Well, all the students have gone to their lakeside summer hideaways, leaving just the crusty and dusty ones to haunt the campus.
Which means I have time to spin you a story.
Everybody’s got someplace they call home
Dawn has always had more gangles than curves,
And never, not ever, gets what she deserves.
This far from home she is just an outcast
Staring in awe at this country so vast.
Dyed hair and short nails but not yet too old
To be approached in a bar by those who are bold.
Scary she may be and fierce in her tone
And worried that she may end up alone.
Alone! she did cry! Alone! An old bat!
(and, one may deduce,
With a horde of wild cats
and a stack of Doc Seuss!)
With no sense for the rhyme she continues her quest
Of telling this audience about her good self
But who is out there that doesn’t know her?
For she has only told a few, as it were.
Of this location hidden away on the internet
So she has no editors and need not really fret
That people will laugh and mock and disdain
These few random ditties she needs not explain
Fishnets and red
Every so often one of the grad students I cajole introduces me to something that stuffy academia would never let me see, bringing a new color into my life. (At some point I will dig out a few old essays on why comics are a mythology for modern America.) Some of the more, for the want of an oxymoron, popularly obscure. Like Sin City, which was made into a movie several years ago. The idea of black and white and a splash of color interested me, and although the books were unreconstructed nonsense, the mechanism appealed.
Then I thought of all those 50s film noirs I love, and the pulp novels they grew up from. Where was the feminist side of these? So I have always toyed with writing a series of short stories (in the noir/Sin City format, some thread running through them all) from the viewpoint of the femme fatale. There are ideas jotted down, and here is an opening from one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These offices are all the same. Cheap carpet. Unemptied ashtrays. Cliche upon male cliche. The male domain is an alien one. To keep with the sham, we degrade ourselves before we come. The deep, deep red lipstick, the deep, deep red dress. And deep, deep attitude. It is what is expected. The ceiling fan chokes on the smoke, I add to it by inhaling from the cigarette in my hand, exhaling with my head titled upwards. I stare at the blades, counting the rotation. The light flickers, the blades slow down. I can hear the air drag and slow the progress, increasing the pressure in the room. The setting sun intrudes through the drawn blinds, reflecting off every smoke particle in the air. I can see each beam reach its grubby fingers towards me.
“Dame’s are always trouble” breaks the spell, reminds me of where I am, what I am dealing with and what I have to pretend to be. “But can you help?” I drawl. The voice is all part of the act. Throaty, vunerable. Play to what he wants, so I can use his entry to a world that is beyond me. “Sure” is all I get back. He stands, shuffling back from his untidy desk, piled with what are probably unsolved cases. Husbands cheating on wives, husbands abandoning wives, husbands murdering wives. And here is another man to take their dollars, exchange these dollars for hope. Why should I be any different from the others? I may be a little taller, maybe a little smarter, but I know where the power lies here. “When can you start?” keeping the exchange functional.
The dress was a bad idea. There is a trickle of sweat inching down my back. The shoes were a bad idea. Second floor office with no lift and pointed heels. This was all a bad idea.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That one never quite worked, but there are least four other attempts at the same story. The others will see the light soon. The plan for this journal of ideas and odds and ends is a poem, some prose, then something personal.
And there is something great about being in fishnets and red. Red dress, red lipstick. Every girl should try it at least once.
Dawn
The Animal Abstract
I.
Fumes arise and float around
Mercy drives them all to ground
Caution sings for heart’s desire
And dance! Oh dance! Water & fire.
II.
What fear should we the lessers have
When darkness cloys the narrow path?
Temperance dances for mind’s delight
And sing! Oh sing! Sap & might.
III.
Time we rose to claim what they
Who take unjustly, squander the day
Animosity breathes along our body
Oh play! And play! Wise & parody
IV.
Man is a beast easy to see
His greed bends, His fervor flees
Broken we lie under the endless there
Away! Away! Gone & forgotten
Dawn ‘07
With apologies to Swedenborgians everywhere.
Before I moved to this part of the US, it was hard to be an Irish apologist for Victorian English poets. But I always liked Blake, with his intense religosity. I could always imagine his words set to old Gaelic tunes. An evening in the pub with fiddles and Liam Blake. What fun that would be! Given the amount of ex-pats here, I may try and instigate such an evening.
Frontespiece
Sometime you don’t want to publish your work.
Sometimes you want to hide from your collegues.
Sometimes you want to play with language.
This is a collection of half-thoughts, quarter-stories and tenth-stanzas.
