October 13th, 1988

 

The girl with the curly blonde hair The girl who I think about late at night wearing her leotard and her Take Five dance studio costume. The girl who can do the no-handed aerial-cartwheel where she tucks her arms in to her shoulders like dual pyramids as she becomes suspended in the pond of the atmosphere above before landing perfectly. The girl I grew up with who my mom used to babysit who walked barefoot in my back yard capturing fireflies in transparent mason jars. The girl who is the cheerleading captain. The girl who, a filched decade later in my life, will serve as the inspiration for the daffy female protagonist of my thousand page tome of postmodernism. The girl who sat next to me on the Bleachers when she giggled and asked if she could call my house during her sleepover. The first girl I ever gave the digits of my phone number to when she asked if she could call my house during her fifth grade birthday sleepover and play an innocuous game called, “call a boy up and tell him a joke.”

 The girl who wears her cheerleading uniform to school on game days and does a series of backflips across the freshly linoleum mint of the gymnasium floor.

 The girl who tells you before Misses Reinhardt’s fifth grade year that she loves this song. That she goes home and dances to this song. That she just can’t get enough of this song. That at night, when she is all alone in her room, she gets up and turns on this song and jounces on her mattress thinking of the boy who sits next to her in class  

The girl who went to the purported rival high school in town where she was the cheerleading captain. The girl whose brother is your age and who was diagnosed with the same vile disease that stripped the breath of your father from his body only he was able somehow to beat it.

The girl whose kiss I tried to kiss by the deep sea blue of the stage curtain separating the gulping lip of stage from the remainder of the audience in spring only to find her somehow, looking back at me, her face the color of cheap wine cooler, hitting the ashen dome of her cheek bone, smiling...

If it isn't autumn and you are in fifth grade.

If It isn't... 

 

FUEL

 

 

Is the first bar on Main Street to herald a rainbow flag

Hoisting a shadow of flagellating pride

over the dead-tooth neon sidewalks

Overturned chandelier caricatured fingers

Reverberating subwoofers, lolling baritone

Dirge, Hopscotch of variegated strobe casting

Keyhole silhouettes

Genderless splotch

 Human beings gyrating

Cogs and pistons in a Caterpillar tractor

Dancing into the peach of dawn.

 

Fuel is the boys with short hair, tucked in white shirts

Sometimes wearing dresses and heels  and glitter

Salt and pepper shaker

Chafed genitals, vowels of the night

Finding yourself in every shot you slam at the bar

Angel on your tongue

Feather of your name.

 

Fuel is

The chromosome furl of an awareness ribbon

Limbs marching in stonewell stalks of denim,

 Knowing when to DV8

Into the side alley Underground  popping

Pomegranate seeds with Persephone like ecstasy

 

Fuel is the drip your smile creates

Every time it exhales

Dalliance of chemicals kissing diesel

Life breath with spring air.

 

Fuel is kindness of a proprietor

who buys drinks for patrons,

Another round for everyone

Courage to disintegrate the

flippancy of social barriers

last brick culled from the blockade in Berlin

 

and Fuel is the heat your body gives off

crackling in an incendiary nest

welts and flames,

swilled cognizance

 errant blink

diva’s bow, flicker applause

 punctuating heave

last breath knowing

that you gave

every sip of bottled

 oxygen for strangers

to stay warm.

 

 

--Todd Scholl

 

1966-2013

Anticipating rockin' out the stage at OPEN MIC POETRY READING at the Tartan Inn t'morrow showcasing the finest in contemporary verse including the ravishing rants of Hollye Green (who just published a new book of FIRES IN EDEN), the blistering beat sonatas of Kyle de Valk, the philosophical pandering's of Joshua Franz Stucko and Krista Buchanan, whose voice sounds like an angel trapped in an upside down shot glass....the event is free and all are welcome to come and perform, imbibe a quality craft beer, and wade in the narrative sea of voices caroling the stories we tell to somehow find ourselves....the event starts at 8pm...please come!!! (and Valena Jackson..thanks for the picture!!!)