Poetry
I, yourself
I, yourself,
I am born of notes played by rising fish.
My throat began to grow when I was in a frame,
a floating mass of nothing more than
drifting currents in a womb.
I, myself,
They are blundering eyes and I am
crushing mountains with a raise of
an eyebrow.
In a crashing of hay, I am born,
following in dried footsteps.
I, holding fire,
am a mother of dried cypress.
I bore a mold of myself,
and of an element.
In grains of a field,
I am held in drooping shoulders.
Nomad
Young Pines, thick air
A place where red clay replaces dirt,
and heat fills the air
Back roads hidden in the cradle of the sweet green
This was the place I would seek my refuge
this is the nature I will always hasten to
Here is where my heart is planted, and it will eternally be
Busy streets, tired people
A child stolen from it’s cradle, I was deducted to a place of light
The rift that was driven in my family would scar forevermore
My peers outran me as summer became autumn
Time there would promptly be stolen from me
for I could never grow as a weed, suffocating in a field of grass
Old oaks, chilling air
I stand here on uneven and lush ground
My home revised in a soft light
Though my native ground is far gone
This revised home is filled with unrelenting warmth
Where my childhood was relived to me
This rolling land may not house my roots
Yet this cold land is what I’ve become
His Eyes From Miles
Afternoons, held with desperation,
you and I were saturated
by your ideals.
The sky peaked over
your sun polluted shoulders,
and I only wanted you to
feel cold for me.
I often protested the
hills with you.
I'm bored with
your wilted pictures
framed with calm skies,
and vines that grasp
up at a rising sun.
All of this you typed out to me
on a humid airplane.
Spare me your
wisdom, floating in ash speckled
pools of stagnant water.
Throw me your
only spare bones,
so that I may use them to
make a shelter.
Give me what you
can't live without,
and I would trade it away
for a false promise of copper.
We would have
picketed for tents,
casting away
any care of the children.
My fingers tapped
the table,
and you held
your unsolicited arm
around my shoulders.
I never asked you,
I never wanted response.
He Skinned His Knee
I.
Meet me where the asphalt
waves into dirt. I’ll see you
walk down through the concrete tunnel,
I’ll get up and pretend I haven't
been glancing that way for an hour.
Find me in the spaces between
fading lines of paint.
I'll find that your body
can't hold the air in your lungs.
You push yourself out of your mouth-
through your teeth and
into my throat.
You and I will play coy with our hands,
teasing the other with rough thoughts of touching.
Follow me as I sweat through my shirt,
I'll lie in the river across our knolls.
From the water you will sit with your legs spread,
I'll trace the back of your spine with
brambles and sticks from the water.
I’ll sit by you and listen to the sounds
of rocks dancing under my feet.
II.
She was born of the fish, with an embracing eye &
sprigs for arms.
She meanders across boiling rocks & inflated egos
Her feet were worn by the
hardened leather in her shoes.
I found her drying on rocks,
grasping for my hands and
vying for my hips.
Foundation on my face melted into her mouth;
she was swollen by the heat.
Her lungs - as his were
filled in the year that past in front of her.
Before I would walk on her back,
she had fell into the Delaware and
broke herself into the Poconos.
III.
I, romanticizing myself as a
hopeful devil, forgot the Two
in a Summer.
The Ego peeled the color from my eyes,
I threw Self into my fingers.
Motivate me to cut my own hair.
I would breathe mint
into every pore,
and sigh twisted stems out of my tongue.
Creative nonfiction
Everything Stays
"The sun is going down." She turned her face freckled by the summer to a sinking sun, teasing them with their last hours of their humid day.
"Yeah, yeah I know. It's fine. It hardly takes us twenty minutes to get back to the house." Kacey sat in one of their "borrowed" lawn chairs, gazing across the field they often trespassed in. The pair of girls often came to fields and property like this, scavenging for treasures, left behind by previous campers and occupants. As often as they could, they ventured into the woods to escape their siblings and grandparents. There had been a time the two had spent almost all of their youth on the expanse of land, but as they aged, they began to grow apart, just as their days had. Whitley moved up north, and Kacey stayed. Time had begun to show its face to them, and as they aged it became apparent that these days laying in the sun wouldn't be as endless as they had always seemed. The sun was almost gone now, and frogs began to croak as the air grew thick with mosquitoes and June bugs.
Kacey took her eyes off the field, and gazed over to Whitley, where she lay in the dry grass squinting her eyes towards the sun.
"When do you go back?" She asked.
Whitley kept her eyes locked upward.
"I thought we were just about to go back?"
Kacey exhaled, "No, I meant when you go back."
She'd been asking all week when Whitley would go back up north, the conclusion to their time together this year. Although Kacey knew, she asked almost everyday in the month Whitley had been here, hoping the date would somehow change.
"I thought I already told you," Whitley sighed, Kacey always had a convenient lack of memory.
"Oh. Thursday right?"
Whitley staggered a laugh, "Your memory isn't as bad as you make it out to be, kid."
Kacey shot her a skeptical look.
"Why am I the kid?"
"Since you're younger than me, kid." She sat up and showed her a sideways grin, and pieces of dry grass fell from her hair. Kacey rolled her eyes, and she began their ritual of packing up. They hadn't found much to scavenge that day, just a few empty shotgun shells, and a broken spotlight. Through the years, the two had accumulated a number of things. A lawn chair that just needed some tender loving care, a flashlight that seemed to chose when it wished to work, various lighters, and a pair of binoculars that worked way too well to just be left behind. Among other things, these objects were always carefully packed and put away under a decaying pine tree, that stood on their side of the property line. Throughout the day, the pair had shared Whitley's canteen of water, and picked huckleberries from nearby bushes.
"I'm taller than you. You know that right?" Kacey called to Whitley, as she was rummaging through their pack of momentos.
"Still younger," Whitley called back over her shoulder.
Grinning, Kacey turned around to face her, about to tease her again, but was met with a somber face. It was a strange thing, to see her cousin in a place like this, with such a destitute look on her face.
"What's with the face?" Kacey asked, moving closer to Whitley, studying her.
"What's wrong with my face?" Whitley began, with the hint of a grin on her face.
"Well, besides your nose and sunburn, you look so depressed all of a sudden."
"Can you blame me?" The two exchanged knowing looks, and acknowledged what had been in the back of their minds this whole summer. The tall grass was shaken by the winds, and the earth was becoming ever dry with the late summer air. Like all things, their youth was passing, and this year had been an exclamation on that. Neither of them said it, but both felt the same. This whole experience was becoming boring. The two were late into their teenage years now, and because of this, the forest and fields no longer harboured the same adventure as they had before. Years ago, each creek, stone, and pine had been unknown to them. As they grew up in these forests and fields, each detail was known to them, and they had memorized the land. What had once been a whole new frontier to explore, was now as drab as their backyards. Neither wanted to say it out loud, but their adventure had become too repetitive.
Silently, the two finished gathering their things, and began to slowly walk into the dense forest back in the direction of their grandparent's.
As she moved a thorny vine over her head, and held it there as Kacey passed, Whitley suddenly burst out laughing.
"So what, now we're all giddy again?" Kacey said, chuckling to herself as she watched her cousin laugh.
After regaining her composure, Whitley began to reminisce.
"Do you remember all the times we got lost out here? Or how your mom would always come looking for us after dark?"
Kacey laughed, and nodded her head in knowing.
Whitley continued, "Or how we'd drive too fast on the ATV's? And the times we got stuck in the mud?"
"All happy memories, yes. I also remember how much trouble we'd get in, and all the times we were yelled at." Kacey was ahead of Whitley now, nimbly stepping over dry broken branches.
"Since we're older, we'll have more trouble to get into I guess." Whitley said, and pushed ahead to catch up with Kacey
"Why do you always seem to get us into trouble?" Kacey turned around, and imitated someone frantically driving and ATV, alluding to how often Whitley had crashed and gotten them stuck a few times in the past. They laughed together, although the memory wasn't too funny at the time.
"You better hope I don't drive a car like that." Whitley said, as they laughed together.
Short Story
Raspberries and Division
"I don't want to be a drag," Will began, once again about to state the obvious, "but I'm pretty sure it's going to rain."
Tyler scoffed, not in a mean sort of way, he was always able to be sarcastic without being mean.
We all sat together, the last hour in our shift slowing dwindling away. We had been picking raspberries and blackberries for hours, our hands thoroughly calloused by their tiny briars.
I had always thought farming was an alright summer job, that's all it ever was though. Every summer since eighth grade, Will, Tyler and myself had been working at the farm together.
"Do you guys think this is where we'll all be next year?" Will asked.
Tyler took his arm off his eyes and squinted up at him.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, this time next year don't you think we'll be going to our own schools and all that?"
Tyler went back to laying in the grass with his arm over his eyes, once again disregarding Will's comments. Will accepted this, and rather than push it, followed suit with Tyler, opting to lay in the grass.
I looked out across the field where I'd spent most of my time this summer, and many summers before. What field that was once filled with bleeding shades of crimson and burgundy, was now a field filled with grey and brown skeletons of bushes, dancing in a breeze that always seemed to become colder too fast. Every year around this time I could watch as green flickered to gold on the leaves, their autumn forms lasting a couple weeks at most.
"Noah, you're spaced out again."
Tyler was looking at me now, sitting up at my level. In his face I saw amusement, like he was waiting for me to say something dumb so he could make a joke out of it.
"I was just thinking about what Will said,"
I began, but Tyler interrupted.
"See man that's your problem, not even Will thinks about what he says."
Will seemed to agree, as he addressed the comment with a languid chuckle.
I joined in with Will's laugh, and soon Tyler was laughing at his own comment.
I tried to start the conversation again.
"I was just thinking, we could all be in completely different places next year."
Will seemed to be contemplating that, his face contorted with his brows furrowed, like he was trying to string together a coherent thought about the subject. He opened his mouth to say something, but Tyler beat him to it.
"Yeah I get what you're saying man, but I'm not really in the mood to get all weepy about graduating. For the past three years all I've wanted to do is graduate."
I exhaled.
"But why do you want that so bad?"
Tyler seemed to be thrown off by that. He had always complained about where we lived, but I don't know what he had to compare it to. All our lives we'd lived in the same rural town, being friends with the same rural types of people, and I had always been content with that. In the silence as I waited for Tyler's response Will began to speak.
"This time last year we didn't know we'd be here now. I guess I didn't really think about it then though."
Tyler was quick to jump in on that.
"Right, but we obviously weren't graduation last year, so it didn't matter then."
Will shrugged, but I didn't let the subject drop.
"It doesn't matter, change still could've happened. The only difference is that now it's almost a guarantee, like we can't avoid it anymore."
Tyler gave me his usual "whatever man," glance, rolling his eyes. He and Will both resigned to lay in the grass as we had before, and as we always did.
