Had the sudden urge to draw some of my old neopets. It’s been well over 10 years, happy with them.

At a holiday potluck I was cornered by a slightly drunken young man with blonde dreadlocks who said he recognized my voice from the radio. Before I could feign flattery he stepped up so close he had to look from one eye to the other just to see all of me at once. “Are you a writer?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I said. I’m not sure how he thought I get all this brilliant material for the radio if I’m not. 

Then he asked me a question that would get a man in my native state of Alabama slapped. “Do you write poetry?” 

            “I never touch the stuff,” I said, flinching as if he’d suggested we find ourselves a dark room and shoot up heroin. He started backing up and I thought I was going to escape, but he told me to wait there because he had something in his car he wanted me to see. “I’ve…you know… written some poems.” His car? This guy keeps poetry in his car, like a tire pressure gauge, or an umbrella, or extra napkins from Chick-Filet.

            Waiting for him to return, the idea of shooting heroin was looking infinitely better than having to listen to an inebriated wannabe poet read to me about the longings of his empty spirit or how his soul has been wrung dry as the barren desert because he must face a world that does not understand him. From the window I can see him rummaging in the backseat of a blue Hornet that honest to Pete is nearly as old as me. 

            When he emerges from the car with his hands clutching a ledger at least two inches thick with disheveled papers, I am looking for a back exit, but the room is crowded and the only way out is to sprint over two men sitting cross legged in the floor playing banjos. The poet returns with his string bound notebook over his head and announces to anyone listening that he will read his latest poems. I don’t know if this means he will read his latest seventy-four poems, in which case I will hack at my wrists with the plastic knife I have found left in a bowl of hummus, or if he will be merciful and release us before the New Year. Because this is a party of artists, all supportive of any creative endeavor, everyone gets quiet and faces are upturned in reflective contemplation. The banjos soften to a respectful background chorus and our poet begins.

            “My spine is made of eggs,

            strung like ancient planets to make the backbone of my spirit.”

            See, I knew there would be a reference to the word “spirit” in there somewhere. I steal a quick sideways glance at the woman next to me and she is agog. Now there’s a word no poet can be without, “agog.”

            “I stretch heavenward, agog, mystified, yet ever yearning,

 my fingers growing to meet the spring of universal waters that flows to the thirsty

tongue.”

            I should interrupt here and clarify that I do not hate poetry. In fact, I love it. I’m not sure what poetry has to do with this particular person at this particular party, but he is convinced nonetheless that what he is doing is somehow unclogging the universal sewage of groundwater that threatens to drown us all. In fact, this is his next line, something about “my true self unclogs the storm drain of the violent flotsam that is humanity.” I have to admit I like the phrase “violent flotsam.” It sounds like the title of a punk band my son listens to. 

            The poet, who shall henceforth be referred to as Flotsam, is theatrical. His locks whip about like extension cords on a dancing Christmas tree. He raises his free hand into the air, his poetry ledger clenched in the other. If this were my old Baptist church it would be the part when the preacher was accusing us of cavorting with Satan through the use of alcohol and impure thoughts and we were surely dancing on the flames of death if we didn’t repent right then and there.

            “…a bitter heart like a banyan seed, it looms, it swoons, it…has no end.”

            This is as close to rhyming as Flotsam gets. His eyes are shut tight and his hand floats down to this side like a shot dove. Finally, his head falls forward. We let out a collective sigh and applause bursts rapid fire around the room. This is a marvelously supportive crowd and everyone has imbibed sufficiently that I could have read the ingredients on a box of Little Debbie doughnuts and received the same enthusiasm. 

            “Oh, you should read one of your stories,” someone says. I think he is talking to Flotsam, but then I realize he is referring to me. I modestly decline, but this is a group of people for whom performance is demanded or you will looked upon as morally suspect, or worse, a Republican. 

“Oh, you don’t really want to hear me,” I say, trying to buy some time.

They all insist they do, and I even hear some requests for stories I’ve done on the radio. I can’t remember any of them. Finally I settle on the only one I think I can recall from beginning to end. It involves a boy, his dad, and a sick cow. As I begin it hits me that this room is at least eighty percent vegetarian. The story doesn’t involve slaughter, but this cow is a farm resource and nothing more. The story revolves around the bonding of the father and son that emanates from the ordeal of the sick cow, actually a better choice if I were sitting around telling a story to the Waltons or, even better, the Cartwrights. The cow gets better, the father and son put their bitter past behind them, and I added an impromptu part about the summer sun setting over their pick-up truck as they watched the mended cow meander back to the herd.

Flotsam is agog. He has tears in his eyes. This lovely, naïve young man who has likely never held a real job for more than two months in his life, loves this story, and he applauds my effort with such fervor that I am immediately ashamed. It is the clarity of heart that is so beautiful here, even if the art itself is best heard only at drunken parties. I have always thought the cow story was a good one, and I was completely sober when I wrote it. To see how much joy it has brought to this crowd makes me feel like the artist I’ve always dreamed I could be.   

Flotsam reads a few more poems and this time I applaud with gusto. Though he’ll probably be working in places that require a hairnet for a long, long time, he knows in his heart what he is, and I guess that’s what makes it all tolerable.

When I lived in America I was a regular on Spindale public radio in North Carolina. These essays are from my collection that aired on WNCW.

Cathy Adams was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first novel, This Is What It Smells Like, was published by New Libri Press, Washington. Her short stories have been published in Utne, A River and Sound Review, Upstreet, Portland Review, Steel Toe Review, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, among others. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop and now lives and writes in Xinzheng, China, with her husband, photographer, JJ Jackson.

Credit: /~Gama

Owner: aesare

It’s Flotsam Release Day!

It’s Flotsam Release Day!

#newrelease #fairytale #retelling #bigfoot #thebeeandtheorangetree

Ok, I know it’s been a hot minute since my last post, but I promise I had a good excuse! Actually, no. I didn’t. But I do apologize for being quiet for so long. And don’t worry; I have a few good posts lined up for you over the next several weeks. So stay tuned, and be sure to come back or subscribe for updates!

Monsters saved her for one fate. Can Rue escape to find her own?

Today I have such…

View On WordPress