish bones, and birthday candles; with fingers crossed they wish for seemingly inaccessible dreams to come true. Ignorant adults these dependent miniature people deceitful atrocities, neglecting to read the small print dragged along with “You can be anything you want when you grow up.” There happens to be a strict formula and guideline for what that anything entails.
So here we see them, leaping off their beds and claiming super hero powers, waiting by the window for their Hogwarts’ acceptance letter and in my case broadcasting to the world, “I could be purple.” Though, such ideas have recently become tangible and perhaps it appears as though our societies ambitions aren’t so far-fetched after all.
Ten years post graduation and I find myself swimming victory laps in the realization that I have actually met the criteria for the color purple (though not literally a lupine flower, a plum, Aussie Shampoo Bottles, or bruises.) I have dived into the media pool and dispersed myself as album art, advertisement posters, and most prominently illustration. I am even the wall mural in the café down the block, earning me unlimited free refills, much needed and routinely taken advantage of.
Within the early years of becoming purple I strived to separate myself from the other colors, realizing that they had all chosen specific nationalities to represent. I traveled, and in doing so, I melted myself down; liquefied and then re-solidified into culturally adapted shapes. Only to discover that through such travels and sculptured forms I consistently held the original components. The primaries: Red (the education and passions developed at Temple University) and blue (the metaphysical psychological “first ray” of pure will-power.) I am Purple.


RUTGERS: always have a back up plan... soccer (USED THE SAME ESSAY FOR PRATT+ARCADIA)

Although not currently involved, for seven years my family took in fostercare children through KidsPeace, opening our home up to adolescents going through times of crisis. I consider myself to have had over 20 siblings come in and out of my own childhood. Some of the kids have remained in contact with my family while others have vanished into new lives completely.
My past has greatly impacted my views of hard situations I come across. Knowing what true-life trails are and witnessing mere children make it through them changed me. This opportunity to become imbedded as the normality and sanctuary of so many kids as enforced the realization that for the rest of my life I want to be that face in the crowd that they know will always be there for them. My family allowed each of those kids to feel what it was like to be cared for and to know what a true home feels like. I think, being only in my elementary and middle school years, I did as much as I could to help raise their standards of life and to show them what it was like to be able to just play and be a kid. To this day I still feel compelled to teach and inspire other people, especially children.
I look forward to utilizing my talents and passions to inspire or help the people around me. I have been taking Sign Language classes for four years now and deeply involved with my school’s ASL Club for three of those years. This year I am now the clubs Vice President and initiated into the ASL National Honors Society. I have interpreted at the Baum School of art and I have been teaching at the elementary school for two years now through Parklands EWLE program. This month I start teaching a deaf and illiterate refugee girl Bor Meh. I intend to help promote awareness of the Deaf world as well as help bridge the gab between those hearing and non hearing.
Communication is everything to me. It was through the Literary Magazine Club that I discovered my passion for writing. Starting in my sophomore year, my math notes, agenda book and even body limbs quickly became volumes of prose and poetry. During my junior year of high school my creative writing class attended DeSales University’s poetry festival. I hadn’t expected to be recognized out of the 200+ students, but my poem Graphite Garden received an honorable mention presented by Dr. Stephen Myers. Now, in my senior year, I find myself deeply immersed in literature, taking an independent studies creative writing course, AP English, as well as immersing myself in the Literary Magazine Club as its Editor. I have realized that words have the potential to change lives. Great writers such as Miranda July, Margaret Atwood, and George Orwell have pushed minds into uncharted territory, and warping them to greater a greater understanding of themselves. Overall, I’m just trying to inspire people to think differently. I want to create meaning in the mundane and beauty within everything that has ever been overlooked.
I believe that everyday is a chance to meet new people or try new things. I intend to effect as many people in a positive way as I can. Weather it through years of companionship or just a brief moment of help, through language, literature, or just action, I want to be the familiar and remembered face in the crowd, the difference and the change.

NH Institute of art: just too small and cold.
Art is a risk, an impacting grotesque or beautiful captivating idea given to the world in physical form. It was not until this past summer that I realized I didn’t have to throw out my outlandish ideas or ignore my ongoing need to create. Understanding where art is and what it does changed my perceptions and possibilities for the future. Everyone sees art from the second they wake up, till the moment their eyelids droop at night. Everything has at one point been passed through the hands of an artist. My coffee mug, my toothbrush, my sneakers, the house I walk out of, and the school I walk into, have all been artistically influenced at some point in their production. For as much art and design that is in the world, I’ve been told that only 5% of the population can actually create it.
I want to be part of that 5%. The New Hampshire Institute is merely the first step. I have been able to develop creativity, originality, and imagination on my own from the day I was born. However, if foundations and techniques aren’t learned, practiced, and well established any innovation or style is lost. I’m looking for a school that will pass on all they know and allow me to exploit as many resources, mediums, knowledge, or experience offered out to me. Till just this year I found myself struggling with the possibility of an education in art. I had pre-established the notion that art was not a job option. Getting a BFA would simply mean subjecting myself to a career in constant rejection and debt. “Starving artist” was not in the cards, or paints if you will.
Often I find that I’ll suddenly become enveloped by an idea, only to realize half way through that I can’t properly portray the things I want. I hope to utilize the things I learn at the New Hampshire Institute in order to create album artwork, promotional posters for movies or musical artists as well as delve into all aspects and genres in illustration.
Currently I derive my inspiration from almost any aspect of the world around me. I believe that the things that prod my train of thought along can be anything from a orange pealing, oriental carpets, Regina Spektor lyrics, or even the cracks between floor tiles. If I could do one thing only for the rest of my life it would be to turn every single mundane or ugly thing and warp other peoples’ perspectives of it till it becomes an object of reflective insight and beauty. “Anything plain can be lovely.”

Dixie Cups

Whispers into paper cups dance across a string, stretched between your brick box and my brick box, a black hole gap in our 7th street Galaxy. Cradling some “you can be anything,” fallacy, -we were just kids hiding in space where sleeping adults lost satellite reception. Trained by culture in the art of deception, an unleashed reality barked howled at the moon from our ally. Released by me, free to roam through the concept of innocence and in_a_sense freed from the disease of “Grow Up!” the plague of living by a five-paragraph format. Outlined lives defined by the three body points, Intro: reformed, thesis: refined, drafted till the inevitable foreclosure of your creative mind.
Long before the conclusion was stated and the planets aligned you were nothing more than a reflection of your childhood shine. Plastering “for sale” signs up on our dreams we sold our souls to The Man. You’ll never be more than a machine, well oiled by stress, fueled by caffeine, pivoting day after day between this brick box and a concrete cube down the block where you sit in your shift just watching the clock count off the hours and a nine and two cent rate. “Penny for a thought,” but only when the proper forms are signed on that spacious black flat line reminding me of what your brain waves will look like in time.
Do you remember when we whispered sublime dreams into Dixie cups and sent our secrets through stolen string? The fear of your sister as she screamed, yanking back what was once her favorite sweater, now laced between your window ledge and my window ledge. She stole our ability to dream of universe with no edge. Stuffing our fingers into our ears we sing, “LA, LA, LA! I can’t here you,” and somehow later we find ourselves locked in by rubrics and deadlines wanting but unable end an Essay with ‘BUT’ ‘AND’ ‘OR… some other conjunction, so that every sentence is just another introduction. Allow the possibility for infinite more construction, disregard grammatical punctuation and release your inner child’s fanatical imagination. Be the start of a new generation in creation. Leaving all your words out there for free interpretation. Break out of this interstellar planetary rotation. - Make of me what you will And…

some basic math...

I most definitely believe in signs, that is to say I believe that in order to reduce the chance of dying from some sort of stress-induced heart attack, that ladybug that just crawled up my leg means one of two things. Either I can now expect myself to have the heebie-jeebies for at least five minutes because a bug just touched me, or that horrible string of misfortune I have been fighting through all week is most certainly about to dissipate. I began to use this method for determining my mental status around the time that I bought my first vehicle. I bought the GPS first, named her Dorothy, and the car second. It was a Mitsubishi Lancer and more specifically the OZ Rally Edition with 92,222 miles on it. Two is my lucky number and well... Dorothy was looking for the wizard of OZ, so I signed the check and have been following the Yellow Brick Road ever since. My most recent dilemma has me faced with the task of finding an apartment to live in. After two months of countless tours of stained carpets and yellowed ceilings led by stringy-haired landlords, and no sign, I am debating whether the added privacy, cheaper price, and and the aptitude for me to maintain my job, are really worth it.
I thought I had found a place, a quaint victorian home in Fountain Hill. Sure, there may be an abandoned gas station down the block and a couple gangs in the next town over, but the second I stepped onto the wrap-around porch and looked out over the white iron railing, all i thought about was the neighbor’s lawn gnomes and the edge of a yellow brick road. It is just ten minutes from my college campus, two minutes from my favorite coffee shop, 15 minutes to my job, and 18 minutes to my figure drawing class. I would not have to share a bathroom with three other annoying teenage girls, and I would not have to listen to them complain about their boyfriends, their classes, or about how the obnoxious TV that they leave on all night is only playing Friends reruns.  Some nights I do not get to leave work until two in the morning. When I arrive home there is never the worry that I will wake someone up with my intense and skillful gourmet toast making.  College dorms, with their thick cold walls and funny smelling desks drawers, is not an ideal habitat, especially when it costs thirteen thousand dollars.
It just takes basic math skills to determine that living off campus and paying a monthly rent can save thousands of dollars. Even with the price of gas, groceries, and electricity, the fee is easily justifiable when paralleled to the expense of its counter part, the idealized “college campus life.” Though all the signs keep saying “there’s no place like home,” one part is just not adding up. In order to move in I must sign this man Kasper’s lease form.  It is extremely difficult to do when he wont return my phone calls or emails, it has been two weeks since he originally told me the place was mine for the taking and I have learned that it is, in fact, impossible to sign a form when that form does not exist. Do I stray from the yellow path and start up the futile hunt on Craig’s List all over again, or do I wait it out?
At this juncture I am so exhausted by the task of finding a home that I am overwhelmed with jealously of all the students living in that thick cold-walled room, with its funny smelling desk drawers, and its propensity to contain four teenage girls who somehow manage to not peel each other's flesh off. Is thirteen thousand dollars the price to pay to not have to deal with the stress of apartment hunting, or is the stress of debt the price to pay for not having the will power to hold onto a space of my own? Someone send me a sign.

That's What they Say

“Hey, sink or swim, that’s what they say.”
I didn’t look up but offered a single curt nod in acknowledgement. He brushed specks of imaginary sand off of his perfectly pressed dress pants and stood up to leave. He expected me to get up and follow him, I could tell. Three seagulls fought over a French fry across the dock; I didn’t dare look into his face. A defeated sigh eased out of his lungs and I watched his polished shoes squeak themselves back across the pier.
Finally I looked up as the seagulls dispersed, for him to pass. Already he seemed miles away into the distance and I had the fleeting panicked thought that I was already forgetting his face. What was his name again? I desperately wanted to jump up and shove quarters into the coin-operated binoculars just to hold sight of him for as long as possible. I however, never carry, never use, and never keep spare change. A strong breeze whistled through the pillars below and with their tuneless song my boss faded in the distance. All captains go down with their ship, that’s what they say.
Across the pier a thick young man was suddenly yanking on the rusted chain of a storefront’s metal gate. Just moments ago pier had been completely devoid of life beyond the rowdy squawks of seagulls and the rhythmic sloshes from waves below my feet. It rattled up, exposing the usual assortment of tacky tourist items; neon framed shades, tie-dye tees, sun tan lotion, and an obnoxiously wide variety of key chains.
Now, slowly and without my approval, people flocked to the shops. More seagulls swarmed near benches and metal trashcans anxious over the excitement of a runaway fry, popcorn caught in the salted wind or cotton candy out of a small child’s gripless fingers.
Women congregated around the shops, gossiping over this and that, reminding me why I never plan to marry. “Did you hear about… and… see… can’t believe… what a bit…choosing a new house… can’t afford… he never…”
A bald man was looking down at his map, turning it around and around, his broken compass hands crinkling the roads as he clutched it in the wind. The glare off of his head shone onto the lean arm of a pink-faced boy just as he laced his fingers through the other boy’s next to him. A large red hat bobbed in laughter beyond the brave scene. It was so nice of my brother to drop me off at the boardwalk on a day like today. I wonder why he didn’t stay.
A dog walked his owner who seemed preoccupied by the legs passing in the opposite direction. The weather has not been this nice since last week –or was that yesterday? An annoying voice to my right squirmed its way out of the girl whose Cell phone remained wedged between her ear and shoulder as she swatted bees away from her fruity perfume. She said nothing and yet would not shut up. I wondered if she was talking to the guy buying funnel cake to my left. Powdered sugar dusted across his mustache, and he was well tanned everywhere, apart from a skinny band of white wrapped around just below a pudgy knuckle. Out of sight, out of mind –that’s what they say.
I leaned even further forward on the bench; small clouds pass between the sun, one after another, like when my grandson plays with the dining room’s light dimmer. An eighties windbreaker pumped past, followed by a business suit, four bathing suits, and a kite attached to a boy. He wears his golden hair parted to the side as I had in my youth. Such a thought makes me smirk. As attentive as I am, I cannot make out the presence of my own fingers drumming away on my knees. I think back to my grandson again, his name was –gosh this heat, growing more intense by the hour… I wondered why on earth I chose to walk to the pier today, knowing how sunny this month has been. There hasn’t been a bad day yet. I knocked on the wooden bench after such a thought.
Just as I was warding off the rain I saw her, or better yet just her long braid at first. She was looking up just as I had been doing moments before, watching the kite fight to stay afloat in the wind. It dipped and rippled –a tail of ribbons slapped the wind, painting the sky with their metallic colors. And then I saw her face, as it turned to meet mine. The glance over her shoulder was quick, deliberate and shockingly beautiful. Why was she beautiful? Because she looked at me, she looked in me. She met my eyes as though we had seen each other a thousand times before. I’ve never seen such eyes, the color of green tea, ice cubes and all. She then smiled and I felt incredibly exposed and unprepared; a gift for an occasion I could not remember. Similar to last week when I forgot it was my wedding anniversary. I smiled back my toothless grin at this stranger, and with that she walked over.
I adjusted my suspenders and cleared my throat, but she spoke first. “Hello there, you seem a little lost.”
“Just enjoying the early morning sunrise.”
“You mean sunset?” She sat down beside me on the bench. “I noticed you earlier today, you seemed upset,” she noted.
I nodded. “Oh it’s just my son. He was trying to get me to move in with him. However, I plan to be traveling soon. Time and tide wait for no man, that’s what they say.”
“Where will you be heading?”
“I imagine I’ll simply start out in America. I would of course renew my license and drive to the Grand Canyon. Now that I think of it, Las Vegas has always seemed fun, all those slot machines. In for a penny, out for a pound, that’s what they say,” I held up the pile of coins I had in my pocket.
“Will you go alone?”
“Well surely no man is an island, would have liked to bring my wife, It’s all she ever talked about; after the war –how’d we go out and see the world. Oh, all those plans we made, my dear I’ll never forget them, like paintings all along the walls of my head. “Rose left last spring.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s always what they say,” I smiled at the young girl to show her I was fine.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, apologizing for her apology.
“I’ll probably bring my Nurse, but Oh, the woman is such a bother,” I exhaled sharply. “Always telling me not to go places alone, not to ‘wander off.’ She treats me like a child, claiming simply that I’ll forget the way home. Such nonsense. I’ve lived in that house for 42 years before my son up and sold it on me –yet another issue with the nurse. Apparently the house was dangerous; she told my son horrible lies about me having a hard time getting around. Once she even said I had fallen down the stairs –preposterous. I think I would remember such a thing.
“I suppose so, how did you say you got here again?” She looked nervous and played with the hem of her skirt, then, pulled her cardigan tighter to cut the evening breeze. Lights along the pier turned on. My grandson should be meeting me here soon. The Ferris wheel must have distracted that young boy again –or was he not back from the war? They grow up so fast. Memory is the treasure of the mind, that’s what they say. I squinted across the pier looking for his distinctive golden hair, parted always to the side. Did he come with me today? Did he stay home with his grandmother?
A woman next to me suddenly spoke, “Aren’t you cold?” She had long dark hair, like a rope going down her back. Small strands of it swam across her cheeks and neck in the breeze. She seemed familiar. Though, I’ve never seen such eyes, the lightest shade of green tea.
“Did you say something to me miss?”
“Come on dad, let’s go home now.” She took my hand, and led me across the pier; a small boy trailed behind us, and behind him, the long tail of his kite.




Review by Kiri Heidecker of Broadway show "Freak Magnet":
"This is fantastic! The ending is marvelous! The thing I like best about it is the wonderful pacing and the gorgeous, lyrical writing. This piece has managed to capture the voice of the character, and I appreciate the stylistic choices re: diction, imagery and pacing. Lovely work!"