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Fences

White picket with peeling paint

I live in a rat-maze of fences

stone wall with monitored gates

Within each an indifferent house perches

wooden ply with only thin slits

Self secluded, those who subsist within

tall, thorny, black iron

Completing the rounds of normalcy

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Freewrite.

The five of us sat at our computers. The clacking of keys and the clicking of the mouse filled the room. A teacher sat in the room adjacent, mindlessly grading papers and reading the morning paper. His coffee filled the room with an aroma that made me feel warm and nauseous. I hate the smell of coffee in the morning.

“What are you writing about?” asked the girl with the blonde, wavy hair. She had a kind face, but her tone seemed odd, accusatory, demanding. I immediately closed my screen.

“Nothing. Just some stuff.” I couldn’t tell her about my story. She wouldn’t understand the fine nuances, the subtle shades that my words, my phrases, my meanings spread over the blank whiteness of a page. It was art, better than any painting or sculpture. It was beautiful because it was mine, both commonplace and individual; the same letters as everyone else but in a new, bold, and shocking arrangement. It stunned me.

But clearly, she took no offense. The blonde girl turned to the boy next to her. “Writing another snoozer, are you?” she asked with the same tone as

before. “I can’t wait to read about another thrilling baseball episode.” The room had changed. Her voice chased the coffee smell out of the room. My head was filled with nothing but the blonde girl beating the poor boy next to her with a baseball bat. I laughed in spite of myself.
“What are you laughing at?” The girl on my other side always scrunched her nose when she talked to me, as if I smelled of a sandwich with a bit too much mustard. She was very smart, but perhaps too likeable. Sometimes it seemed like she molded, as jello does, to whatever sort of person to whom she spoke. I put on my complacent smile and shrugged my shoulders. She had already turned back to her computer. How long had I been thinking?
“Well, I find baseball interesting. Frisbee’s not, but…” the other boy’s voice trailed off into a series of murmurs, probably about some string theory of baseball or some other incomprehensible statement. He was the quiet smart one. Most days, he didn’t grace us with responses to our questions, but when he chose to do so, his answers were sharp, quick, and final. He was something of a god to the class – often, people agreed with his answer merely on the basis

that he proclaimed it was correct – and his word was as good as that of the leading literary critics of the time.
This same boy had a large cowlick on his right side, and I could never quite help but stare at it. He spoke again. “What sort of story are you writing about?” He dove for the computer of the blonde girl. He missed horribly; clearly he wasn’t any good at baseball. The blonde girl easily pushed him back away from her screen.
“NO! This is a private reflection! You can’t just jump in and read it!” She covered the screen desperately with her hands and arms; her skinny limbs covered nothing, but her flailing hair blocked us all.
“Would you stop? I’m trying to be deep here.” This voice came low from the end of the row. The fifth boy was off on his own, writing some deeply provocative and insightful message to the world about his own experiences. I think I liked his writing the least, although he was something of a funny writer. He spared one more second to glance at all of us with a

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semi-threatening stare, but soon returned to his writing. It was clearly very important.

“Does anyone know what we are supposed to be doing?” Nose-girl asked to the class. Her question floundered in the air, and then died, falling flat on the carpet. She looked around and saw that no one was going to answer. “Do you know what we are supposed to be doing?” she asked me, catching my eye. Personalization of a question? I was so flattered. I gave her another shrug. Apparently she saw this one, because she continued talking to me.

“Well I just don’t get what the point of all this writing is supposed to be doing for me. I would rather study for Spanish. How much did you study?” A pointless question, but unfortunately, it couldn’t be answered with a shrug. She was waiting to her a small number, one hour, half an hour, ten minutes, not at all, so that she could feel better about her own lack of studying. My nose started to twitch. Thank God: a sneeze. I sneezed loudly, aiming towards the blonde girl. It worked perfectly.

I laughed inside, the giggles reverberating through my head. The sound of laughter is so much more brilliant when it isn’t wasted on others. An external laugh always seemed odd, misplaced, and rude,

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shattering the kind silence that I wished was maintained eternally. I came to. I lose myself in my thoughts at least five times a minute.

I suddenly realized that cowlick boy had been typing furiously while I was distracting myself from the task at hand. Free-writing, what a joke. I peered over at his screen:

“What does it mean to be infinite? Mathematically, it has to do with the idea of a limitless number. The inverse of infinity is zero, for dividing by a huge sum will approach zero, and there is nothing larger than infinity. Yet infinity has no mathematical value. There is no possible way to ask for infinity dollars as a wage. How can something literally worthless be larger than anything with worth? A mathematical paradox then.

But in life, perhaps infinity has more to do with the idea of an unattainable goal. We are taught from an early age through that silly movie about going to “infinity and beyond.” But what is beyond infinity? If infinity is truly never ending and simply one more than the highest number you could ever fathom (and then one more beyond that and one more…), how can you ever go beyond this end?

Why do we even need the concept of infinity?”

I looked around the room. The five of us were finally sitting quietly at our computers. I hate the smell of coffee in the morning.

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Prepare Yourself

For Monica Kelly

I was walking my dog all alone

when I saw Mrs. Jones up ahead.

“I heard about what happened,” she called,

“Buy a new ring and soon you’ll be wed.”

But she was the love of my life, I moaned:

and she’s marrying the department head.

“So woo some other young girl!” she replied.

“Fools rush in where angels won’t tread!”

Except I was fired by phone -

I've been living on wonder-bread.

“Well it’s high time you chase your dreams,

my boy, and start your own rock band instead!”

But my house got struck by a cyclone

and all I have left is a bed!

At this Mrs. Jones raised one eyebrow,

then giggled and turned apple-red.

And also, my tumor has grown…

She shrugged while a fresh tear I shed.

The prognosis is less than one week, I moaned,

unable to conceal my dread.

She talked to my dog while I groaned:

“There’s surely a bright side to being dead.”

That dog is almost fourteen, I remarked.

“Best prepare yourself,” she said.

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Bells of Slavery

I am a bell

But I do not ring

From a church's tower

Nor do I ring from

The hands of a caroler

Spreading joy.

No, I am the bells that jingle

At a man's ankles as he trudges

Through the mud.

For I am the chains which

Hold a free man captive.

I am the bells

Of slavery.

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Flocking

I.
I see Benu birds* flocking towards Key West
Fly together.

Why? – Are they not sure it will be warm
If they get there?

Perhaps, because when they’re alone reality might
Shatter.

II.
I see them flying in a V
Following He who is in front
As closely as possible so as to not break—
Away from the group.

III.
I see a River flowing. The Air— ticking.
I feel the rush of ink flowing into the River
From the veins of John, Mark and Paul (Grinning) –
Mortal men made Immortal, by being the first
To fly south.

IV.
I see Leviticus, long horns bared, nose flared,
Surrounded by his legion of screaming, red-faced angels,
Floating on a pen.
God— I wish he’d fall off.

*Benu Bird is an egyptian bird associated with origin

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The light gathered on the edges of the treetops, reaching down to the mist-covered ground below. It danced and sung in the autumn air with the strains of mist, those frail wisps of cloud, vanishing midway through its last two-step, lost now beyond the early twinkle of the rising sun. When the sun hit the blades of grass, the dew shook, shivering in the warm light. A small finch began crying, still tucked away in a pine tree’s branches. The sweet, soft sound of the bird’s melody mingled in harmony with the steady rush of water pushing its way through reeds, downed branches and overgrown grasses.

The wetlands were becoming brighter now, forsaking a cold, cloud-ridden day for one last glimpse at a summer disappeared. At the end of its journey summer was prepared to make one last stand against winter’s oncoming onslaught, hoping for the time of spring and rebirth when the sun’s light would gently warm the world. That light, those rays of brilliance, would become His light. And His light would be there to guide his children home.