Gabriel's Threadbare Thread

[Gabe1]

April 13



Cliche #4


The boards on the window
are gone. The nails gave up
in the night to pry bars
or hands. It doesn’t matter.
I hid behind the latrine buckets
and closed my eyes.
Outside is still outside.
I can use the closet door
to seal the sill tomorrow.
The crying next door
has stopped.
The bread has spoiled
and grown a dense rot
as thick as my own breath.
When the sun is up
I will go to Bardarash
and sell my shoes.
Inshallah,
and the Creek don’t rise.



-Gabriel

Footnote

[Gabe1]

April 13 redux


The past is poised above the telephone's bell,
the future has moved into a tortoise shell and set up house.
Power lines stretch into the animal kingdom,
infusing evolution with electric power.
Cell-phone jackrabbits are ruining the stock market,
beluga whales belch fax paper into the ocean,
and the soft buzz and beep of fire ants' pagers
hum through the ground.

The tree frog is left untouched,
she presses herself tight to a green breadth
of leaf and shows up as a dark flutter
in the screech owl's infrared.

Away from the whirs and blips of nature, I wait
in the quiet of passing cars.
The drone of the cross-town swells on First avenue.
I hail its approach with a wave,
the steel pin in my shoulder
rocking in self-assurance.



-Gabriel
*gets dose of silly* Ahh.

[HowardM2]

Show-off. Hrumph.

"Cliche #4" is chilling and grim; the second finely comic (you might want to run "tortesoise" through a spellcheck, though -- unless a genuine torte is involved in some way).

[Gabe1]

Damn. I wrote myself a note to check that before posting too. Thanks, fixed now.

[Gabe1]

Cliche #5


My father gives me a bar of chocolate
while the men with him open the freight box.
It is bigger than my father’s house
and green like the water of the reed bed.
I have chocolate because it is my birthday.

When my father leaves, I wait by the truck
and eat chocolate.
Other people arrive, the children stay.
My tongue and hands are sticky.
I am lucky.

The man called Oji puts us inside the box.
The buckets are for pissing and shitting.
His fat hand slaps the ceiling
and the ringing buzzes the backs of my knees.
Food comes through here.

It is hot and hard to breathe. I dream
I am a baby spider. Inside the egg,
my legs knock against my brothers
and sisters. I wake up. The floor
is so cold against my face it feels wet.

The crate is opened and Oji
drives me through a story, Mokele mbembe
has eaten all the people. No hero comes.
The car smells like tobacco and raspberries.
I have to pee. Close your eyes. I close them.

Thick hands on my shoulders lead me
into a house, down the stairs.
The air is cold. Someone takes my clothes.
Lights blossom through my eyelids
like painful red balloons.

Open your eyes. I open them.
Oji pushes down on my shoulders
until my legs buckle. The floor is dirty
and hurts my knees. Oji tells me
I am a gift. I am a new penny in a hand.

There are legs in front of me:
my eyes water - spider eggs
hanging from a root.
His hand closes on my hair, hard.
Open your mouth.



-Gabriel

[Alasdair]

Gabriel,

In Cliché 5 I like the way the ominous atmosphere is building in S1-2 to spill out clearly in S3. The simplicity of the voice adds pathos to this piece and the spider's eggs are a good image choice. The ending is horrible and effective.

I hope you decide to revise this, it deserves to be seen by more people.

Cheers,

Alasdair

[Rachel Lindley]

I think Cliché #5 has enormous potential. The voice is superb, simple without being simplistic and saccharine, and the ending is potent without being full of the Portentous Hush. There are a couple of slightly awkward points, and it may be trimmed a little in a few places for compression's sake, but not too much or the voice would be lost. Some relatively simple revision would fix those. Definitely a keeper.

But you already knew that.

Rachel

[Bela]

Jeepers, Gabriel. What they said. Very horrific and effective, beautifully done.

Béla

[sefton]

Gabriel,

I once asked a friend what he thought about Prizzi's Honor.

He said, "It was so good, I wish I'd never seen it."



sefton

[Blythe]

Gabriel,

I really did like your thread as Garbiel's thread. Oh well.

Cliche #5 is as excellent as everyone says, excellent in a very icky way.

Thanks for posting it. I've been enjoying your thread. Blythe

[Rachel Lindley]

Oh, and for any of you who are reading who participated in the character study contest - this is how it's done.

Rachel

[Searcher]

Gabreil:

"Cliche #5" is as an expressive and emotionally wrenching a narrative as I ever read.

Gene

[Gabe1]

Thanks very much for the encouragement. I'm pleased that by and large the last poem seems to be working, even though I sort of fudged on the cliche.

[Gabe1]

April 18th



Hail to the Bean





*************************************************************


______________________________slick witted,

my hair curves hubward where the scarring splits

like a fingernail wound an orange’s skin. Where to begin?

Follow the ear north through the lowlands of my hairline

into thicker growths, bristled like boars in rut,

to where the surgeons cut like bogmen digging peat: wet, neat; line

the boundary lip along my nose and tuck

the bloody digging back into the start again.

From a height,

I am a pitted plum, wet meat through to the dense root of my tongue.

A trapdoor exposed to offstage light – a stagehand snagged by scenery.

Where to begin? Let’s set lines, like playing Cowboys

and Indians. This garbage bin, that flowerpot, the railroad tracks

that raked my back after flashpan scuffles and that kiss –

I’ve wandered out of bounds again. Follow a method.

Don’t slip the lines of me and mine. Rail ties the earth to car, car to sky,

reflected in the rain puddle. I like this look, I seem





***********************************************************

[Gabe1]

April 18th redux



B to the E to the A to the N, yo.



I think I will live on an island.
The people are better there,
imported like tiny Japanese desserts.
I will get a motorcycle,
and terrorize the locals
by whooping at the top of each hill.
Meanwhile, I could scratch myself,
watch the International Pope Raffle.
Cleaning the apartment wouldn’t hurt.
Or I could go to California
and spend a week in a yurt.


*************************************************


Cookie crumbs on the floor.
Bean is in the net:
munch munch munch.




-Gabriel