AUDITION
Name: Marianne
Age: Twenty-one
Location: Minneapplesauce (or, as some say, Minneapolis), Minnesota
(Apologies: one of the photographs is fairly large.)
I noticed that others have submitted mostly poetry in their auditions; allow me to break from trend and serve as temporary bellwether with a bit of (non-fiction) prose (followed by a poem):
The urge to reinvent does assert itself still; at my temples the impulse does throb, my eyes twitch, the calendar smolders, ready to catch flame and to leap up in joyous dance, oranges and yellows two-stepping, flirting with the blues and purples that are more content to glow quietly, reflecting on their brief existences. Fire dies and left here are ashes and numbers jumbled, dates unforgotten, secrets buried, but still alive, still very much alive, screaming to get out, out! Let me out! I slam shut the casket, wipe from my hands a layer of grime and regret, and now standing upright stiff and starched white, pale with exhaustion, pink with the excitement that bubbles up in spite of the death that whirls and mills about, I glare, hurl silent accusations at a sun daring to beam upon me, I a lone living creature in a wasteland once a lush jungle, a place of life all green, shiny, noisy. I burned it all to the ground and the silence rushes at me, the loneliness scratches at my cheeks, and I double over, sweat and guilt heavy, quick to strip away that sense of accomplishment. I have destroyed what I helped to create, I am a vengeful God and I haven't yet met Jesus, and I don't give a fuck if I ever do.
Love tastes to me like bitterness, festers on my tongue, remnants of a cigarette smoked alone and in the dark hours before; love smells to me like the torched remains of a tree once tall and proud, holding up the ceiling with his capable fingers, those branches innumerable and loyal to the death. Love looks to me like my reddened eyes in the mirror, each caked with the drying crust of too many tears, each graced with purple-half-moons that attest to a lack of sleep, and a lack of interest. Love sounds to me like the hissing of a fire when I take a bucket of water to it, douse it, stop the spread of that wild animal who observes no laws but one.
Love is none of these. Love is something I have caught mere glimpses, mere whiffs of; I have never come close enough to know and to embrace it, to kiss its cheek and to nurture it. I am left now with the memory of something that felt so powerful and so real that it might have indeed been love, love slowly surfacing, a blossom in the spring, a newly-hatched chick. I scorned it. I burned my hands. I took off running, riding the waves in a sea of lust that eventually threatened to swallow and to drown me.
And I pay dearly for my loss of control, for my allowing fear to command my actions, and lust to sway me in the wrong direction. Without compass or conscience I am hopelessly lost. The wasteland I shall wander. If I should find a bottle of aged wine, I shall toast to T.S. Eliot and to Dan Bern. I know your wastelands well; they have all the comforts of hell.
Snap in Time
After "Webs," L. Broderson
That last, that sturdiest branch,
A twig, now,
Weathered and battered,
Season after season -
A city dweller, carrying a briefcase,
Steadfast and striding forward,
Purpose in each step,
Each click of a cold heel
On concrete
And filed nails
Sliding along the cold steel
Of the railing,
Clinging to that purpose
Not letting that last twig snap.
That brittle twig, that feisty glimmer of youth yet inside,
Now reduced to an existence saturated with fear,
Fear of cheeks that sag, seem to grow pockets,
Give way to gravity’s pull,
And the hum of a faithful refrigerator
Once only the background,
Now prominent, now noisy -
Nevertheless a consolation -
The only sound, that consistent drone.
You find yourself losing fragments
Like newspaper clippings,
Yellowed, faded, blurred,
Your memory flaking away,
Eroded by the dust and dirt of the open road
The wind whooshing as Father Time makes his rounds,
Nudging you further, nearer to that precipice
From which you cowered,
The edge overlooking
The place where no questions answer themselves
Until you have been catapulted into that
Great
Gaping
Gully.
You must preserve that one glowing ember that persists
That keeps you pleasantly warmed, fends off the cold
Of near-death at your back, a shroud ready to envelop
And lead you to its hearse, motor purring.
No sturdy twig shall fall into decay on your watch,
Snapping, in time, leaving you a half-cracked nut
Uneasily sensing you’ve forgotten something -
The loss twitches and pulses beneath nervous skin.
(More samples can be viewed at this journal and here, in my memories. (The entries at the bottom of the list are the best entries to read for more recent examples of my writing.)
Age: Twenty-one
Location: Minneapplesauce (or, as some say, Minneapolis), Minnesota
(Apologies: one of the photographs is fairly large.)
I noticed that others have submitted mostly poetry in their auditions; allow me to break from trend and serve as temporary bellwether with a bit of (non-fiction) prose (followed by a poem):
The urge to reinvent does assert itself still; at my temples the impulse does throb, my eyes twitch, the calendar smolders, ready to catch flame and to leap up in joyous dance, oranges and yellows two-stepping, flirting with the blues and purples that are more content to glow quietly, reflecting on their brief existences. Fire dies and left here are ashes and numbers jumbled, dates unforgotten, secrets buried, but still alive, still very much alive, screaming to get out, out! Let me out! I slam shut the casket, wipe from my hands a layer of grime and regret, and now standing upright stiff and starched white, pale with exhaustion, pink with the excitement that bubbles up in spite of the death that whirls and mills about, I glare, hurl silent accusations at a sun daring to beam upon me, I a lone living creature in a wasteland once a lush jungle, a place of life all green, shiny, noisy. I burned it all to the ground and the silence rushes at me, the loneliness scratches at my cheeks, and I double over, sweat and guilt heavy, quick to strip away that sense of accomplishment. I have destroyed what I helped to create, I am a vengeful God and I haven't yet met Jesus, and I don't give a fuck if I ever do.
Love tastes to me like bitterness, festers on my tongue, remnants of a cigarette smoked alone and in the dark hours before; love smells to me like the torched remains of a tree once tall and proud, holding up the ceiling with his capable fingers, those branches innumerable and loyal to the death. Love looks to me like my reddened eyes in the mirror, each caked with the drying crust of too many tears, each graced with purple-half-moons that attest to a lack of sleep, and a lack of interest. Love sounds to me like the hissing of a fire when I take a bucket of water to it, douse it, stop the spread of that wild animal who observes no laws but one.
Love is none of these. Love is something I have caught mere glimpses, mere whiffs of; I have never come close enough to know and to embrace it, to kiss its cheek and to nurture it. I am left now with the memory of something that felt so powerful and so real that it might have indeed been love, love slowly surfacing, a blossom in the spring, a newly-hatched chick. I scorned it. I burned my hands. I took off running, riding the waves in a sea of lust that eventually threatened to swallow and to drown me.
And I pay dearly for my loss of control, for my allowing fear to command my actions, and lust to sway me in the wrong direction. Without compass or conscience I am hopelessly lost. The wasteland I shall wander. If I should find a bottle of aged wine, I shall toast to T.S. Eliot and to Dan Bern. I know your wastelands well; they have all the comforts of hell.
Snap in Time
After "Webs," L. Broderson
That last, that sturdiest branch,
A twig, now,
Weathered and battered,
Season after season -
A city dweller, carrying a briefcase,
Steadfast and striding forward,
Purpose in each step,
Each click of a cold heel
On concrete
And filed nails
Sliding along the cold steel
Of the railing,
Clinging to that purpose
Not letting that last twig snap.
That brittle twig, that feisty glimmer of youth yet inside,
Now reduced to an existence saturated with fear,
Fear of cheeks that sag, seem to grow pockets,
Give way to gravity’s pull,
And the hum of a faithful refrigerator
Once only the background,
Now prominent, now noisy -
Nevertheless a consolation -
The only sound, that consistent drone.
You find yourself losing fragments
Like newspaper clippings,
Yellowed, faded, blurred,
Your memory flaking away,
Eroded by the dust and dirt of the open road
The wind whooshing as Father Time makes his rounds,
Nudging you further, nearer to that precipice
From which you cowered,
The edge overlooking
The place where no questions answer themselves
Until you have been catapulted into that
Great
Gaping
Gully.
You must preserve that one glowing ember that persists
That keeps you pleasantly warmed, fends off the cold
Of near-death at your back, a shroud ready to envelop
And lead you to its hearse, motor purring.
No sturdy twig shall fall into decay on your watch,
Snapping, in time, leaving you a half-cracked nut
Uneasily sensing you’ve forgotten something -
The loss twitches and pulses beneath nervous skin.
(More samples can be viewed at this journal and here, in my memories. (The entries at the bottom of the list are the best entries to read for more recent examples of my writing.)