Lisa Pimental
“Foozle”
Response

The Ballad of Jeremy One Sock
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Jeremy One Sock leaned forward a bit in order to lick his left front paw. He rubbed the top of that foot with his nose before letting his tongue roll gently over his toe pads.

Thad watched the kitty. He sighed. Then he spilled most of his oatmeal onto the carpet. He wanted to pet kitty so badly, but kitty shied from his touch.

A butterfly flitted past the livingroom window. Jeremy One Sock jumped to the top of the sofa and mewed at it. The butterfly hovered, anyway, hearing no cat sounds through the glass.

Jeremy One Sock jumped down to root under the sofa. He caught a deflated balloon, an unmatched sock, and two pistachio shells.

Thad’s face got wiped. What’s more, he was released from his high chair. Thad still wanted to pet kitty.

Jeremy One Sock licked his left front paw another time before cleaning his right one. Thereafter, he gracefully twisted himself enough to clean his hind feet.

Thad knocked over the vase that held Daddy’s flowers to Mommy. Bits of china and petals crashed onto the carpet. Thad continued to move forward.

Jeremy One Sock stopped grooming. The small, unstable giant was a source of food. He was also a source of pain. Jeremy Once Sock jumped to the top of the sofa a second time.

Thad approached. He tried to scale the sofa. It was too high. After a few attempts, he screamed.

Mommy came running. She saw Thad. She saw Jeremy One Sock. She picked up Thad and brought him to his play corner.

After a span passed, Jeremy One Sock jumped off of the sofa and walked over to Thad. He sniffed the boy’s blocks. He sniffed the boy’s stuffed animals. He sniffed the boy’s diaper.

Thad reached a hand to pet kitty. Jeremy One Sock stiffened.

Thad almost cried. Jeremy One Sock smelled Thad’s arm. He sat down next to Thad’s leg.

Thad again tried to pet kitty. Jeremy One Sock ran away.

Thad toddled after him, but banged his head on the coffee table. He cried.

Jeremy One Sock, who had been watching from the relative safety of the kitchen doorway, inched forward.

Mommy came running. She, too, sniffed Thad’s diaper. Her back unclenched. She sighed.

Mommy sat on the sofa, hiked up her shirt and nursed quaking Thad.

Thad quieted.

Jeremy One Sock liked Mommy. She smelled like good things. Mommy never used perfume or hairspray. She stopped applying makeup after Thad was born, claiming she’d rather spend her free time with people.

The kitten inched forward.

Thad was starting to breathe slowly and regularly. His eyelids were drooping.

Mommy, too, relaxed. Her shoulders started to settle away from her ears. Her entire torso grew limp. Most of Mommy’s muscles assumed an open position.

Jeremy One Sock stuck a paw past the kitchen doorway.

Thad’s eyelids completely covered his eyes. He still suckled, but he sighed between gulps.

Mommy’s eyelids, too, grew heavy. She, too, sighed.

Jeremy One Sock, his body pressed against the wall, slowly moved into the living room. Mommy was warm. He wanted to be where it was warm. Mommy, however, had Thad on her lap.

The hand Thad had used to hold onto Mommy dropped. His entire arm hung loose on Mommy’s lap. His mouth fell off of her breast. He snored faintly.

Mommy gathered Thad close to her. She closed her bra and pulled her shirt back down. Once more, she drew her little boy near. The laundry could wait. There was no need to cook a fancy dinner. The answering machine did just fine with the phone calls.

Jeremy One Sock crept to the foot of the sofa. Thad still lay flaccid in Mommy’s arms. Mommy was soft. Jeremy One Sock wanted to be on her lap, too.

With a small jump, the kitten settled half on Thad and half on Mommy.

Mommy hugged Jeremy One Sock.

As his own lids fell over his eyes, Jeremy One Sock purred.

©KJ Hannah Greenberg
drkarenjoy@yahoo.com

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Pimental
Inspiration piece

Geraniums
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response

Albert paid double to rent the foam machine, which fashioned artificial clouds, over the weekend. The crazy cost didn’t matter to him. If Lizbett didn’t consent to be his wife, no amount of money, no social media status, truly nothing at all, would make a difference.

Lizbett showed up at the park at noon, as promised. As soon as she saw Albert, she pulled him toward the flower beds. The geraniums were blooming and she wanted him to witness their return.

Just as Lizbett was bending to closely admire those pink, purple, and white flowers, Albert jerked her upright. He pointed to the sky. Above their heads, clouds in the shape of hearts and stars floated. He didn’t want his beloved to miss the spectacle.

She pulled her hand free of his and bent, once more, to the blossoms. She had no idea that her boyfriend had paid a significant sum to a teen to pump out “romantic” shapes, let alone that Albert had hired a foam machine for the weekend. She only grasped that he was stubbornly refusing to admire the buds that were dear to her.

Albert looked as his lady love with wide eyes and a frown. How could posies be so important? Surely, she noticed and cared about the drifting pieces of froth for which he had nearly emptied his bank account. It was a good thing that he had bought the ring before he had rented the machine.

Lizbett squatted lower. On a leaf, of a sticky geranium, she spotted a small bug. Again, she tugged at Albert. “This plant’s protocarnivorous. The fly’s doomed.”

“Did you notice the heart-shaped puffs?”

“Saw them. Someone’s probably courting.”

“Lucky fellow.”

“Could be a girl.”

“That’s backwards.”

“Or modern.”

“Or lesbian.”

“Or not cisgender. Ugh. You’re so limited. Aren’t you disturbed the fly’s going to die?”

“Not really. I’m bothered that you don’t care about those clouds.”

“When have I ever cared about such nonsense?”

“Good point. Might you care about this?” Albert kneeled next to the still squatting Lizbett. “Would you mind standing up so I can do this properly?”

“Yes. I want to see what happens to the fly”

“Whatever.” Still kneeling, he pulled a small, velvet box from one of his trouser pockets. “I paid two thousand pounds to rent that foam machine.”

“The clouds are yours?!”

“A token for you.”

“Oh. I guess the fly can wait. You must have paid a lot.” Lizbett stood up. “Wait a minute, if you’re here, who’s getting those things airborne?”

“I hired someone.” Albert stood up, too. “This ring is also for you.” Albert opened the box and pulled out a piece of amber mounted on rose-colored gold. “There’s even a bug trapped inside!”

“Oh! My!”

“So, you like it?”

“Oh! My! It’s perfect! Can I wear it?”

“Forever?”

“Forever! But only if you promise that we will plant sticky geraniums and leadwort in our flower boxes.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.” The young woman leaned forward to embrace the young man.

A few sweaty minutes later, he continued, “with just two entomology courses ‘til you graduate, I figured it was okay to propose.”

Additional sweaty minutes passed before the young lady surfaced for air. “Can we rent a similar cloud machine for our wedding day?”

“That’s a yes?”

“Yes!”

“So glad.”

“You shouldn’t have worried; my morphological adaptations are such that even though I caught you, I could never digest you.”

“Meaning?”

“You’ll be forever stuck on me. Look! Another heart is floating up.”

“Must be mine.”
©KJ Hannah Greenberg
drkarenjoy@yahoo.com

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Pimental
“Woven”
Response

This Wild and Precious Life
By Julia Rolfe
Inspiration piece

Make messes and beauty

Feel 100 percent human

Begin again and again

End as many times or more

Nestle in the belly of trees to listen for the water pouring down the rocks

Catch the acorns falling from the trees

Collect feathers

Pan the bay for sharks who lived millions of years ago

Hold those teeth in your hands

and swim across the oceans older than we could ever dream to be

Marvel at the heavy-headed sunflower until the rain breaks its stalk

Mourn the loss of its beauty and

Leave the seeds for the ants and the worms

and watch how many seedlings appear in its place

Celebrate the bees resting in the dew under the sunflower’s umbrella

Grow back into the babe

who knew no difference between

breath, heart,

love, & death

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Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Pimental
Inspiration piece

Gilded
By Jules Rolfe
Response

Glaze over the mess

With gold shimmer

The double zero still shows through

Leave three for the money,

Four with direction,

And five for the hope

of something new

Will a butterfly rescue

this rose-colored disaster?

Will the caterpillar

Be scrapped off your size 9 shoe?

Like a flower-seeking bee

There’s no stopping you.

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Note:  All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and writing permission fro the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Pimental, 345

Response

Marcela Kogan, Coveting My Son’s Tutor

Inspiration piece

I am sitting in my car, waiting for my son to come out of his tutor’s house, eager to hear what the tutor thinks of my son’s Great Gatsby essay, which I came across while rummaging through his backpack the previous evening while he was asleep. I wanted to see whether the changes she suggests were ones I would have as well. Mostly, I wanted confirmation that I—a professional writer for 30 years, author of hundreds of articles and two books—knew what I was doing.

My son started working with this tutor four months ago to help him improve his writing skills and reading comprehension. I feel my own writing skills could be strengthened—better organization, smoother transitions and clearer sentence structure. So when he declared he didn’t need a tutor anymore, I wanted to take his spot.

Admitting I want a tutor is embarrassing. I started out writing as a fluke, as an “editor” of a non-profit Hispanic housing organization’s newsletter. Panicked over my new fancy title, and wishing I hadn’t overplayed my writing ability—I took crash courses in journalism and creative writing through the local university’s continuing education programs. Equipped with good reporters’ tools—curiosity and audacity—I learned to write news and feature stories.

But writing, even simply news stories, still takes me forever. I write the lead, get distracted and lose focus. When I try to pick up where I left off, my mind goes blank and I panic, furiously writing whatever comes to mind about the topic until suddenly, almost miraculously, the information swirling in my brain materializes into a well written, organized, polished story. The process is hectic, driven by panic rather than technique or structure. I try organizing my thoughts using outlines, webs, charts but nothing works.

Wanting to improve my writing skills at 51-years-old is an admirable endeavor. Why should I have to sneak around my son’s room like a criminal to mooch off his tutor’s lessons? Why covet my son’s tutor when I could get my own?

Over the following weeks I ask people for names of tutors who work with adults. But psychologists, teachers, school administrators—everybody is confused by my question. Tutors, at my age? Did I mean a life coach? An editor? A consultant? Facilitator?

A highly regarded psychologist gives me someone’s name. “Just ask her if she does adults,” she says.

Days later, I call the tutor. She sounds flaky over the phone, telling me that changing my writing process would change my life. “You’ll never think the same again,” she assures me. She could only help me if I let her “get into” my head. “We should get together sooner rather than later to see if we’re going to get along,” she adds. “Bring stories you’re working on,” she says.

We plan to meet at American Diner on a Wednesday morning at 9:30. I wouldn’t have trouble finding her, she says. “I have a lot of hair.” I get off the phone wondering if I should cancel.

I arrive at the diner on time and set up my laptop. The place is nearly empty except for a few tables of business people meeting over coffee, mothers lingering with their children waiting for schools to start. A woman with long wavy hair and bright red lipstick traipses in, a fur hat covering her ears and fur boots, looking as if she were meeting a friend in Alaska, rather than a client at a Washington D.C. diner.

“You must be Marcela,” she says, squeezing my hand, a burst of sweet perfume settling between us. I perched at the edge of my seat, sliding of the slightly tipping cushion.

“Let me tell you what I do,” she says, her fingers rubbing her temples, as if nursing a migraine. She takes out a pencil and a pad and writes in big letters: F-E-A-R.

“I help people overcome their fear,” she pronounces, “because fear is the major obstacle to change.”

Every time I think, ‘I can’t learn,’ I should envision the traffic STOP sign. “You need to believe you can change.”

She was like a conference speaker giving a power point presentation, but instead of standing in an auditorium before a large audience, she was sitting next to a jukebox talking to me.

I could just end the session, give her the check and leave. But if I want a shot at something better, I have to believe that this disheveled, eccentric and distractible woman could help me somehow.

She lowers her voice and reaches out her hand to me. “Show me what you’ve got.”

I give her what started out as being an essay about my experiences trying to get out of having to pay hefty fines for overdue books to the Montgomery County Public Library, which had referred my account to a collection agency.  The story seems simple, but my thoughts are scattered, and the essay is turning out to be a Hodge podge of funny stories about getting bad legal advice from baseball moms and misplacing book returns in the donation pile.

I worry about her reaction, but every so often, she lets out a loud throaty laugh. Or she
stops to underline a sentence. “This is an excellent point.”  She moves closer in and confides in me. “Do you know how difficult it is to write a funny story like this one?”

I nod, painfully recalling many failed attempts at writing humor. Her words strike my fragile ego: I’m afraid to believe she thinks I’m a good writer. But when she begins drafting an outline of the story, I immediately object. “Outlines don’t work for me,” I blurt out. “I can’t organize anything that way. It’s just too many words.”

She pauses, perplexed. “Tell me the story about the library.”

I stammer at first, still flustered, having told the story dozens of times to friends and attempted to write it dozens more. But the sound of my voice as it steadies reassures me that I could go on, and I begin telling the story that I want to write, picturing in my mind’s eye events leading up to the confrontation with the librarian, describing the scenes with vivid imagery and humor.

The story I tell is well organized, and evenly paced. The tutor sees my eyes lighting up and begins drafting my story in a storyboard, a series of illustrations frequently used by film directors as a technique to visualize the layout of the scenes. Together, we fill in the panels, stick figure style, to depict the sequence of events. “We’ll first tell the story of what happened,” she explained, “and then go back and fill in background.”

The first panel shows a letter from the collection agency addressed to me, the second depicts people sitting by a baseball field. The third shows a stack of books under the word “donation.” Together, we build a story, one thought at a time. I’m no longer afraid my story would get lost if my mind drifts, my excitement wanes or my luck runs out.

At the next meeting a week later, I bring along a copy of the Corporate Relocation Survey 2009. I’m doing a write up of this survey for the next issue of a client’s newsletter. I’ve written hundreds of stories about the relocation industry, but I still agonize over whether to start the story by  describing the problem, summarizing the conclusion or presenting the findings.

The tutor groans when she sees the title of the report. She says she hates business writing and would rather work with me on essays or teach me to write fiction. But relocation is my bread and butter, so she snatches the document and thumbs through it. .

“What questions will this report answer?” she asks, drawing a question mark that takes up the entire page. “Write down ten questions.”

“What’s it about?” I ask tentatively.

“That’s one question. Write it down. What else?”

I’m thinking hard. Whom does it affect? I can’t think of anything else. And then: Why would anybody care? What are the findings? The questions are coming faster than I can write them down and my heart begins racing as my curiosity grows. How do spouses feel about having to move? What’s it like for the kids?

She then tells me to glance over the report and start out with whatever fact strikes my fancy. Eagerly, I thumb through the pages. I’m on a mission to find something specific, something insightful, and intriguing. And I find my lead: Companies find jobs for trailing spouses to keep their relocating employees happy.

Finding a lead to a news story and drawing a storyboard for an essay is easy when the tutor is across from me. On my own, the lessons were hard to implement. But when I lapsed into old habits, I pulled out our session materials. When panicked over the lead, I look at the question mark and I know what to do. When I’m lost in thought over an essay, I think about just the facts and that gets me writing on course.

Seeing the STOP sign helped me stop worrying that nothing will improve.

I only saw her for five sessions—long enough to know what I was doing wrong, but not long enough to correct the inefficiencies. I’m on my own now and it’s up to me to use those teachings to make the changes.

When I tell my son that I had seen a tutor, he looks up from his game boy and laughs. “You going back to school or something?” Is that notion that strange?

I found the copy of his Great Gatsby essay crumpled in the bottom of his backpack. Unfortunately, he and his tutor never had a chance to go over it.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Pimental
Inspiration piece

Invocations Before Spring Arrives
Dorothy Bendel
Response

Grace writes his name on a small, torn piece of paper with a Bic pen. She folds it twice, crisscrosses blue thread across the square she has made, sets it in a clear plastic storage container that is filled half-way with water, seals the lid, and places it in the freezer.

No harm. No harm. No harm.

The freezer lives in a kitchen that lives in a room with a twin bed and the front door to the apartment that Grace lives in. She is cold because she is not standing in front of the small heating fan pointed toward the twin bed. The thermostat is switched off to keep the electricity bill low. Grace spends most of her time on the bed, save for dashes to the bathroom – the only other room in the apartment. She wants to slip back under the quilt her grandmother made, to hear the squeak that the bed’s metal frame makes as she pulls her knees to her chest and submits to the whir of the heating fan. Instead, Grace slips into a long, black wool coat big enough for a woman twice her size, buttons up, and walks out into February.

Grace turns just enough to see if there is anyone to her right, and then to her left, when she comes to the first street corner between her apartment and the bus stop where she will wait in the frigid rain. She bends her knees and lowers her body so that the pennies and pink-papered candies that she releases from her grip will fall too softly for anyone who might pass by to notice. She drops pennies and sweets (slipped from a glass bowl in front of a bank teller’s window) at each intersection for seven blocks.

***

Mr. Bailey waits at the door of the Federalist style four bedroom, three bathroom brick home where Grace looks after Mr. and Mrs. Bailey’s son, Joshua. Mr. Bailey’s fingers tap the brass doorknob as he looks for Grace to come into view. He does not know that her third, and final, bus was caught in traffic.

I’m here! I’m here, Mr. Bailey!

Grace quickens her pace when she notices Mr. Bailey’s eyes widen once she is in his sights, nearly slipping on the petite white stones leading up to the tall, wide house. He calls for his wife.

Still asleep, Mrs. Bailey says before hurrying out with her husband.

Grace goes to Joshua’s room, where he waits in his honey-colored crib. A cluster of stars, surrounding a crescent moon, hangs over his head. She unbuttons her coat and lets it slide off onto the floor. She will put it back on before Mrs. Bailey arrives home at six o’clock.

Grace wants Joshua to wake up so she can hold him. She wants to feel his warmth and press her face into his neck – to take in the smell of baby powder and the sweet staleness of dried baby saliva. She wants it so much that Joshua stirs for a moment and then opens his eyes fully to look at her. Grace  picks him up and notices how much heavier he is than the week before.

Good morning, sweet Joshua, she sings before burying her face in his neck like she imagined. Joshua squeals and kicks his legs as though he is a tiny motor that will carry them off somewhere only babies know about. She strokes his legs and moves them to the side of her growing belly, so much bigger than the week before.

***

When the house is quiet Grace wonders if she should have gone about things differently. She should have dropped silver coins at the street corners. She should have used stronger thread. She should have used a bold, black permanent marker to write his name on the paper now frozen and suspended in the plastic container. She should have buried it in wet, dark earth far from where she lives.

Lisa Pimental
Out the Window
Response

Dorothy Bendel
At the Window
Inspiration piece

I’m envious of the potted plant that sits on the window ledge. It can move more than I can. It moves in increments, in ways most people would never have the patience to see. It reaches towards the sky and sprawls into corners, creeping beyond the space it is allowed. People cannot sit long enough to notice. There is something inside them that jolts the system, propelling them forward.

My wheelchair is planted, facing the pot full of leaves that splinter from a thick center stalk and burst out into a firework of green. Helen feels that it is good for me to sit in the sun’s rays, that I will reap some sort of miraculous benefit from exposure. Maybe I will get a tan for the first time in my life. Maybe it will reverse the paralysis.

A fly coasts through the open window and lands on one of the plant’s leaves that stretches out like a long, relaxed limb. They sway together in the wind, dancing. I used to dance with Helen even though I had two left feet. Thursday night lessons in a big red barn. I would have felt terrible for stepping on her toes so often if she hadn’t laughed each time, her shoulders bouncing with each eruption. Then my feet went numb, the deadness spreading up my legs, thickening and hardening. I can’t move my head far enough down anymore to see if my feet are even still there. I like to think they are waiting for me on the barn’s dirt floor.

The fly lands on my mouth. I move my eyes to look past my bumpy nose. I can see twitching hairs and two legs rubbing against each other like it is in the midst of plotting something sinister. I try to will my lips to move, to shoo it away, but some invisible hand has buttoned my mouth shut at the middle and left the corners to hang open, rigid.

I’m starting to lose sight of it now. I think it is going inside. What the hell does it want? It won’t find anything there, just something dry and empty that used to fill the silence with meaningless jabber.  Maybe it will fill the emptiness with its eggs. Warm, white, limbless things. Panic and chaos waiting to break through. Helen would find me, my face covered in tiny creatures, and think that I had finally gone.

I see the fly emerging now, out from the darkness. The jig is up. It has come to its senses and knows that its tricks are lost on me. No sustenance to offer its children from these thin bones. I hear  the soft whirr as it flies back to its lush green lady. The sun is dead center and as bright as it has ever been. The plant is reaching out her arms. I close my eyes and can almost feel her touch.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.