Bob Hoeppner, Joanne Merriam, Carol Banks Weber
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Bob Hoeppner, Joanne Merriam, Carol Banks Weber
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Stuck on a Bridge The bridge that burned last summer now groans under snow, clunks from bumpers crunching over lines that do not show on this slidery surface suspended over water frozen in its turbulence. Green, red and white are pretty seasonal, but it is the dark blue bulbs that bloom a different wound in me. A blue of drowning in time, the color of childhood sky in my bed just before the monsters came. Shielded by a sheet I sensed them sneak, could hear them, when the TV wasn't laughing, move as the latest casualties were debuted. "It'll be over before you're old enough." my mom cooed every year. She was right but not by much. Some people like the white light, are drawn to it. But not me. I am moved to blue.
Xmas Rush The toys that enrich a childhood also erase it. The gun in the hands of a boy. The Barbie in fingers that will never be thin enough. There are toys for tots to prop their thoughts, so they don't totter. You are loved, here's a toy. Shoot. Dress. Grow. Should I believe in the power of toys any more than I believe in Mr. Claus? Or is the real mystery-- does Santa believe in me? I'd like to sit in the lap of someone who'll tell me what I'm getting. Or have someone sit on mine and whisper sincerest desires. But I don't have enough elf-space for the tools to make dreams come true. The boy is not father to the man. The man is the hand-me-down of boy, the rags of what once suited him, tailored by aging, stained by evaporating dreams that spilled from a cup he let go just when his hand could hold it. And Candy, with her cane so hard and sweet at first, then soft, the straightness worn down to a permanent curve, she's earned her stripes at every step of her carefully chosen shoes. Maybe we should play a game. One we pull out from childhood. Maybe we should move our pieces on a board worn from the past, outcome in doubt, each taking turns flicking the spinner, or warming the dice in our hopeful hands. Maybe each should be the die for the other, cast onto our squared relationship, rules read and discarded, fears shuffled and cut. If I could just understand that she is not a toy, then I would be right somehow, I would be on the right track, the fantastic would be over, but reality, that unwrapped present amongst the fantasies broken within minutes of the wrappers coming off, reality would be played with for the first time, and it's then the really fantastic would not be bought or won, but created, not in imagination, but in hands that knew a gun or impossible body, finding, in ourselves, not perfection, but imperfections which fit perfectly with each other. Yes, there is a time for putting away the childish things, but not all, and knowing which ones to keep is the cut in the deck between advancing your token to another one's space, or sitting, possibilities closeted, alone, with a vacant face. Carol
Banks Weber is a writer who lives in Diamond Hair December rain over there fairies
rolling in sweetened condensed milk and pine-studded
snowit's another dimension, where cell
phones ring SuperMario in five-four rhythm,
a flamenco, some folk, and a passing fancy to
Rock Lobster somewhere in the Road and Track,
chicks and bars -- you'd never find me
here, straightening my glasses -- gravelly groveling
voice mixed up in too much scotch, soda and
beer, my enemy sings me to sleep the lyrical
words anymore, I can almost lipsync my friend
I could stab you in the back, in the
back of a punchline, have another shot by
author without
the Tom Cruise baggage stuck in a terminal condition,
arms bars, Tina Arena chains... unfolds
in Hallmark dirges, demons, dragons, Lipton tea and tin-metal
blocks beside a graying sea, from Saturday
Night Fever, his whisky rum chaser |
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