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Friday, December 29, 2006

Lament Blind Girl

vbass ♥ 3:50 AM link to post 2 comments


Tuesday, December 26, 2006


About the Folio:

I was really hoping that we would have a literary folio to show our output at the end of the year. However, it seems that as it stands there hasn't been much written in class, so there isn't enough to fill a folio with yet. If we really want it, it can be done. The hard part of course is the writing, and that's what I expect you all to be doing, writing, submitting stuff, us discussing things in class. So if you want the folio, then I should be seeing more work posted here and submitted to me.

So here are the things due. I hate to have to do this, but if it's what it takes:

1. sitcom scripts
2. pieces on the places where you grew up
3. horror stories

And you can submit whatever you want us to see and talk about whenever, regardless of genre or form. Please guys, we've got a quarter left and I hardly know your writing. Anyways, enjoy the rest of the vacation. I hope you all come back rested up and ready to write. Also that by the end of the vacation I see your horror stories here.

For workshop:

Here's a horror piece. Please make comments. I don't have a title yet, so I'd accept suggestions.




She knows the situation. She has seen it too many times that it is impossible for her not to know what is happening and what will happen. She knows fear.

Just out of the shower, her hair still in a towel, she is wearing a pair of her skimpiest underwear. She is not so sure why she has put them on, in fact she wonders now as she walks down the stairs to the living room to investigate a creaking noise, why she had the impulse to put them on when on any other night she would have put on an oversized T-shirt and gone to bed.

She is home alone. Her parents are somewhere. It is raining hard out, the pellets of rain relentless; she could swear that it sounds like countless dead children’s fingers stabbing at the roof. Her house allows for this situation. It matters little if it’s a house in an American suburb or a Filipino subdivision. What matters are the glass doors, the back door that leads out to the lawn, the large rooms, high ceiling, the way that there is darkness cast everywhere as if the architect intended for these shadows, this eeriness; what matters is that there is a sense of isolation.

She sees that the back door is ajar. She could have sworn that she had locked it, had locked all the doors before taking a shower. First she thinks it must have just been the wind, that she hadn’t locked the door and it had merely swung open. But then she knows that she has seen this, that it is impossible for her not to recognize this motif.

She knows that if someone were watching her now, they would be screaming for her to run, to get out of there, go run, go now, what are you waiting for? But she does not. It feels as if she cannot. It feels as if she has a role that she must follow. And thus, she moves to the kitchen.

As she walks, she calls out, Hello, hello, is someone there? though she already knows that she will get no answer. There is a blur she glimpses just at the corner of her vision, some movement that barely registers. Fear grips her, and she thinks now of all the times that she has watched something like this transpire. She could not understand why the girl in her situation did not run.

She knows now, because like the girl, she cannot run. She cannot move, in fact. The fear has petrified her. It is no longer some imagined viewer she hears screaming run, it is her own mind screaming run, run out to the lawn, make your way to the neighbors, find help, just get out of that house. But loud as her mind screams, her body fails to obey. Her spine shivers and feels as if it has hardened, her feet become rooted to the floor.

Then another creak. It is the back door closing. She hears the door swing. And then, in the silence, in her stillness, she can’t help but hear the deadbolt being turned. It sounds sickening to her, a lurch then thud as the lock slides into place.

There is a flash of lightning and a crackle of thunder and she leaps in fear. She can move again.

She finds herself still heading to the kitchen. Again, she does not know why she is drawn to the kitchen, but she goes there. She cannot bear to turn on the lights. She knows that if she opens the refrigerator door, the light will splash out and reveal that thing that she fears most at the moment. She is not ready for that yet.

She calls out again, hello, this isn’t funny anymore. She laughs, like in the movies, calls out to her friends, maybe her boyfriend, says their names and says, come on, this isn’t funny anymore, you’ve had your laughs, I’m scared now, okay? so you can come out now. As she says this she reaches for the phone that is in the kitchen. By now she knows that the phone line will be cut, or if it’s up, that by the time she manages to dial and connect with help, the phone line will go dead.

She picks up and turns on the cordless phone, and sure enough, the line is dead. There are only two ways that this could end, she knows. The first is that she will open the refrigerator door, allowing the light from there to reveal a shadow. She will scream, run, a chase will ensue, and she will feel the blade rip through her flesh when she has made it to the lawn. The last thing she will feel before the last slash is the impact of cold mud and wet grass against her skin. The rain will continue to fall as she dies. The second is that she will continue calling out, she will keep asking for whoever is there to reveal himself. Afraid, her voice will start breaking, and it’s very likely that this will cause her assailant more pleasure than he expected. Then there will be one last flash of lightning, the last she will ever see. In that last flash she will see him, and before she can run, he will be upon her.

She wants neither. She knows, and still she cannot accept the situation.

She puts the telephone back on the counter. She sees another flash of lightning, hears another growling of thunder. The sliver of light reveals nothing. She knows that she only has until the next lightning strike to do whatever it is she plans to do. In the dark her hands crawl across the countertop searching for the cutlery holder.

She takes a knife and waits for the lightning to strike.
merchant of menace ♥ 4:15 PM link to post 1 comments


Tuesday, December 19, 2006


Hey guys here's a poem i read recently that i really like and thought you might have fun reading. I look forward to seeing your submissions here (impatient teacher taps fingers on the table and looks sternly at class). In the meantime, a fun poem from Mark Halliday:


Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women

I don't know why I didn't think of this before.
It's so simple: I just won't notice.
Twenty years ago the hormones would have exploded this idea
but now I'm-now I have the wisdom of-anyway
I'll just be like "What? Oh, I didn't notice. Where?
Over there? Nope, didn't happen to see her."
Life is going to be a lot easier. I'll read more books;
I won't keep looking up when someone comes into the cafe`
because who cares? I mean,

to hell with them! They want to be so impossible?
They want to be so many versions of sublimity on two legs?
Let them go watch each other, whatever, let them go tantalize
lurching iron pumpers who wear backwards baseball caps.
Or let them go get engagement rings from suits that wear cologne,
vice presidents with tickets to Jamaica. I'm very vague on all that
because I'm so devoted to other values. Like,
art's endless campaign to represent the mysteries of the spirit's
passage through the realm of time and change. That's
what I'm all about-but I get distracted I mean till now I did
get distracted by BWs but that's over. Finito.
Let them shimmer and slink in Jamaica,
let their bikinis be murderous-
that's only flesh! Flesh is nothing but-you know, it's only meat
.It's only physical substance. With whatever warmth and smoothness
ultimately it's-well, the seventeenth-century guys called it dust
and they had a point. Were they happy? Well,
that's not my problem. I've got very large bookstores I can go to
where a thousand books are shiny and smooth-

I abjure Jamaica. I extract Jamaica from my heart
with the tweezers of mature sobriety. Not that I had any actual access
okay okay anyway I have this life now: I embrace it.
My jeans are wearing through at the knees. I embrace this.
My hair, to the extent that it remains, points northeast in a peculiar way
since my last haircut by Dawnette who is much less sexy than her name
and who calls to mind a vat of mashed potato-but I don't say that
because she' s human, plus I'm not thinking about how any woman looks.
Yesterday I spilled ginger ale all over the seat of my gray Mazda-
all right. It's my life. I accept it. The thought that a BW is unlikely
to ride in an old gray Mazda coated with ginger ale does not come up.
I read books. Oh,
perhaps on occasion I recall that in 1967 Kathy Farley smiled at me
on Thayer Street but I know that has become fiction, she is fictive,
and I'm off now to a very large bookstore,
and once I've got a tall mocha and some slim volumes in the cafe`
even the Michelle Pfeiffer of 1983 couldn't make me look up.

by Mark Halliday from Michigan Quarterly Review
merchant of menace ♥ 6:46 PM link to post 1 comments


Monday, December 04, 2006

Aaand a grand total of two poems! Heh. The first is my place where I grew up poem, and the second is something I have been working on the past week. Tell me what you think!

The Place I’ll Return To Someday

The air is saturated with the stories of ages

Ghosts of people I used to know

And people I will never know

Infused in the dark brown paneling.

Dark brown, and hardwood

And capiz shell windows

How can this structure withstand

The poundings and rumblings of

Toddlers running after trains

And fathers moving furniture around.

Indeed, how, when the least

Of us is numbered at four?

My grandfather knew that

Wealth is in the breadth of laughter

In one’s house long after he has gone.

Wealth is the roundness of cheek

From food that went from garden to table

It is the great number of hands to help

Sons, daughters, nieces, nephews

And the abundance of mouths to appreciate.

My brothers and sisters are as fleet-footed

As I am; we shall make the world ours.

Yet not cobble stoned cities nor palm tree

Beaches, not sienna savannahs, not

Robots or gondolas or chocolate castles

Would keep us away from our home

Where our road dusted souls would

Take their place in the walls

And whisper to our sons and daughters

The tales of our nights and days.

Nocturne and Semi-Clarity

Maybe if I let you talk to me

I'd stop feeling like a

burst balloon, but the

emptiness stems from

the sound of your voice

and everything it brings back

because moving on is

a dance of denial

and drunken pre-dawns

and forgetting has become

bitter with mute deafness.

So maybe if I pick up

to hear you say "Are you fine?"

(could you get any more

ridiculous than are you fine)

I could probably tell you

"Yeah, sure," and mean it

then could moving be

a bit more sober

and a little less worthless

and forgiving would not

play us a piano solo

Aya ♥ 1:18 PM link to post 3 comments