Hands and Exotic Places

This was another piece that I wrote in the workshop I took, and had forgotten about until now.... Our prompt was somewhat vague: 3 minutes to write something about someone's hands. 3 minutes using using a metaphor to an exotic city. 3 minutes to ask that person a question about their hands. I ended up turning it into a 3 part poem...

1. Hands that lack elegance,
in perpetual motion.
Chewed fingernails,
chipped black paint.

Soft hands,
with a soft outline,
veins quietly visible,
beneath the skin.

Hands that fiddle,
with,
string,
paper,
headphones,
the keys on a phone.

2. Panama City,
like the wind.
In perpetual motion.

Filled with,
sights,
sounds,
smells.

A placid spot,
will shield you,
from the movement,
for a moment.

3. "What makes you
chew your fingers so
that the paint chips,
and even you inexhaustible
supply of lotion
cannot make then attractive?"

"I paint
my nails and
chew my fingers and
move my hands perpetually and
put lotion on
out of habit.
Habits that
cannot be broken."

Flames

This is a short little story I wrote in the car on the way back from Maine. Interpret it as you will.

The air is cold and sleepy, casting a spell over the town.  The branches on the trees don’t stir, sirens don’t puncture the air, and the streetlights don’t flicker.  

                A lone, dark figure glides down a tree swathed lane, the branches caressing the figure as it walks past. Almost imperceptible tapping from the figure’s sneakers rise into the stillness.  As the figure nears a road light, her delicate features become visible, framed by soft, brown bangs. She wears a heavy, black trench coat like a turtle does their shell, shielding herself from the coldness of the night and hiding her from the coldness of humanity.

                She reaches a fork in the street that forms a giant, unseen cul-de-sac; the center circle vegetated heavily with towering maples and pines. The woods ringing the street made the little road an asphalted donut in the scenery, and she just a dot in the landscape. The girl pauses, takes a ragged breath, and strides to the left.

                A dirt driveway spills into the road and promptly disappears back into trees. Reaching the cheery red mailbox at the end of it, the girl stops short. After reaching into her coat and fishing around she produces a small object and clenches it tightly in her left hand.

                She hesitantly opens the mailbox, and flinches as it creaks.  Her fingers find the only paper in the box; a thick envelope. If it were daytime, she would see the heavy, yellowed paper of the letter envelope; the neat script inking the name on the front; the red, waxen seal; the date on the stamp. But in the darkness all her senses tell her is how crisp the paper feels, how thick the envelope is. She lifts her left hand up and, after fumbling about for a minute in the night, clicks a flame into life. Holding the Bic close to the envelope washes a weak, flickering light over the address. She squints at the words, and nods slightly in approval. Licking her lips, she holds the end of the envelope away from her, and gently lets the flame lick the parchment. The flames reflect softly in her wide eyes. The fire hungrily eats the old, dry paper and she anxiously drops it onto the dark pavement in front of her. She stands watch over it until the light winks out; then she squats down, coaxes another flame out of the tube, and carefully scans the ground. Seemingly satisfied she stands up, bangs the mailbox shut with her elbow, and drops the lighter into one of her many pockets.

                Her shoulders relax away from their hunched position and she gives a little sigh.

                A breeze picks up and stirs the ashes from the pavement towards the sky as she disappears back into the night.

Reflection from a Reservation

This is a poem-ey piece that I wrote on a recent mission trip to the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation that appears to be becoming a sensation (I minutely question why) in my little micro-community.

It is intended to be read down normally, and then read from the bottom to the top, LINE BY LINE, not word by word.
Reading it down normally illustrates the realities of this reservation currently. Reading it from the bottom to the top is my hope for this reservation in the future.
Some statistics:

• Out of every dollar that a resident of the reservation makes, only about 1 cent stays on the reservation. The rest goes to stores, Walmarts and etc outside of the reservation.
• The census reported somewhere around 60% employment (I believe) but in reality about 85% of the people on the reservation are unemployed.

I have a bleak future. I am a miracle

because I have some hope. Don't tell me that

I am sure to go to college. I am normal

when I think that I will be drunk. I know

that my heritage is starving away. I am crazy

to not have hatred. It would be a lie to say

trash isn't destroying our land. Our children learn

of fear and sadness. Of course

we don't dream. We are deprived

of the means to help ourselves. You're ignorant when you say

our dogs are well fed, loved, and taken care of. We are all aware

children are raising other children. Every one of

this community knows of despair. No

one is helping us. It is not true that

we know that some

Hope is here.

This community will be turned around

because I held firm to my hope.

Copyright 2011 Abigail Chapman

The Last Rain

I just finished taking a three day writing workshop (whoop whoop!) and learned A TON. This was a prompt that we did today. Choosing out of the proverbial hat, we chose character: a recent high school graduate, setting: the porch of an old farmhouse, time: after a recent thunderstorm, and plot: reminiscing about how things have changed. We also had to include a specific poem (two of my friends in the class wrote it, I did not write the poem). I feel as if this is one of the best pieces I have written so far.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Droplets from the recent storm fall from the eave and splatter on the already soaked edges of the porch. The wind gently whistles, bringing the scent of wet soil, hay and grass to my nose. It’s evening, and although the thunder is now distant and the rain has moved on, the sky is still overcast; promising that we will not see the sun until tomorrow morning.
The air feels cleaner, cooler, refreshed, and newly washed, giving welcome relief to the heat of summer.
I sit in the rocking chair on the porch; my cowboy boots kicked off, faded jeans stretched across my legs, and my blue plaid shirt unbuttoned and blowing in the breeze, exposing my plain white tee shirt underneath.
The huge wooden porch with its warped, dark wooden planks; low, overhanging ceiling; and walls: the bottom half plywood and ripped screen that now flutters in the draft above, hasn’t changed since I was a baby. And I have always thought that the old, beat up red door, that closes off the screened in porch, has looked useless, hanging all raggedy on its hinges.
The plain white rocking chair creaks as I sway back and forth, surveying the landscape. A narrow dirt road meanders away from the house, and practically goes out of sight over the horizon before it twists through a crumbling wall and enters the road. The hay fields surround us by acres. Tall, green, lush and swaying in the almost imperceptible breeze. Beyond our own fields are our neighbor’s fields, and beyond that is the prairie, or that’s how it all used to be anyways. Caddy corner to our old white farmhouse sits the dilapidated old barn, just out of sight from where I sit on the porch. Inside rests old machinery, and old, rotting hay.
I close my eyes as tears begin to stream down my cheeks.
For 18 years, this had been my home. For 12 years I had walked 2 miles down that drive to wait for the bus to pick me up and race the sun over the perimeter of the sky. For 6 years I had helped my father take care of the farm and cut and bale the hay. For 5 years I had watched each of my siblings leave, never to return. For 2 years, every morning, I had coaxed my mother into giving me the keys, so I could drive the truck to school. For 1 year, I had woken up every morning to my grieving mother. For 1 year, I had taken care of 20 acres by myself.

For 8 months I have stopped believing that I will go to college. I still can’t believe that I walked across that stage with a diploma. And for 2 months, I have sat in this empty house, wondering where to go.

High school is over. Homework every night. Feeding the dog. Helping my mother clean the house; is all over. That was the last thunderstorm I will ever see from the porch again.

I think about my 5 siblings, all living their own lives, and my parents now lying peacefully side by side.

I think of my mother: smiling, hair pulled back into a braid, frilly white apron, singing, and telling me that our history is the most important part of us.

I think about my father’s thin, solemn face and how his laugh would boom out and fill the whole yard.

Under my breath I whisper the poem that had hung in our living room under a glass pane, bordered by little blue flowers, encased in a wooden frame for generations:

I see the aqua flow,

Purplish puddles glow.

Shaded periwinkle forms,

Down the everglades they go.

I hear the choir birds booming,

Their singing voices linger,

I stare as I listen to the lead singer.

Telling us their past choices,

I find myself roaming.

Past and future together I am sewing.

I sigh heavily and pull my boots back on. Yanking the keys out of my pocket, I lumber down the steps. 7 of them, concrete, 6 each with of us kids’ hand prints, forever petrified in stone, and the top step with my parents’ hands held pressed together into the concrete, forming a heart. I open the rusty door to the old blue Ford, and swing myself up onto the stained seat.

Tonight I will deposit a check; enough money to pay for myself to go to college. And tomorrow some bigwig at some huge company will come stamp out this imperfection in the middle of their land, plowing down our history to make more room for their corporate crops.

The radio blares, and I refuse to look in the mirror that is mocking me above my head. I refuse to take a last glance at the sad, old house, just sitting there. Waiting. Ready to keep its appointment with the hangman.

Class Gift Dedication

My mom texted me at 11 o'clock on one of the days of the last week of school, saying "please give dedication presentation of class gift to the school at 1 o'clock." I first had to text her back, asking, what is a class gift? what was my class giving? who was I presenting to? It turned out that the class gift was three daphne bushes and an engraved stone to the school. This is what I presented in front of the whole school that afternoon:

Each year, as a tradition, the eighth grade class gives an enduring gift to the school. This year we chose to give 3 Daphne bushes. We chose these because they are symbols of growth, blossoming and renewal. As sixth graders, we come into this school, stressed from the transplant. But as we advanced through the school we blossomed into the teenagers we are now. These bushes are peaked from recently being planted, but through the years, with care, they will grow and thrive and every spring they will bloom with fragrant, pink blossoms.  As each sixth grade class walks through these doors, the will look at these bushes, at the promise that they too will grow into something beautiful. And as each eighth grade class walks out of these doors, they will look at these bushes and reflect on what they started off as, and grew into. Thank you MSMS, for helping us grow.

 Copyright 2011 Abigail Chapman