rumbleHUM

Like most schools that I attended, students were often grouped by interests that they shared. In high school, populations of students accumulate around extracurricular activities. Band members grouped together with other band players. The newspaper/yearbook students all collected together usually in the journalism teacher’s room. Even our debate team found a cohesiveness. College presented a more organized version of populations in which students were gathered by various majors and minors. In high school and later on in college, I found it very difficult to find a wolf pack which I felt kinship towards, though I spent a little bit of team in each of the above groups. An aspect of my personality always ran ragged against the group’s tenants. For example, I disliked marching instead only wanting to play the music itself. I never had focus enough to do anything meaningful in journalism though I managed through out a couple of articles with photographs which went into the school paper. The...

Yesterday, I was perusing an idea for a story, this image of a rag and bone woman, an idea, which like the woman at its core, cunningly refuses to fully reveal itself. The only truly distinct image I visualize is the image of the witch from the movie, the Dark Crystal, an ugly old hag, with rams horns hidden underneath a bird ’s nest of hair, a wrinkled old, gray face, thick lips turned down in a frown, and a set of dark eyes, one open, the other closed, as if she were perpetually in painful thought. The song “Rag and Bone” by the White Stripes gave rise to the idea, a metaphor waiting to be explored, I thought. The image of persons who sought out items of personalty to collect when no one else wanted them appealed to me, essentially rag and bone men and women. The song exemplifies the soulful jaunt that has come to characterize the White Stripes, a simple guitar rift over which Jack White and his eager sidekick, Meg, speak rather than sing, a kind of rhythmic kind of cadence, wavering...

Dante’s K-car, a rental provided to him by the company, slows to a stop, a popping rising from underneath the tires as it rolls over rocks, a persistent hissing pressing out from under its hood, a greyish cloud seeping from the hood’s seams. Dante, standing next to the over-heated automobile, could smell what he assumed was a mixture of rubber and auto fluid wandering through his nose, a fine perspiration dotting his forehead and pooling underneath his eyes. Dust spreads across the South Texas town in large wisps, a searing hush twisting in devilish whirls, brushing past Dante’s ears, finding hollow, empty spaces echoing the ghostly voices of dead aliens who penetrated the border, only to find their mortal body could not outrun the need for hydration. Dante surveyed the area for any signs of life. The town bears the appellation of a Spanish namesake, an inheritance of from a saint, transformed from the English, made holy by adding the word “san” in front of it, something like San Migue...

I. The four parts of my heart thrum a rhythm against the sheath of ice, gripping their cavities, and, in concert, slide through the space where the rib I gave you used to be, leaving a ticklish sensation as they squeeze through. They abandon a residue  of slow sadness and frenetic anxiousness in the emptiness.  II. My brain. A haze presses upon its folds, exhausts the optic nerve, leaves a rawness behind my eyelids, leaves a soreness where the sclera meets the skull, and draws the eyes wide and weepy, dispatches pieces of static across my scalp and out the hair follicles. III. My limbs, like heavy branches grasp, fumble with  the fruits of your sorrow, weighted by a frigid numbness. Gravity drags on weakened joints, until the connective tissue snap, riving arteries and veins, disengaging bone from bone, permitting my arms and legs to disown the thickness of my trunk. IV. I am no longer a whol...

Valentin had one hand on the handle of the mailbox on the corner Morning Dove Lane and Evening Sun Avenue, a lone blue metal box, with a domed top, a white eagle flying in from the left, a dynamic profile, fast, efficient. Not as efficient or fast as an email. Not as fast or efficient as a text message. Not as fast or efficient as just speaking directly to his wife, in the morning, after his morning run, after a hot shower, over a hot bowl of apple cinnamon oatmeal, heated up in a microwave with a bit of milk, and flavored with pieces of fruit, raspberries, blackberries, or strawberries, whatever hadn’t spoiled in the refrigerator as a result of not being consumed quickly enough. Valentin thought about that fruit, about how frustrating it was that no matter how quickly he tried to consume the berries, the bananas, some of it managed to go bad. The berries softened, turned dark, deflated, and then grew moldy. The bananas grew dark brown spots like skin cancer across the skin. He pinches...

I feel the blood puddle at my feet, feel the wetness seep up into my sandals, the thick stickiness finding its way between my toes. A hot storm roils in my stomach while a sharp pressure in the back of my head causes everything in my view to start to turn a fuzzy steel grey. The contents of my stomach would have fled my stomach had I not kept them down by swallowing with large gulps. However, my throat burns with the fierceness of hot coals. The body lays at our feet, all of our feet. I cannot give myself permission to call him by his name because he is no longer here. Whatever he was, that part of him has escaped the mortal form and gone on to something better, leaving us to figure out how to deal with the fallout of it all. Igor says something I didn’t catch, the blood pumping too much in my ears, like waves of guilt. I was a good girl. I am a good girl, or so I keep telling myself. Maybe I should have followed the example of Karen, who was strong enough to know when enough was enou...