by Frances Gapper
His love for Penelope seemed to depend greatly on distance and self-
idealisation. I tried to distance myself when he talked about her. Not
feeling pain is a trick of the mind, just like making somebody fall in
love with you, a minor magic. He praised her skills, while blaming my
laziness; he asked why I just sat around all day. Familiarity made us
strangers to each other, I can see that now.
He expected me to entertain him; it was something women just did. I’d
been alone a long time and maybe lacked conversational skills. He knew
the names of all the plants, despite this island having its own unique
microclimate. He took cuttings. He’d invented a special jar, to
transport them safely back home to Ithaca.
When we made love, I forgot my name, my immortality and hence the need
for caution. He, my friend, once had a similar experience, while
crouched among the giant sheep. Having told the Cyclops he was Nobody,
he then forgot his own name for a while. The gods always make the best
jokes.
Frances Gapper writes very short stories and pretend poems. These have appeared in Wigleaf, Pretext, Brand, other places.
Showing posts with label Prose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prose. Show all posts
The Spirit Level
by Sarah Hilary
From overhead a skitter of chair legs says morning more reliably than the clock he fixed to the wall.
He’s redecorating the bathroom, orange. He has a hammer to break up the old tiles, working to a rhythm, swinging, bringing it down. She likes the pattern, pulse, a noise like living.
When he goes away she’s frantic. For the children there’s no change; they cannot understand her pacing, snapping fingers, counting the bricks from one end of the room to the other. The new line of orange tiles isn’t even; he left the spirit level behind. She gets into the habit of placing it everywhere, along the door jamb, on the floor, across the tops of shelves.
She stands on tiptoe and holds it on the ends of her fingers flush to the ceiling, watching its long eye empty and fill with green spirit, seesawing until it stops. Nothing in the cellar is straight.
The children sit in front of the television, moon-faced, tongues worrying at the hollows in their teeth.
She worries the food will not last until he returns. She sets the spirit level on the lid of the chest freezer then places it inside, where ice has formed a scummy shelf. The green eye runs away, blinking, winking from the glacier polythene of pork chops.
She thinks, What if the floor isn’t the floor but the ceiling? What if I’m living on my side? She pushes her ear to the wall and fills her head with the thwapping of her blood.
One of the children tries to take the spirit level off her and she yells, clutching the thing to her breast as if it’s the child, not the big-eyed rot-toothed thing grabbing at her.
The spirit is strange, a beautiful bubble shaped like a heart being squeezed, being swallowed and blown back out, bursting back and forth, boiling, smoothing flat and low in the level. She could watch it for hours.
The idea of smashing it comes and goes, exciting her. At night she sleeps with it against her sternum, feeling her lungs inflate, deflate, chasing the spirit to and fro. She dreams she cracks the glass but the spirit keeps its shape, filling the cup of her hand, a fluorescent globe.
In the morning she thinks of falling on the level, like a Samurai. Of driving – hiding it – up inside her body. She would walk stiffly but always find her balance.
He comes back, bringing the sharp stink of outside, bitumen and burning leaves. Autumn, already? He’s brown, there’s sand between his long toes, loose skin below his ribs, whole handfuls of it. He’s old, she remembers, was old before she was born. Pouches under his eyes, presents for the children, garlands of plastic flowers.
She hated him for a long time, feared him for longer, but he comes back smelling of outside, bringing the familiar beat of his feet on the cellar floor, and she reaches for him with something like love.
Sarah Hilary won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with Fall River, August 1892, and has two stories in the Fish anthology 2008. She was a highly commended runner-up in the Biscuit Short Story Contest 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, One Last Pick-Up. Her work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee. Sarah blogs at http://sarah-crawl-space.blogspot.com.
From overhead a skitter of chair legs says morning more reliably than the clock he fixed to the wall.
He’s redecorating the bathroom, orange. He has a hammer to break up the old tiles, working to a rhythm, swinging, bringing it down. She likes the pattern, pulse, a noise like living.
When he goes away she’s frantic. For the children there’s no change; they cannot understand her pacing, snapping fingers, counting the bricks from one end of the room to the other. The new line of orange tiles isn’t even; he left the spirit level behind. She gets into the habit of placing it everywhere, along the door jamb, on the floor, across the tops of shelves.
She stands on tiptoe and holds it on the ends of her fingers flush to the ceiling, watching its long eye empty and fill with green spirit, seesawing until it stops. Nothing in the cellar is straight.
The children sit in front of the television, moon-faced, tongues worrying at the hollows in their teeth.
She worries the food will not last until he returns. She sets the spirit level on the lid of the chest freezer then places it inside, where ice has formed a scummy shelf. The green eye runs away, blinking, winking from the glacier polythene of pork chops.
She thinks, What if the floor isn’t the floor but the ceiling? What if I’m living on my side? She pushes her ear to the wall and fills her head with the thwapping of her blood.
One of the children tries to take the spirit level off her and she yells, clutching the thing to her breast as if it’s the child, not the big-eyed rot-toothed thing grabbing at her.
The spirit is strange, a beautiful bubble shaped like a heart being squeezed, being swallowed and blown back out, bursting back and forth, boiling, smoothing flat and low in the level. She could watch it for hours.
The idea of smashing it comes and goes, exciting her. At night she sleeps with it against her sternum, feeling her lungs inflate, deflate, chasing the spirit to and fro. She dreams she cracks the glass but the spirit keeps its shape, filling the cup of her hand, a fluorescent globe.
In the morning she thinks of falling on the level, like a Samurai. Of driving – hiding it – up inside her body. She would walk stiffly but always find her balance.
He comes back, bringing the sharp stink of outside, bitumen and burning leaves. Autumn, already? He’s brown, there’s sand between his long toes, loose skin below his ribs, whole handfuls of it. He’s old, she remembers, was old before she was born. Pouches under his eyes, presents for the children, garlands of plastic flowers.
She hated him for a long time, feared him for longer, but he comes back smelling of outside, bringing the familiar beat of his feet on the cellar floor, and she reaches for him with something like love.
Sarah Hilary won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with Fall River, August 1892, and has two stories in the Fish anthology 2008. She was a highly commended runner-up in the Biscuit Short Story Contest 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, One Last Pick-Up. Her work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee. Sarah blogs at http://sarah-crawl-space.blogspot.com.
Distance
by A.J. Kirby
Let me measure the distance between us. Let me evaluate this vastness of space and time like an oceanographer. Let me map out the wax and wane of our separation. You know that I work with figures, solid truths, but what equation could describe how we have drifted apart? What compass could express my yearning to be close to you again?
I could count the revolutions of the trundle wheel, but there would be so many clicks it would be like trying to calculate the number of random finger-snaps by a whole football stadium of Fonzies. I could fire off a depth charge, deep under the surface of us; see a three-dimensional rendering of the yawning chasm which slices through our hearts, but I couldn’t bridge that gap. Now, even when I am with you, we are not together.
You hate these uncomfortable weekends. You must have come to think of them as prison-time in recompense for a crime which you did not commit. Like the Count of Monte Cristo you imagine a daring escape, but can’t quite bear to punish you gaoler so. Remember how I used to read you that text? Remember how excitement curled around you like a cat’s tail?
How can I impress you now? How can I travel that well-worn path into your good books once more; do I need to beg? Maybe I should. Maybe you’d be satisfied with my grovelling. It would give you that sense that everything was right and natural in the world again.
And so, when I come to you, I’m Sting’s Englishman in New York. I’m alone and alien and, dare I say it, a little apathetic in my arthritic attempts at a connection. Perhaps I too have given up. You’re a hard-faced urban sophisticate that I can’t hope to compete with these days. You’re always name-dropping, dwarfing my petty little efforts to interest you. You’re a collator of foot-notes; always ready to reference some of the real celestial bodies that populate your life nowadays. I hardly even recognise you.
It goes on and on. You’ll say: ‘Oh, I saw blah, blah in the deli. We did lunch.’ And I’ll scratch at my beard and rack my brains as to where I might have heard that name before; which in-flight magazine might have featured that particular star? As I’m doing this, you’ll perform that exaggerated rolling of your eyes that was once the bane of my life. It pains me to see you looking so tired, so worldly. You were never worldly; I always used to feel that if I wasn’t holding you so tightly, you’d float off into the air, never to be seen again.
‘You don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?’ you’ll sigh. Your disgruntled breath will be thick and foggy in the cold air.
Inside, I’ll be screaming. I don’t do lunch like you do. It’s too much of a leap for me. The only things I do are these eternal flights; this crazy-ass acquisition of air-miles and bags under my eyes. I do not do things like lunch. Lunch is something that just happens, like breathing.
So, we’ll sit in silence for a while, and you’ll think about art and I’ll think about science. Maybe I’ll lightly touch your knee or reach out for your gloved hand. We’re both aware that time is trudging relentlessly onwards and it is our duty to make of that time what we will. And we do try, don’t we? We try to keep up appearances in the best English tradition. I hand you your lean sandwich and tuck in to my own now-cold grease-burger. We huddle into the bench and try to find things that we can talk about. We remark that all things are ‘nice’, that the air here at Harlem Meer is somehow cleaner than in the rest of New York.
You look as though you have been crying out for some good old-fashioned fresh air. It puts the colour back in your cheeks; makes you look more natural somehow and not so grey and urban. It softens the features of your face and brings that dancing light back to your eyes.
‘I’m going away in the summer,’ you say, suddenly. Your voice is pitched somewhere in the mid-Atlantic now, and seems coldly unfamiliar. ‘California State let me in despite what happened in the fall.’
‘It’ll be on account of your connection to the famous Dr. Grey,’ I joke, trying to play down my agony at the thought of even more distance being placed between us.
You don’t laugh though; you’re all-business. ‘I’m not doing physics, Roger,’ you say. I hate it when you call me Roger; it seems so impersonal. I hate it almost as much as the fact that you’ve now adopted the American spelling of your name, replacing the ‘e’ with an ‘a’.
‘Don’t go,’ I whisper.
‘I have to go,’ you say. ‘I’m meeting someone.’
You’re bored of me. I know that. It’s a matter of scale, I think. I can’t get my head around America or the new you that inhabits it. It feels as large as the solar system to me. Why can’t you understand how distances make me feel?
‘I’ll walk with you,’ I say.
You just nod your head. But you don’t move. It is as though there is something more that you want to say. I know that feeling only too well, and so I sit in silence and let you compose yourself. In the silence, I become aware of a lonely bird singing its sad lament in a nearby cypress tree. Maybe he’s trying to tell me something about loss. Maybe he’s asking: ‘how far is too far?’
‘See that bird in the tree?’ I ask. I’ve given you ample opportunity to speak, but you just can’t find the words, can you? Well, let me do it for you. ‘Imagine that bird has a tiny flea riding in the feathers. If this bench is the sun, that flea is Mercury.’
‘What are you talking about, Roger?’ you ask, getting that look on your face.
I creak up from the bench and start to measure out thirty long steps away from you. Then, and with some triumph in my voice, I spin round and face you again, shouting: ‘Venus!’
Wearily, you climb to your feet too. You trudge after me as though wearing a ball and chain attached to your feet. But when you reach me, I notice the traces of a small smile playing on your lips. You remember this, don’t you? Our little games?
‘Earth?’ you ask.
I begin this crazy long stride as though I’m in Monty Python. Unbelievably, you start to follow; bouncing along as though you’re walking on the moon. You look so foolish! It’s so long since I’ve seen you not care about what anyone would think of you…
We move out of the park; Earth is on 108th Street and Mars is only a few more giggly moon-steps from there. We walk so close that our steps fall into sync; we’re both caught up in this current of desire for things not to be as they are. We are both mapping out our reconnection. But maybe I’m mistaken; maybe I’m reading too much into things. For there is a bit of distance between Mars and Jupiter, and your pace soon begins to slacken. By the time we reach Madison Avenue - the rough approximation of where you used to get bored when we used to play Planets – you’ve stopped the giggles and got that bored look in your eyes. Back then, you used to ask me whether we were nearly there yet; ridiculously, I’d always make you ask the question in a different way, not like all the other kids ask.
By 110th Street, even I’ve given up walking like an astronaut. It’s become all about the destination rather than the journey once more. But then you do something that is completely unexpected; you surprise me. Did you actually comprehend how happy it would make me when you stoop to pick up that dime from the floor or was it pure accident? ‘This is Jupiter,’ you say, holding up the dirty coin for me to see. I beam with pleasure; how perceptive of you! If Mercury is only a flea on a bird’s back, then you are right to scale up for Jupiter. Maybe we’ll make a Scientist out of you yet… although I’m not sure if that’s what you have in mind.
Along East 110th, much further down, we also find Saturn. I finger a button on your expensive duffel coat to show the planet’s scale, but somehow you don’t seem that enamoured with the game any more. We don’t talk much as we plot a course into the nether reaches of our solar system; turning right at Frederick Douglass Circle and then right again into West 110th Street. The discovery of Uranus should have cheered you up. ‘Your anus!’ you used to screech, loving the excuse to use a dirty word with impunity. Now though, you are dangerously quiet.
Neptune is on Morningside Drive and Pluto way out on Amsterdam Avenue.
‘Pluto’s not even classed as a planet any more,’ I say, trying to inject a little more interest into things again. But you don’t even respond. Please understand, love, how small I really am. I am the tiny little Pluto, orbiting your sun. You can’t even see me. I’m ice-cold from lack of your warmth. Hell, they’ve even changed my classification now, like you changing the spelling of our name.
‘And now, Lisa, do you know where we might find the closest star to the sun?’ I ask, before answering my own question as is my wont. ‘Well, if we were keeping to the same scale as we have just walked the solar system, it would be as far away as Los Angeles. Now do you see why I don’t want you to go?’
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m still a child, dad,’ you say. ‘Los Angeles isn’t Proxima Centauri. That was just a silly little game we played years and years ago before you decided that your work was more important than your family.’
‘But don’t you see? It’s all about space,’ I shout, but already you are orbiting some new sun. A boy I’d hardly noticed before steps out of one of the proliferation of theatres and links your arm. He’s tall and broad shouldered and not at all grey. He holds you as I once did, so there’s no distance at all between you. You’ve only got eyes for each other, you and him, your Los Angeles boy.
And you never even thought to introduce me. As you float away through space and time I feel something break within me. My heartstrings have been stretched and stretched but now they have snapped. That is the distance between us, I think.
A.J Kirby is the author of three novels; The Magpie Trap (to be published in time for Christmas 2008), When Elephants walk through the Gorbals (which was third place winner in the 2008 Luke Bitmead Writers' Bursary competition from Legend Press) and Leap Year (which he is currently re-writing). His portfolio also includes the novella Perfect World and over thirty short-stories. Publication credits for his short fiction include Nemonymous 8: Cone Zero, Graveside Tales, Sein und Werden, Dog Horn Publishing, The Second Hand, Skrev Press, Underground magazine, Necrology magazine, Monkey Kettle, Golden Visions, and Champagne Shivers.
He was runner-up in the 2008 Huddersfield Literature Festival creative writing competition, and this year was also short-listed for the Cinnamon Press short fiction prize and the Mere Literary Festival prize. He is the current editor of Itchy Leeds Guide and am determined to make writing his life or his life’s work writing.
Let me measure the distance between us. Let me evaluate this vastness of space and time like an oceanographer. Let me map out the wax and wane of our separation. You know that I work with figures, solid truths, but what equation could describe how we have drifted apart? What compass could express my yearning to be close to you again?
I could count the revolutions of the trundle wheel, but there would be so many clicks it would be like trying to calculate the number of random finger-snaps by a whole football stadium of Fonzies. I could fire off a depth charge, deep under the surface of us; see a three-dimensional rendering of the yawning chasm which slices through our hearts, but I couldn’t bridge that gap. Now, even when I am with you, we are not together.
You hate these uncomfortable weekends. You must have come to think of them as prison-time in recompense for a crime which you did not commit. Like the Count of Monte Cristo you imagine a daring escape, but can’t quite bear to punish you gaoler so. Remember how I used to read you that text? Remember how excitement curled around you like a cat’s tail?
How can I impress you now? How can I travel that well-worn path into your good books once more; do I need to beg? Maybe I should. Maybe you’d be satisfied with my grovelling. It would give you that sense that everything was right and natural in the world again.
And so, when I come to you, I’m Sting’s Englishman in New York. I’m alone and alien and, dare I say it, a little apathetic in my arthritic attempts at a connection. Perhaps I too have given up. You’re a hard-faced urban sophisticate that I can’t hope to compete with these days. You’re always name-dropping, dwarfing my petty little efforts to interest you. You’re a collator of foot-notes; always ready to reference some of the real celestial bodies that populate your life nowadays. I hardly even recognise you.
It goes on and on. You’ll say: ‘Oh, I saw blah, blah in the deli. We did lunch.’ And I’ll scratch at my beard and rack my brains as to where I might have heard that name before; which in-flight magazine might have featured that particular star? As I’m doing this, you’ll perform that exaggerated rolling of your eyes that was once the bane of my life. It pains me to see you looking so tired, so worldly. You were never worldly; I always used to feel that if I wasn’t holding you so tightly, you’d float off into the air, never to be seen again.
‘You don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?’ you’ll sigh. Your disgruntled breath will be thick and foggy in the cold air.
Inside, I’ll be screaming. I don’t do lunch like you do. It’s too much of a leap for me. The only things I do are these eternal flights; this crazy-ass acquisition of air-miles and bags under my eyes. I do not do things like lunch. Lunch is something that just happens, like breathing.
So, we’ll sit in silence for a while, and you’ll think about art and I’ll think about science. Maybe I’ll lightly touch your knee or reach out for your gloved hand. We’re both aware that time is trudging relentlessly onwards and it is our duty to make of that time what we will. And we do try, don’t we? We try to keep up appearances in the best English tradition. I hand you your lean sandwich and tuck in to my own now-cold grease-burger. We huddle into the bench and try to find things that we can talk about. We remark that all things are ‘nice’, that the air here at Harlem Meer is somehow cleaner than in the rest of New York.
You look as though you have been crying out for some good old-fashioned fresh air. It puts the colour back in your cheeks; makes you look more natural somehow and not so grey and urban. It softens the features of your face and brings that dancing light back to your eyes.
‘I’m going away in the summer,’ you say, suddenly. Your voice is pitched somewhere in the mid-Atlantic now, and seems coldly unfamiliar. ‘California State let me in despite what happened in the fall.’
‘It’ll be on account of your connection to the famous Dr. Grey,’ I joke, trying to play down my agony at the thought of even more distance being placed between us.
You don’t laugh though; you’re all-business. ‘I’m not doing physics, Roger,’ you say. I hate it when you call me Roger; it seems so impersonal. I hate it almost as much as the fact that you’ve now adopted the American spelling of your name, replacing the ‘e’ with an ‘a’.
‘Don’t go,’ I whisper.
‘I have to go,’ you say. ‘I’m meeting someone.’
You’re bored of me. I know that. It’s a matter of scale, I think. I can’t get my head around America or the new you that inhabits it. It feels as large as the solar system to me. Why can’t you understand how distances make me feel?
‘I’ll walk with you,’ I say.
You just nod your head. But you don’t move. It is as though there is something more that you want to say. I know that feeling only too well, and so I sit in silence and let you compose yourself. In the silence, I become aware of a lonely bird singing its sad lament in a nearby cypress tree. Maybe he’s trying to tell me something about loss. Maybe he’s asking: ‘how far is too far?’
‘See that bird in the tree?’ I ask. I’ve given you ample opportunity to speak, but you just can’t find the words, can you? Well, let me do it for you. ‘Imagine that bird has a tiny flea riding in the feathers. If this bench is the sun, that flea is Mercury.’
‘What are you talking about, Roger?’ you ask, getting that look on your face.
I creak up from the bench and start to measure out thirty long steps away from you. Then, and with some triumph in my voice, I spin round and face you again, shouting: ‘Venus!’
Wearily, you climb to your feet too. You trudge after me as though wearing a ball and chain attached to your feet. But when you reach me, I notice the traces of a small smile playing on your lips. You remember this, don’t you? Our little games?
‘Earth?’ you ask.
I begin this crazy long stride as though I’m in Monty Python. Unbelievably, you start to follow; bouncing along as though you’re walking on the moon. You look so foolish! It’s so long since I’ve seen you not care about what anyone would think of you…
We move out of the park; Earth is on 108th Street and Mars is only a few more giggly moon-steps from there. We walk so close that our steps fall into sync; we’re both caught up in this current of desire for things not to be as they are. We are both mapping out our reconnection. But maybe I’m mistaken; maybe I’m reading too much into things. For there is a bit of distance between Mars and Jupiter, and your pace soon begins to slacken. By the time we reach Madison Avenue - the rough approximation of where you used to get bored when we used to play Planets – you’ve stopped the giggles and got that bored look in your eyes. Back then, you used to ask me whether we were nearly there yet; ridiculously, I’d always make you ask the question in a different way, not like all the other kids ask.
By 110th Street, even I’ve given up walking like an astronaut. It’s become all about the destination rather than the journey once more. But then you do something that is completely unexpected; you surprise me. Did you actually comprehend how happy it would make me when you stoop to pick up that dime from the floor or was it pure accident? ‘This is Jupiter,’ you say, holding up the dirty coin for me to see. I beam with pleasure; how perceptive of you! If Mercury is only a flea on a bird’s back, then you are right to scale up for Jupiter. Maybe we’ll make a Scientist out of you yet… although I’m not sure if that’s what you have in mind.
Along East 110th, much further down, we also find Saturn. I finger a button on your expensive duffel coat to show the planet’s scale, but somehow you don’t seem that enamoured with the game any more. We don’t talk much as we plot a course into the nether reaches of our solar system; turning right at Frederick Douglass Circle and then right again into West 110th Street. The discovery of Uranus should have cheered you up. ‘Your anus!’ you used to screech, loving the excuse to use a dirty word with impunity. Now though, you are dangerously quiet.
Neptune is on Morningside Drive and Pluto way out on Amsterdam Avenue.
‘Pluto’s not even classed as a planet any more,’ I say, trying to inject a little more interest into things again. But you don’t even respond. Please understand, love, how small I really am. I am the tiny little Pluto, orbiting your sun. You can’t even see me. I’m ice-cold from lack of your warmth. Hell, they’ve even changed my classification now, like you changing the spelling of our name.
‘And now, Lisa, do you know where we might find the closest star to the sun?’ I ask, before answering my own question as is my wont. ‘Well, if we were keeping to the same scale as we have just walked the solar system, it would be as far away as Los Angeles. Now do you see why I don’t want you to go?’
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m still a child, dad,’ you say. ‘Los Angeles isn’t Proxima Centauri. That was just a silly little game we played years and years ago before you decided that your work was more important than your family.’
‘But don’t you see? It’s all about space,’ I shout, but already you are orbiting some new sun. A boy I’d hardly noticed before steps out of one of the proliferation of theatres and links your arm. He’s tall and broad shouldered and not at all grey. He holds you as I once did, so there’s no distance at all between you. You’ve only got eyes for each other, you and him, your Los Angeles boy.
And you never even thought to introduce me. As you float away through space and time I feel something break within me. My heartstrings have been stretched and stretched but now they have snapped. That is the distance between us, I think.
A.J Kirby is the author of three novels; The Magpie Trap (to be published in time for Christmas 2008), When Elephants walk through the Gorbals (which was third place winner in the 2008 Luke Bitmead Writers' Bursary competition from Legend Press) and Leap Year (which he is currently re-writing). His portfolio also includes the novella Perfect World and over thirty short-stories. Publication credits for his short fiction include Nemonymous 8: Cone Zero, Graveside Tales, Sein und Werden, Dog Horn Publishing, The Second Hand, Skrev Press, Underground magazine, Necrology magazine, Monkey Kettle, Golden Visions, and Champagne Shivers.
He was runner-up in the 2008 Huddersfield Literature Festival creative writing competition, and this year was also short-listed for the Cinnamon Press short fiction prize and the Mere Literary Festival prize. He is the current editor of Itchy Leeds Guide and am determined to make writing his life or his life’s work writing.
Tote
by J. Boyer
One of the benefits of going to a writers conference is the tote you get, thought Plumly. Normally these were first-rate totes, as totes go, heavy cloth, good stitching, a logo that could knock your socks off, but that’s not what he had in mind by “benefit.” What he had in mind was that when the girl said, “Here is your badge, and here is your tote,” he got to respond, “Wow, that’s a pretty nice tote, is it free?” and she said, “Well, it’s included.” She was young and pretty, she might have been one of his students, and he didn’t want this small exchange to end before it had to, so he said, “The tote is included?,” not because he didn’t hear her or because he was unforgivably stupid, but mainly because when her hand brushed his own as she handed him his badge he remembered how much fun it was to say the word “Tote.” It came back to him in a flash, as if out of nowhere: Tote’s a pretty good word. It was better said aloud than said silently though. It wasn’t the kind of word you said to yourself. Silently, Tote could be just about any one-syllable word you only get to use occasionally, like “crash” or “nip” or “pontificate,” though “Pontificate” of course has more than one syllable. Said aloud though, Tote was over the top.
Try it. Say Tote.
Not like that. Say it the way Plumly just said it. Say it out loud.
See?
Plumly used to have an old 78 rpm record when he was growing up of Paul Robeson at Carnegie Hall singing Old Man River, a song that greatly benefits from the word “tote,” though there of course it has to do with barges and manual labor, and it’s not something you get free at a conference. Or get to say for no apparent reason.
Plumly remembered that his mother used to say “tote” and he probably used it once or twice himself when he was growing up, at the beach, say, as in “Mom, aren’t you forgetting your tote,” but Tote wasn’t a word he’d used for a long time and he was surprised by how welcome was the chance to use it in a sentence, as in, “That’s a pretty nice tote—for being free.” It was just one of those words, you know? It had some heft, and lately a lot of things in Plumly’s life seemed devalued of heft.
It was one of those words that made him think had he chosen a different career
or lived a different life he might have had the chance to say it a lot. Tote.
Right? Hear it?
When the girl behind the counter turned away so she could help others with their registration package, Plumly thought to himself it was a shame you couldn’t work a word as good as Tote into a casual conversation at least once or twice a day, every day of your life, you’d probably be the better person for it. But most of us aren’t living that life, we’re living lives where we find ourselves using words that aren’t much fun to say aloud, such as “perpendicular.” Now there, thought Plumly, is a word better kept to yourself.
Perpendicular. Paralegal. Paragraph. It must have something to do with all those Ps. They’re just no good on the tongue. Poets can probably think of a way to find some music in words like that. Not Plumly though. Maybe if he practiced. But then poets probably have a leg up in this particular case because Poet begins with a P, and they are always introducing themselves as “Hello, I’m Cynthia—or Aaron—or Nakeesha the poet.” Not that he’d ever actually heard a poet do that kind of self-introduction. How would it sound? They probably could if they wanted to though. Leave it to a poet to know better.
Face it, when’s the last time you heard some famous poet say something like, “Hello, I’m W.H. Auden, the famous poet”? Auden knew better. Too many Ps. That’s what made Auden as good a poet as he was. He knew that one P is one too many. But Plumly was willing to bet a full semester’s salary that Auden used the word Tote a lot. Plumly had never made a study of this, but he bet Auden included the word Tote in several of his poems. Auden probably saved these from publication, and only used them at his readings. If so, thought Plumly, smart move.
Plumly bet Auden said things to Yeats like, “Fucking great tote you’ve got there!”, just for the fun of saying it. That’s the kind of life he had. Tote came up a lot. Any time Auden felt like it.
No one should be a paralegal, if you asked Plumly, and it was risky to be too perpendicular, but that was another matter.
Tote. There it was again. He’d said it aloud. Completely out of nowhere.
It was taking on a life of its own as he walked toward the convention hall to see if his books were being displayed, and that was okay. He could think of ten
people right off hand who didn’t deserve the life they had, all of them his younger colleagues at the college where he taught, all of them sitting pretty, and if Tote wanted a life of its own, Sobeit, fine by him, have at it. Take the whole enchilada. You’re a lot more deserving than they are.
Tote. What could he tell you?
He was sorry now he hadn’t used a great word like Tote when he was still talking to his ex-wife, or with the Iranian man who owned the dry cleaners they used before she moved out and took an apartment of her own, or the paralegal they used when they went to revise their wills once they parted. And not something awkward either, like “Repeat after me: Tote.” Though that would have been okay for the Iranian man. He was just learning the language.
It’s probably not going to happen though, thought Plumly. His was the sort of life right now where he only got to say the word Tote once in a while, mainly when he went to conferences, which was probably just as well. He was old enough now so that he had more totes in his closet than he had life left to live, and he’d grown smart in a way that could only come with age, and filling up your closet accordingly. Plumly was smart in the way that made him jump at the chance to say the word Tote whenever he got it, because there was no way to be sure when it would be the last chance he got, Tote. See? He wasn’t taking any chances.
Tote. He said it again, and for no apparent reason. Pausing before the door to conference hall, he thought, It’s not like I think I’m getting a second chance at life after this one’s behind me, so I’m making the most of the time I have left.
“Here, hold my tote for a minute, will you, I’ve got to use the restroom,” he might say to a stranger, or, “My tote has a side-pocket, that’s better than the last one I got,” or maybe he’d be speaking to one of his poet friends later in the day and he’d say “Fucking great tote you’ve got there.” He’d see if they got the literary reference.
When he headed home in a couple of days, he’d probably be taking the great tote he got at this conference onto the plane with him. If so, he was planning to keep it on his lap. Maybe it would start a conversation. Who knew? In the meantime, he’d try to think of some alternative life where you don’t have to force things by putting a tote on your lap. Or maybe he’d just wait until a few things clear up in this one.
J. Boyer teaches in the Creative Writing Program of Arizona State University.
One of the benefits of going to a writers conference is the tote you get, thought Plumly. Normally these were first-rate totes, as totes go, heavy cloth, good stitching, a logo that could knock your socks off, but that’s not what he had in mind by “benefit.” What he had in mind was that when the girl said, “Here is your badge, and here is your tote,” he got to respond, “Wow, that’s a pretty nice tote, is it free?” and she said, “Well, it’s included.” She was young and pretty, she might have been one of his students, and he didn’t want this small exchange to end before it had to, so he said, “The tote is included?,” not because he didn’t hear her or because he was unforgivably stupid, but mainly because when her hand brushed his own as she handed him his badge he remembered how much fun it was to say the word “Tote.” It came back to him in a flash, as if out of nowhere: Tote’s a pretty good word. It was better said aloud than said silently though. It wasn’t the kind of word you said to yourself. Silently, Tote could be just about any one-syllable word you only get to use occasionally, like “crash” or “nip” or “pontificate,” though “Pontificate” of course has more than one syllable. Said aloud though, Tote was over the top.
Try it. Say Tote.
Not like that. Say it the way Plumly just said it. Say it out loud.
See?
Plumly used to have an old 78 rpm record when he was growing up of Paul Robeson at Carnegie Hall singing Old Man River, a song that greatly benefits from the word “tote,” though there of course it has to do with barges and manual labor, and it’s not something you get free at a conference. Or get to say for no apparent reason.
Plumly remembered that his mother used to say “tote” and he probably used it once or twice himself when he was growing up, at the beach, say, as in “Mom, aren’t you forgetting your tote,” but Tote wasn’t a word he’d used for a long time and he was surprised by how welcome was the chance to use it in a sentence, as in, “That’s a pretty nice tote—for being free.” It was just one of those words, you know? It had some heft, and lately a lot of things in Plumly’s life seemed devalued of heft.
It was one of those words that made him think had he chosen a different career
or lived a different life he might have had the chance to say it a lot. Tote.
Right? Hear it?
When the girl behind the counter turned away so she could help others with their registration package, Plumly thought to himself it was a shame you couldn’t work a word as good as Tote into a casual conversation at least once or twice a day, every day of your life, you’d probably be the better person for it. But most of us aren’t living that life, we’re living lives where we find ourselves using words that aren’t much fun to say aloud, such as “perpendicular.” Now there, thought Plumly, is a word better kept to yourself.
Perpendicular. Paralegal. Paragraph. It must have something to do with all those Ps. They’re just no good on the tongue. Poets can probably think of a way to find some music in words like that. Not Plumly though. Maybe if he practiced. But then poets probably have a leg up in this particular case because Poet begins with a P, and they are always introducing themselves as “Hello, I’m Cynthia—or Aaron—or Nakeesha the poet.” Not that he’d ever actually heard a poet do that kind of self-introduction. How would it sound? They probably could if they wanted to though. Leave it to a poet to know better.
Face it, when’s the last time you heard some famous poet say something like, “Hello, I’m W.H. Auden, the famous poet”? Auden knew better. Too many Ps. That’s what made Auden as good a poet as he was. He knew that one P is one too many. But Plumly was willing to bet a full semester’s salary that Auden used the word Tote a lot. Plumly had never made a study of this, but he bet Auden included the word Tote in several of his poems. Auden probably saved these from publication, and only used them at his readings. If so, thought Plumly, smart move.
Plumly bet Auden said things to Yeats like, “Fucking great tote you’ve got there!”, just for the fun of saying it. That’s the kind of life he had. Tote came up a lot. Any time Auden felt like it.
No one should be a paralegal, if you asked Plumly, and it was risky to be too perpendicular, but that was another matter.
Tote. There it was again. He’d said it aloud. Completely out of nowhere.
It was taking on a life of its own as he walked toward the convention hall to see if his books were being displayed, and that was okay. He could think of ten
people right off hand who didn’t deserve the life they had, all of them his younger colleagues at the college where he taught, all of them sitting pretty, and if Tote wanted a life of its own, Sobeit, fine by him, have at it. Take the whole enchilada. You’re a lot more deserving than they are.
Tote. What could he tell you?
He was sorry now he hadn’t used a great word like Tote when he was still talking to his ex-wife, or with the Iranian man who owned the dry cleaners they used before she moved out and took an apartment of her own, or the paralegal they used when they went to revise their wills once they parted. And not something awkward either, like “Repeat after me: Tote.” Though that would have been okay for the Iranian man. He was just learning the language.
It’s probably not going to happen though, thought Plumly. His was the sort of life right now where he only got to say the word Tote once in a while, mainly when he went to conferences, which was probably just as well. He was old enough now so that he had more totes in his closet than he had life left to live, and he’d grown smart in a way that could only come with age, and filling up your closet accordingly. Plumly was smart in the way that made him jump at the chance to say the word Tote whenever he got it, because there was no way to be sure when it would be the last chance he got, Tote. See? He wasn’t taking any chances.
Tote. He said it again, and for no apparent reason. Pausing before the door to conference hall, he thought, It’s not like I think I’m getting a second chance at life after this one’s behind me, so I’m making the most of the time I have left.
“Here, hold my tote for a minute, will you, I’ve got to use the restroom,” he might say to a stranger, or, “My tote has a side-pocket, that’s better than the last one I got,” or maybe he’d be speaking to one of his poet friends later in the day and he’d say “Fucking great tote you’ve got there.” He’d see if they got the literary reference.
When he headed home in a couple of days, he’d probably be taking the great tote he got at this conference onto the plane with him. If so, he was planning to keep it on his lap. Maybe it would start a conversation. Who knew? In the meantime, he’d try to think of some alternative life where you don’t have to force things by putting a tote on your lap. Or maybe he’d just wait until a few things clear up in this one.
J. Boyer teaches in the Creative Writing Program of Arizona State University.
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