by Brittany Fonte
Karma: a crawling lizard, if that’s the way you carried yourself, or churned on your belly, contradicted yourself in the bedroom, the boardroom. Bored, Nirvana may still be near.
Maybe you cornered yourself in a life that lit the sky with warnings of more than explicit lyrics and riverboat videos, more than drugs or militant activism, more than a night that turned into days of handcuffing: judgment. Now, you are mute, but Jesus still Loves You.
Karma creeps in: tomorrow? “More than Likely.” Or after you have died, seen your lies, learned a little, yelled a lot, leaned into the pit of despair that remembers fingerless gloves and all-occasion dread inside a gay British native’s head and nodded: Yes. I did that. Nodded to the judge. (Don’t disbelieve simply because you cannot see….)
Logic tells us, If you love, if you risk something significant like love with Moss, or rolling stones, you will win some of the time. You will win, at least a lesson. And sometimes, when you lose, you find out what you had hoped against becomes what you needed most. This is karma, too.
So let your love for your loved ones exceed your need for them. And when someone asks, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” answer honestly. The Dalai Lama: If your intention is kind, no matter the outcome, you are safe. Secure. Buddha will catch you before you tumble into that pithy pit of pirated lines.
Showing posts with label Brittany Fonte. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brittany Fonte. Show all posts
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
MRA - Mommy’s Rifle Association
by Brittany Fonte
I yell, “Young man! Not at people or animals!” Then I sigh a sigh that can only be explained by too-long hours as chauffer, chef, dietician and disciplinarian. I breathe out what I have held in for so long; carbon dioxide lifts for shifting tides.
Maybe by biological osmosis, certainly by cruel (cryptic?) fate, I have become the mother I said I’d never be. I have born a boy who knows no boundaries but, perhaps, barbed prison wire (in papier mache). I am too late for “Scared Straight.” He is too young for boot camp.
Maybe he hears me, but he does not halt his ongoing slink to the hiding space beneath the sink, the place where his errant arsenal is hidden. There, he threatens dust bunnies or a toddling sibling with levied legos, and musses his also truant tresses by way of U traps in petite plumbing playgrounds.
I am the overprotective ova-producer; and I am trying to delay the inevitable male gun-play with minimal rules and minimum fuss. I fuse what I know to be true from bleeding with Buddha with what might work, if screamed, if coupled with physical force or big, big bribes, neither of which I can offer when configuring icing on classroom cupcakes, thirty minutes till school starts.
He is too young to know that dead is forever; he is too frank to finesse a new rule to such an old and genomic game. His little sister is, now, the Cyclops of Cyprus, or the virtual villain of the month in Sesame Street attire. And he is nine, or will be nine in four years, and in four years I will wish, only, for my own fortitude of character…and Restylane.
When I was nine, I learned tragedy sitting at a graffitied desk, dreaming at a brainy boy’s back, rereading history and then watching the future: the space shuttle Challenger. There was dream debris in the elementary school desks, sent by Hope’s detonation, by pieces of everyman’s mother sent through space: a sentry. We watched this live; we knew “never again” by the look on our own teacher’s face and the sound of a scientific misstep. Somewhere.
I want to warn my son about his abstract ammunition; I want to wean him from the glitter of violence beneath its sliver of grown up. But all I can do is pull him from his sub-sink clubhouse and warm his skin with kisses on this day, January 28th. I breathe in the smell of his lavender shampoo, his baby lotion, his still-fetal faith in the magic of the imaginary. I breathe IN. Oxygen.
I yell, “Young man! Not at people or animals!” Then I sigh a sigh that can only be explained by too-long hours as chauffer, chef, dietician and disciplinarian. I breathe out what I have held in for so long; carbon dioxide lifts for shifting tides.
Maybe by biological osmosis, certainly by cruel (cryptic?) fate, I have become the mother I said I’d never be. I have born a boy who knows no boundaries but, perhaps, barbed prison wire (in papier mache). I am too late for “Scared Straight.” He is too young for boot camp.
Maybe he hears me, but he does not halt his ongoing slink to the hiding space beneath the sink, the place where his errant arsenal is hidden. There, he threatens dust bunnies or a toddling sibling with levied legos, and musses his also truant tresses by way of U traps in petite plumbing playgrounds.
I am the overprotective ova-producer; and I am trying to delay the inevitable male gun-play with minimal rules and minimum fuss. I fuse what I know to be true from bleeding with Buddha with what might work, if screamed, if coupled with physical force or big, big bribes, neither of which I can offer when configuring icing on classroom cupcakes, thirty minutes till school starts.
He is too young to know that dead is forever; he is too frank to finesse a new rule to such an old and genomic game. His little sister is, now, the Cyclops of Cyprus, or the virtual villain of the month in Sesame Street attire. And he is nine, or will be nine in four years, and in four years I will wish, only, for my own fortitude of character…and Restylane.
When I was nine, I learned tragedy sitting at a graffitied desk, dreaming at a brainy boy’s back, rereading history and then watching the future: the space shuttle Challenger. There was dream debris in the elementary school desks, sent by Hope’s detonation, by pieces of everyman’s mother sent through space: a sentry. We watched this live; we knew “never again” by the look on our own teacher’s face and the sound of a scientific misstep. Somewhere.
I want to warn my son about his abstract ammunition; I want to wean him from the glitter of violence beneath its sliver of grown up. But all I can do is pull him from his sub-sink clubhouse and warm his skin with kisses on this day, January 28th. I breathe in the smell of his lavender shampoo, his baby lotion, his still-fetal faith in the magic of the imaginary. I breathe IN. Oxygen.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
1981: Hollywood, Florida
by Brittany Fonte
The grass-fed cows on the Mid Western farms posed no harm to children, alone. My mother, having picked parenting skills like soybeans, sweet corn, sugar beets (that nobody eats), often let me roam until the dinner bell rang: well-done beef and casseroles made with Campbell’s soup. Tang.
When we moved to another, sunnier state, those safe farm feelings hitchhiked, too. My feral fascination with wandering loomed, loomed large, like billboards of the missing. I was six, quite oblivious. Adam Walsh, so Wanted, was lost not so far away at all. Just one Sunday trip South, sans Amber Alerts, sans security cameras at a Hollywood mall.
My brother was young, then, barely-haired; he was bottle-fed and bouncy-chaired. His birth betrayed my freedom. A new apartment complex meant: a new playground, loud laughs, wild cries, and treasured trash. It meant days spent with sidewalk-scratched knees, chewing gum, villainous bees. The trees blew needed breath to me beyond my sliding glass doors.
Begging time to play outside translated to “Calgon, Take Me Away!” As bubbles are scarce with babies in berth, Mom said, Yes. Go. She practically pushed me, and I heard those cows of old moo. As children do, I donned a smile, found a friend, holed up in a moving box; I became another princess with long locks. Our peanut butter crackers were royal petit fours.
Four o’clock came hard, and went.
My mother, the Minnesotan milkmaid of orange juice promise, carried a gallon of guilt, along with my bother-brother, door-to-door. She rapped, so scared, and asked; she masked terror thinking of that boy, the 5 o’clock news, some O’Toole. There were five no’s, then six. He was just six.
Finally. Cut to a seventh living room: I was cutting Barbie doll hair to match Olympic gymnastics’ wear; I was inside a cardboard studio, deaf to Time. Cue my mother’s tears: torrential. I had no idea the headache I caused, the sickness I stirred in my mother’s sewn gut. The fear stayed until I left for college.
I’d just played—like a son once lost in a Sears Roebuck.
The grass-fed cows on the Mid Western farms posed no harm to children, alone. My mother, having picked parenting skills like soybeans, sweet corn, sugar beets (that nobody eats), often let me roam until the dinner bell rang: well-done beef and casseroles made with Campbell’s soup. Tang.
When we moved to another, sunnier state, those safe farm feelings hitchhiked, too. My feral fascination with wandering loomed, loomed large, like billboards of the missing. I was six, quite oblivious. Adam Walsh, so Wanted, was lost not so far away at all. Just one Sunday trip South, sans Amber Alerts, sans security cameras at a Hollywood mall.
My brother was young, then, barely-haired; he was bottle-fed and bouncy-chaired. His birth betrayed my freedom. A new apartment complex meant: a new playground, loud laughs, wild cries, and treasured trash. It meant days spent with sidewalk-scratched knees, chewing gum, villainous bees. The trees blew needed breath to me beyond my sliding glass doors.
Begging time to play outside translated to “Calgon, Take Me Away!” As bubbles are scarce with babies in berth, Mom said, Yes. Go. She practically pushed me, and I heard those cows of old moo. As children do, I donned a smile, found a friend, holed up in a moving box; I became another princess with long locks. Our peanut butter crackers were royal petit fours.
Four o’clock came hard, and went.
My mother, the Minnesotan milkmaid of orange juice promise, carried a gallon of guilt, along with my bother-brother, door-to-door. She rapped, so scared, and asked; she masked terror thinking of that boy, the 5 o’clock news, some O’Toole. There were five no’s, then six. He was just six.
Finally. Cut to a seventh living room: I was cutting Barbie doll hair to match Olympic gymnastics’ wear; I was inside a cardboard studio, deaf to Time. Cue my mother’s tears: torrential. I had no idea the headache I caused, the sickness I stirred in my mother’s sewn gut. The fear stayed until I left for college.
I’d just played—like a son once lost in a Sears Roebuck.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
The Runaway
by Brittany Fonte
Your mother: “You cannot tunnel to China without looking back!” No ma’m, not without a black passport, and not if you’ve chosen to better your breaks in this animal’s life. You need: silver-plated spoons, salted caramels, a second pair of underwear. You need clear directions.
Somehow, yard-by-yard, mineral wisdom seeps in through reaching, raking fingertips, through root vegetables and retaining walls; there is no room for monkey-back rides in barefoot and burdened Buddhist Beijing. You must unload your grimy grief before….
Halfway to the core, you curse the crust, the fuss of emotions. You look for your center, a snake. You see: He was a myth to the masses, most under twelve; now he is ten years gone: yet gilded. Your mother still celebrates his birthday; you still cry to “Danny Boy.” The Dharma doesn’t offer drugs or doctors of psychology.
You think of terra cotta warriors who surely ward off wakes. But he was that pancake batter maker, Bisquick creator, and, if that ‘if’ equals ‘then,’ he also turned into the Aztec sun god at daybreak, danced Irish jigs on table tops, broke his own bitty finger to hold a golf club best; this is middle school math, and karma.
On our mantle—in it, too—there is a picture: he often shadowboxed when the heavy weight of the world would heave-ho, not let go, Bartleby itself on his two shoulders: one angel, one angle. He studied the sport at night, by radio, driving a Pepsi truck away from his peppered past.Prescriptions don’t pause.
Tenzin knows he pencil-pushed his way through Times crossword puzzles. You scrape the outer core for access, also hampered by a sixth grade education. He perfected pizza crusts, sullied by greedy partners and a state seeped in lefse and Lutefisk, littered in shotgun shells and deer carcasses. Your inner core aches, agnostic.
This heat cannot be helped, or measured. He took me golfing, three months before he died, no handicap but carving cancer. This man glimmers brighter than Chinese New Year, offers satori; my childhood tunnel collapses. I call for calm, my mudra, in “Mom!”
Your mother: “You cannot tunnel to China without looking back!” No ma’m, not without a black passport, and not if you’ve chosen to better your breaks in this animal’s life. You need: silver-plated spoons, salted caramels, a second pair of underwear. You need clear directions.
Somehow, yard-by-yard, mineral wisdom seeps in through reaching, raking fingertips, through root vegetables and retaining walls; there is no room for monkey-back rides in barefoot and burdened Buddhist Beijing. You must unload your grimy grief before….
Halfway to the core, you curse the crust, the fuss of emotions. You look for your center, a snake. You see: He was a myth to the masses, most under twelve; now he is ten years gone: yet gilded. Your mother still celebrates his birthday; you still cry to “Danny Boy.” The Dharma doesn’t offer drugs or doctors of psychology.
You think of terra cotta warriors who surely ward off wakes. But he was that pancake batter maker, Bisquick creator, and, if that ‘if’ equals ‘then,’ he also turned into the Aztec sun god at daybreak, danced Irish jigs on table tops, broke his own bitty finger to hold a golf club best; this is middle school math, and karma.
On our mantle—in it, too—there is a picture: he often shadowboxed when the heavy weight of the world would heave-ho, not let go, Bartleby itself on his two shoulders: one angel, one angle. He studied the sport at night, by radio, driving a Pepsi truck away from his peppered past.Prescriptions don’t pause.
Tenzin knows he pencil-pushed his way through Times crossword puzzles. You scrape the outer core for access, also hampered by a sixth grade education. He perfected pizza crusts, sullied by greedy partners and a state seeped in lefse and Lutefisk, littered in shotgun shells and deer carcasses. Your inner core aches, agnostic.
This heat cannot be helped, or measured. He took me golfing, three months before he died, no handicap but carving cancer. This man glimmers brighter than Chinese New Year, offers satori; my childhood tunnel collapses. I call for calm, my mudra, in “Mom!”
Monday, October 31, 2011
Subject: Dear Professor….
For Matt Ryan. My inappropriate hero.
by Brittany Fonte
I could not complete my weekly writing assignment because
A) my mother died. Again. It’s been very hard trying to get her to cooperate this time and fill out the obituary; she says little and doesn’t like to brag. I simply don’t know what to say about her anymore. All the good lines have been taken.
B) my daughter is sick. She missed the toilet and threw up on the computer; it shorted. I have to go to the library to use their computer, now, and they don’t appreciate my daughter’s vomit.
C) I don’t read English; I only write it. And not well. But don’t worry; I’ll eventually go back to my country.
D) it really is against my religion. I can only study Biology. I’m a Scientologist.
E) I don’t want to upset you, but I know more than you do about the topic, and so I choose not to waste my time this way.
F) I believe the Rapture is coming. It’s more important that I build my underground fort. I’ll save you a few gallons of spring water. I’ll throw in some Spaghetti O’s if you can give me an “A.”
G) well, it’s top secret. I work for the government.
H) I’m a math major. I don’t need to be able to read; that’s what the admissions counselor said.
I) I’m only taking this class for the federal grant money.
J) I’ve read your poetry online. I don’t want to end up sucking like you. No offense.
K) I’ve decided I don’t need a degree to be successful, and so I’ve taken up nude modeling.
L) well…. It’s difficult to say. I was unconscious for the majority of this week. I’m trying to draw attention to the college student drinking epidemic. So far, I’ve got a huge following.
M) my Adderall pusher has been MIA. Or I can’t find him because I’m too busy focusing on “Halo: IV” right now. I really like Coke products better than Pepsi products.
N) the reading assignment was inappropriate. I don’t believe in multi-syllabic words or higher vocabulary. I prefer porn. With hot girls.
O) I’ve been working hard training for a marathon. It’s helpful in my neighborhood when the cops raid.
P) I forgot. I’m seriously the youngest case of Alzheimer’s ever. I think that’s what my neurologist said.
Q) I haven’t gotten my book yet. I’m not sure what happened; I ordered it at Border’s.
R) I’ve been meditating. Any moment now I’m going to hit Nirvana and have all the answers.
S) I didn’t think it was included in my tuition.
T) my dog told me not to.
U) my email isn’t working. Or my IPhone. Or the computer at work. Or the library’s cache of Macs. And I have no friends or family. I’m really a very solitary person.
V) I’ve been really preoccupied. My STD test came back positive. It totally explains the spot on my lip.
W) I took your directions literally. I DID complete the assignment; I just didn’t send it to you. Should I do that now?
X) I had no time between my three full-time jobs, my physically handicapped spouse, my ADHD child, and the new puppy that wants to pee on every surface in my house.
Y) I didn’t want to. But I’m a recovering alcoholic. This is my amends.
Z) I was so awe struck by your beauty that I couldn’t concentrate on the mundane. Can I buy you a drink? Borrow you a prophylactic? Flunitrazepam? Offer you the key to my house? (Don’t come by after 6 pm. My wife would kill me; she’s said as much.)
Pause.
“Dear Student….”
(Chin mudra).
I could not complete my weekly writing assignment because
A) my mother died. Again. It’s been very hard trying to get her to cooperate this time and fill out the obituary; she says little and doesn’t like to brag. I simply don’t know what to say about her anymore. All the good lines have been taken.
B) my daughter is sick. She missed the toilet and threw up on the computer; it shorted. I have to go to the library to use their computer, now, and they don’t appreciate my daughter’s vomit.
C) I don’t read English; I only write it. And not well. But don’t worry; I’ll eventually go back to my country.
D) it really is against my religion. I can only study Biology. I’m a Scientologist.
E) I don’t want to upset you, but I know more than you do about the topic, and so I choose not to waste my time this way.
F) I believe the Rapture is coming. It’s more important that I build my underground fort. I’ll save you a few gallons of spring water. I’ll throw in some Spaghetti O’s if you can give me an “A.”
G) well, it’s top secret. I work for the government.
H) I’m a math major. I don’t need to be able to read; that’s what the admissions counselor said.
I) I’m only taking this class for the federal grant money.
J) I’ve read your poetry online. I don’t want to end up sucking like you. No offense.
K) I’ve decided I don’t need a degree to be successful, and so I’ve taken up nude modeling.
L) well…. It’s difficult to say. I was unconscious for the majority of this week. I’m trying to draw attention to the college student drinking epidemic. So far, I’ve got a huge following.
M) my Adderall pusher has been MIA. Or I can’t find him because I’m too busy focusing on “Halo: IV” right now. I really like Coke products better than Pepsi products.
N) the reading assignment was inappropriate. I don’t believe in multi-syllabic words or higher vocabulary. I prefer porn. With hot girls.
O) I’ve been working hard training for a marathon. It’s helpful in my neighborhood when the cops raid.
P) I forgot. I’m seriously the youngest case of Alzheimer’s ever. I think that’s what my neurologist said.
Q) I haven’t gotten my book yet. I’m not sure what happened; I ordered it at Border’s.
R) I’ve been meditating. Any moment now I’m going to hit Nirvana and have all the answers.
S) I didn’t think it was included in my tuition.
T) my dog told me not to.
U) my email isn’t working. Or my IPhone. Or the computer at work. Or the library’s cache of Macs. And I have no friends or family. I’m really a very solitary person.
V) I’ve been really preoccupied. My STD test came back positive. It totally explains the spot on my lip.
W) I took your directions literally. I DID complete the assignment; I just didn’t send it to you. Should I do that now?
X) I had no time between my three full-time jobs, my physically handicapped spouse, my ADHD child, and the new puppy that wants to pee on every surface in my house.
Y) I didn’t want to. But I’m a recovering alcoholic. This is my amends.
Z) I was so awe struck by your beauty that I couldn’t concentrate on the mundane. Can I buy you a drink? Borrow you a prophylactic? Flunitrazepam? Offer you the key to my house? (Don’t come by after 6 pm. My wife would kill me; she’s said as much.)
Pause.
“Dear Student….”
(Chin mudra).
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Call and Response
by Brittany Fonte
Two rings, then three. (Serendipity?) She, in Chi town; he, in their town: Both hold space with desperate arms, alarmed, facing fifteen years of macramed marriage, and fears of losing an identity (or even that inkling) they created before regular sex, baby cravings, whittling siren-sex, that ex, careers of consequence….
She wonders, whiling while tones tone in a loaned hotel room of well-loved beds, if she can be content, alone, with one man; he can never be all she needs. Cannot. As fish need more than a tank, her heart sank when he forgot: her birthday, their anniversary, the condom, milk. He is not a chef, is not Hugh Hefner.
But there are never three in such a first world country of Christian zip ties and Velcro marriages, bold-faced lies of Mrs. and Ms. There can’t be three while the pope still breathes; the tethers of Steinem-feminism miss Lincoln’s nose, picks bare, there. There cannot be three, meant to be, while two boast such a lofty percent: 50. But she knows men.
She knows 50%, surely, is more than what should be, must be behind locked doors, just as those sex surveys roar: Mothers—even whores— do not make love three times per week, not even alone. There is simply no time to moan with Jif and jam, drop off and pick up, soaps and stones, rinse and dry. Dry. She knows, three rings in, he has company. She casts a line to fantasy, too.
Then, “Yeah?”
His common syllable darts, starts a chain of Cain images. It’s quiet. Jizz-us. His mind flits to cover: that old girlfriend from ninth grade and her blonde mother, the swimsuit model from France, the Fed Ex woman’s tight pants, the front man and teenaged stage hand of the metal band he saw—just once—live, also a few lines from a do-me movie he paid $8 for when he couldn’t get laid. His wife often had a headache.
She says, “I’m here. Safe.” And the miles weight her haste to get to once-hidden alone time, “Me Time,” the mini bar or a drink at the open bar without the children shooting par into porcelain vases, or cleaning Sharpie mazes—on the wall— and a hungry husband. A dozen pared phrases and that’s it. Shit- is there nothing he can do? (Sigh.) “Love you.”
“Yes.” And he IS happy, means his merry sign off, even while mind-mapping the miles that stand between him and Hollywood, him and his truant, television third.
Two rings, then three. (Serendipity?) She, in Chi town; he, in their town: Both hold space with desperate arms, alarmed, facing fifteen years of macramed marriage, and fears of losing an identity (or even that inkling) they created before regular sex, baby cravings, whittling siren-sex, that ex, careers of consequence….
She wonders, whiling while tones tone in a loaned hotel room of well-loved beds, if she can be content, alone, with one man; he can never be all she needs. Cannot. As fish need more than a tank, her heart sank when he forgot: her birthday, their anniversary, the condom, milk. He is not a chef, is not Hugh Hefner.
But there are never three in such a first world country of Christian zip ties and Velcro marriages, bold-faced lies of Mrs. and Ms. There can’t be three while the pope still breathes; the tethers of Steinem-feminism miss Lincoln’s nose, picks bare, there. There cannot be three, meant to be, while two boast such a lofty percent: 50. But she knows men.
She knows 50%, surely, is more than what should be, must be behind locked doors, just as those sex surveys roar: Mothers—even whores— do not make love three times per week, not even alone. There is simply no time to moan with Jif and jam, drop off and pick up, soaps and stones, rinse and dry. Dry. She knows, three rings in, he has company. She casts a line to fantasy, too.
Then, “Yeah?”
His common syllable darts, starts a chain of Cain images. It’s quiet. Jizz-us. His mind flits to cover: that old girlfriend from ninth grade and her blonde mother, the swimsuit model from France, the Fed Ex woman’s tight pants, the front man and teenaged stage hand of the metal band he saw—just once—live, also a few lines from a do-me movie he paid $8 for when he couldn’t get laid. His wife often had a headache.
She says, “I’m here. Safe.” And the miles weight her haste to get to once-hidden alone time, “Me Time,” the mini bar or a drink at the open bar without the children shooting par into porcelain vases, or cleaning Sharpie mazes—on the wall— and a hungry husband. A dozen pared phrases and that’s it. Shit- is there nothing he can do? (Sigh.) “Love you.”
“Yes.” And he IS happy, means his merry sign off, even while mind-mapping the miles that stand between him and Hollywood, him and his truant, television third.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Short Story
by Brittany Fonte
SETTING: Many weeds grow green in the Mid Western wilds of cows and plains, mosquito-filled lakes and conservative politics. Wisconsin happily barters in cheese curds and whey (sown by serial killers), the twin Dakotas dapple in deer ticks, dust and durable durham wheat. My Minnesota, though, touts corn and soybeans, also gun racks, goys, and cheap ale. Ice fishing holes, sans crops, are stuffed with mammal heads and hookers as company-come-tail. I was raised here, shallow soil et al; “gay” meant “jolly,” only in the way it was used in famous Broadway musicals recreated at the local (Norwegian) rec center. Here, lefse is rolled as much as Mary Jane, and Mary Jane marries men.
CHARACTER: Mary Jane married three men, maybe high, but I hoped for more. I held Ellen a hero without a hampering cape, or male hormones. Nineteen and nit-witted, I coddled visions of karaoke love songs in my mind of minimal focus and tone deafness. Feeling powerful with temporary parental leave, and teenaged volcanic panties primed in electric shocks, I panted after—preyed— on pretty coeds without guilt, without redneck perceptions, concepts of “perversity,” or narrow-minded prattle. Until.
THEME: Until Eternity: This is what I promised her. I kissed her once, offered, “Until we meet again.” Until the clock struck twelve and my spring break curfew counted, I held her hips until the cows came... I thought of her driving home, got a speeding ticket from a dyke who couldn’t see me for who I wanted to be. I thought: Until the fat lady sings. Until the end. Later, I told my parents until I was blue in the face: I loved her. Juliet and Jolie-Pitt. They were silent. They wouldn’t accept it, not until Hell froze over. Sex equaled guilty until proven guilty.
POINT OF VIEW: Guilt from Her. Mom. The old-fashioned. The bigoted. The Christian Right. The Focus on the Family, not mine. The Majority. The Man. The Commandments. The hope for a grandchild. The neighbors and what they might say, have said, have seen over a privacy fence. The hurt I might contend with. The discrimination. The “phase.” The idea of tab A and slot B without silicone accoutrements. The slut. The family friends who will not accept me. The façade. The children with no father. There is, also, God.
PLOT: My God, Thanksgiving came gifting and I, riding shotgun in my mother’s shuttle van, thinking of tofu turkey and brown buttered biscuits (basic human rights) showed my cards: I shouted, “I’m in love. With a woman.” Torrential, tyrannical screams ensued, and then my ride was wrought with the most soundless of nauseated silence.
(
)
It was clear I would not break breads of bartering, then. There was not one loaf for all, and I had to bide my time until a foreign taxi could return me to sender, reset my sexuality, tally all of my wrongs as a child and all of my tuition costs.
CONFLICT: The cost is more than I have
SETTING: Many weeds grow green in the Mid Western wilds of cows and plains, mosquito-filled lakes and conservative politics. Wisconsin happily barters in cheese curds and whey (sown by serial killers), the twin Dakotas dapple in deer ticks, dust and durable durham wheat. My Minnesota, though, touts corn and soybeans, also gun racks, goys, and cheap ale. Ice fishing holes, sans crops, are stuffed with mammal heads and hookers as company-come-tail. I was raised here, shallow soil et al; “gay” meant “jolly,” only in the way it was used in famous Broadway musicals recreated at the local (Norwegian) rec center. Here, lefse is rolled as much as Mary Jane, and Mary Jane marries men.
CHARACTER: Mary Jane married three men, maybe high, but I hoped for more. I held Ellen a hero without a hampering cape, or male hormones. Nineteen and nit-witted, I coddled visions of karaoke love songs in my mind of minimal focus and tone deafness. Feeling powerful with temporary parental leave, and teenaged volcanic panties primed in electric shocks, I panted after—preyed— on pretty coeds without guilt, without redneck perceptions, concepts of “perversity,” or narrow-minded prattle. Until.
THEME: Until Eternity: This is what I promised her. I kissed her once, offered, “Until we meet again.” Until the clock struck twelve and my spring break curfew counted, I held her hips until the cows came... I thought of her driving home, got a speeding ticket from a dyke who couldn’t see me for who I wanted to be. I thought: Until the fat lady sings. Until the end. Later, I told my parents until I was blue in the face: I loved her. Juliet and Jolie-Pitt. They were silent. They wouldn’t accept it, not until Hell froze over. Sex equaled guilty until proven guilty.
POINT OF VIEW: Guilt from Her. Mom. The old-fashioned. The bigoted. The Christian Right. The Focus on the Family, not mine. The Majority. The Man. The Commandments. The hope for a grandchild. The neighbors and what they might say, have said, have seen over a privacy fence. The hurt I might contend with. The discrimination. The “phase.” The idea of tab A and slot B without silicone accoutrements. The slut. The family friends who will not accept me. The façade. The children with no father. There is, also, God.
PLOT: My God, Thanksgiving came gifting and I, riding shotgun in my mother’s shuttle van, thinking of tofu turkey and brown buttered biscuits (basic human rights) showed my cards: I shouted, “I’m in love. With a woman.” Torrential, tyrannical screams ensued, and then my ride was wrought with the most soundless of nauseated silence.
(
)
It was clear I would not break breads of bartering, then. There was not one loaf for all, and I had to bide my time until a foreign taxi could return me to sender, reset my sexuality, tally all of my wrongs as a child and all of my tuition costs.
CONFLICT: The cost is more than I have
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Booksmarts are Still Silt at the Redneck Riviera
by Brittany Fonte
Today: the errant shells from ego breaks are tempest tossed and jagged and cutting; I bleed pain for sharks to heal on this “vacation” with children clamped to my unseasoned (or unseasonable) hips. Glass slipper grains, ground to the size of flossed bikini tops on heavy step-sisters, cover decades of: tanning lotion, sunrise sex, bonfire ash and seaweed. I pry those hardened pricks from my alabaster skin, expose grown-up (read: jiggly) thighs, peel this ass to garish pink beneath a mommy’s muumuu, resentful. Diet soda in hand, extra saccharine for sentiment, I swipe some sweat, grit sand in teeth, wonder when he’ll tire. I am no sand architect.
While weighty waves threaten XXX-foliation, and the sea washes the shore slate clean, it cannot curb my tongue. I swear with one syllable words (almost inaudible) as the tide rolls over my crab citadel: twelve, now thirteen, now twenty times as my son counts, childishly chronological. My very smart son shovels over water foreclosure, hums like a lark with flooding insurance. I’ve forgotten to apply sunscreen (and patience and fun) and childhood memories, so scale, instead. I am red with emotion, Scarlet (O’Hara).
I shadow smiles, though, of shallow joy, adjacent to perfect spindly legsthat will never need pilates. I dig dig dig with him: heartache, headaches, regrets and regression. I sift wet from dry to castle this fate, as asked. Each time, we are pooled. I am: mother, teacher, wife and sinner. I am missing every other title staring at the pierced navels walk by on trim tummies, watching balding tattoos move on tailored backs. I sow a moat and say I’m sorry.
Like lessons lost in youth, or diluted, dishonest sweat, heat entombs us. The sun falls and falls and hits (beneath this belt, nude). I wait for the temperance of tide and rebirth, my regeneration, or a starfish, four-footed and needing, like me. I count the seconds to “saved” status, wonder if beer works wonders, as I have wandered for more than forty days in a place where I’ve drowned in clichés: it’s hotter than Hades. I do not own a can cozy, and there is no lifeguard present. I’ve misplaced any attention I might have brought home from the hospital with my breast pump.
My child chides only with chafing calves, but my fingernails bleed in futile fullness. Below this Cinderella surface are years of draping storms that started with an overbearing mother or a belittling world, hiding all that he wants on six legs. Heaven worms in what waits beyond “me” in echoes of creation crashing. I see; a jellyfish stings my foot, not his. So I call to the less evolved, again; I play my role. Finally, I fish for that one that will feed us all, or the words to hail a fairy godmother.
Today: the errant shells from ego breaks are tempest tossed and jagged and cutting; I bleed pain for sharks to heal on this “vacation” with children clamped to my unseasoned (or unseasonable) hips. Glass slipper grains, ground to the size of flossed bikini tops on heavy step-sisters, cover decades of: tanning lotion, sunrise sex, bonfire ash and seaweed. I pry those hardened pricks from my alabaster skin, expose grown-up (read: jiggly) thighs, peel this ass to garish pink beneath a mommy’s muumuu, resentful. Diet soda in hand, extra saccharine for sentiment, I swipe some sweat, grit sand in teeth, wonder when he’ll tire. I am no sand architect.
While weighty waves threaten XXX-foliation, and the sea washes the shore slate clean, it cannot curb my tongue. I swear with one syllable words (almost inaudible) as the tide rolls over my crab citadel: twelve, now thirteen, now twenty times as my son counts, childishly chronological. My very smart son shovels over water foreclosure, hums like a lark with flooding insurance. I’ve forgotten to apply sunscreen (and patience and fun) and childhood memories, so scale, instead. I am red with emotion, Scarlet (O’Hara).
I shadow smiles, though, of shallow joy, adjacent to perfect spindly legsthat will never need pilates. I dig dig dig with him: heartache, headaches, regrets and regression. I sift wet from dry to castle this fate, as asked. Each time, we are pooled. I am: mother, teacher, wife and sinner. I am missing every other title staring at the pierced navels walk by on trim tummies, watching balding tattoos move on tailored backs. I sow a moat and say I’m sorry.
Like lessons lost in youth, or diluted, dishonest sweat, heat entombs us. The sun falls and falls and hits (beneath this belt, nude). I wait for the temperance of tide and rebirth, my regeneration, or a starfish, four-footed and needing, like me. I count the seconds to “saved” status, wonder if beer works wonders, as I have wandered for more than forty days in a place where I’ve drowned in clichés: it’s hotter than Hades. I do not own a can cozy, and there is no lifeguard present. I’ve misplaced any attention I might have brought home from the hospital with my breast pump.
My child chides only with chafing calves, but my fingernails bleed in futile fullness. Below this Cinderella surface are years of draping storms that started with an overbearing mother or a belittling world, hiding all that he wants on six legs. Heaven worms in what waits beyond “me” in echoes of creation crashing. I see; a jellyfish stings my foot, not his. So I call to the less evolved, again; I play my role. Finally, I fish for that one that will feed us all, or the words to hail a fairy godmother.
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