October 2024 Flash Lit 10:3 - Elbow Grease

“What’s next, ankle butter?” Noah griped.

 

“They’re old, Noah.  You’re not supposed to understand them,” his brother Ryan said.

 

Noah, scrubbing at the hood of the blue Jetta with a sponge, kept muttering.  “Shoulder salt, knuckle sugar, wrist rub, back bacon…”

 

“Back bacon is a thing already,” Ryan said.

 

Noah did not throw the sponge at him.  “Knee jelly, hip paste, neck ketchup…”

 

“You’re running out of them, I hope,” Ryan said.  “And move.  I have the hose.”

 

Ryan rinsed off the car and began to towel it dry while Noah squeegeed the windows, whispering, “Eye cream, nose mustard, ear garnish.”

 

Whatever it was they used, their grandparents’ car shone at the end. 

October 2024 Flash Lit 10:2 - Elbow Grease

Elbow grease
won’t do it.
There will always
be more laundry,
weeds to pull
out from among
the potatoes,
places
in our hearts
that need more
tenderness than
we can summon
by hard work.
So, even as we shine
with exertion—
elbows, too—
we slide effortlessly
into grace
where we can rest.

October 2024 Flash Lit 10:1 - Elbow Grease

“Mag, how do you find anything in this kitchen?” Cate demanded, looking at the jumble of pots, spoons, jars, and boxes garnished with the occasional spider on the pantry shelves.

“I know where everything is,” Mag replied.

 

Cate doubted it, since Mag had a carrot stuck in her messy bun, but chose not to tell her.

 

“We’re doing this the traditional way,” Mag went on.  “None of this newfangled lab kitchen stuff.”

 

“You’re using a food processor,” Cate said.

 

“I said traditional, not fucking stupid,” Mag snapped.  “I don’t want to spend all day chopping and neither do you.”

 

The two worked in companionable crankiness for a few minutes, Mag at the food processor, Cate at the stove.  The timer beeped and Cate said, “All right, I need your stuff in here.”

 

Mag scanned down the ingredient list, muttering.  “I added the eye of newt and the baby’s tears and the llama hairs and the toad slime.  Oh shit.  I forgot the elbow grease.”

 

The witches looked at each other.  Finally, Cate said, “We’ll tell them it’s the new low-fat version.”

 

Mag smiled.  “That’ll work.”

October 2024 Flash Lit 9:3 - Achilles Heel

The heel wasn’t
the problem.
He came from
a broken home,
his mother easily distracted.
He had so much to prove.
He wore armor anyway,
shining with pride,
chinking with insecurity.
He could not bear
a slight.
And then there was
the grief.
The man had many
places he could be wounded.

October 2024 Flash Lit 9:1 - Achilles Heel

Gil grumbled at everyone and everything.  His back hurt.  His coffee was too hot and then when he waited a bit it was too cold.  The newspaper, in addition to being printed in miniscule type, was full of reports about violence and fear, environmental destruction, and an analysis of a loss by his beloved Forty Niners.

Dee ignored him placidly and spread honey on her toast.  Some got on her fingers, of course, so she licked the sweetness off.  Gil looked up from his paper and said, “How old are you?”

 

Dee knew he meant she was too old to be licking her fingers like a child, but she answered, “Sixty seven, just like you.”  She was a young 67, still trim, her hair mostly brown, but Gil was an old 67, wrinkled from smoking, bent with arthritis, callused by life.

 

He snorted and returned to his paper.

 

“You finish up now,” Dee said.  Peter and Susan are bringing JoJo over soon.”

 

“Do they ever take care of their own child?” Gil groused.

 

Again Dee ignored him.  Time with a two-year-old was the best thing she could think of.  Besides, she knew her son and daughter-in -law enjoyed having Saturday afternoon to remember why they loved each other.

 

Half an hour later, Gil still sat at the kitchen table with his newspaper and a fresh cup of coffee.  JoJo zoomed around the kitchen on the wheeled caterpillar she was rapidly outgrowing making motor sounds.  She crashed into Gil’s foot and he yelped.

 

The little girl jumped off the caterpillar, hugged his shin, planted a kiss on his fleece-lined slipper, and said, “Make it better.”

 

Gil scooped her up and she nestled under his chin.  “Yes,” he said.  “JoJo make it better.”

October 2024 Flash Lit 8:2 - On Tippy Toe

On Tippy Toe

It can’t be done.

No amount of jostling

the shoulders of the crowd,

no standing on tiptoe

to peek over the fence,

no divination

with orbs or bones

or coffee grounds

will give a real glimpse.

There is no map

because no one has walked

its twisting ways.

 

The only way

to see the future

is to let it come,

both bold and shy,

hopping like

a little brown bird

into the present.

October 2024 Flash Lit 8:1 - On Tippy Toe

“She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.” Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 4

 

Allie had to get on her tiptoes to peer through the knothole into the semi-darkness of the shed.  She would have peeped through the window, except it was curtained with an old blue bath towel and a thick mixture of spiderwebs and dust.  Going in at the door was also impossible because Cat had locked it.  Allie wanted to know why.  She also often wanted to know who, when, where, and how, but right now why was top of mind.

 

Cat didn’t seem to be doing anything at all.  She just sat there, knees drawn up under her chin, arms holding everything together like the string on a roast.  The unenthusiastic lightbulb overhead made shadows under Cat’s eyes, or maybe it just lit her face so Allie could see the dark places.

 

Allie felt her chest tighten.  All the questions stopped mattering.  She just wanted Cat.  She kicked at the shed wall with her dirty Keds and pounded on it with her fists.  She didn’t notice the splinters in her hands or the aching in her toes.  “Cat!” she wailed.

 

In motion, Allie couldn’t see Cat anymore.  Crying, she couldn’t hear, either.  It was not until Cat’s arms encircled her and held her tightly that Allie knew she was there.  “It’s okay,” Cat said to her sister.  “I’m here.  I’ll take care of you.  Don’t worry.”

October 2024 Flash Lit 7:3 - Turnip Nose

His nose is like a turnip.
His eyes are Brussels sprouts.
He has a carrot as a lip
That bulges when he pouts.
 
My love is made of produce—
Onions in him, too—
But better that than be a goose.
I love my Veggie Stu.

October 2024 Flash Lit 7:2 - Turned Up Your Nose

“Got your nose!” Poppa said.

Nancy giggled.

 

“It looks tasty,” Poppa said.  “Maybe I’ll gobble it up!”

 

Nancy shrieked, half hilarious and half terrified, as her grandfather made slurping sounds and then swallowed loudly.  “Delicious,” he said.

 

He grabbed his belly.  “Oh dear.”

 

Nancy watched anxiously.  He heaved and retched, hands to his mouth.

 

“I guess noses, even tasty ones like yours, don’t agree with me,” he said.  “I better put it back on.”

 

Nancy lifted her face and he gently squashed his thumb on the tip of her nose.

 

“It looks better there anyway,” he said and kissed it.

 

Grace, in her five-year-old wisdom, turned up her nose at all this.  “Poppa, you are too silly.”

 

“I love you, too, Gracie,” he said.

October 2024 Flash Lit 7:1 - Turn Up My Nose (by Pinnochio)

Of course it hurts, but what else can I do?  There is no other way.  Ouch.  No other immediate way, out of the mess I am in.  It’s either a little pain now or face the wrath of Dad and Uncle Jimmy.

I just want to say, it was not my fault.  Ouch.  Let me rephrase:  I blame Candy.  Is it my doing that makes her so beautiful, like flaming hot?  A boy has needs.  So I told her—I told her and that’s the truth—that I’d love her forever.  She couldn’t see the lie in the dark and I snuck out her window as soon as we were done.

 

Which is why I’m sitting in the 24-hour carpentry shop getting a nose job before I go home.  They turn up my nose for me, for a price, whenever necessary.

October 2024 Flash Lit 6:3 - Stuck in my hair

In the snapshot,
I am smiling,
held tight and high
in my father’s arms.
We are both
impossibly young.
His hair is dark and shiny;
mine has a giant
white bow stuck in it.

October 2024 Flash Lit 6:2 - Stuck in Their Hair

Zell sighed.  What a mess.  It was going to take forever to clean it up.  Even longer, if she didn’t get started.

Fine.  For the moment, she would ignore the disaster that was her hair.  She plucked a basket of fruit off the floor and put it on her table.  Ditto the cat food and the newspaper.  There was a scattering of junk mail, mostly promoting events Zell wasn’t going to go to or products she didn’t need.  The cat himself had made a nest in the clothes freshly back from the laundry.  He was affronted at being evicted.

 

“Go ahead and tell the old hag,” Zell said.

 

He stalked off, tail high and disdainful.

 

“Now,” Zell said to herself, “I just have to get the rest of this stuff out of my hair.”  She surveyed the tower room crowded with yards of tangled blonde hair.

October 2024 Flash Lit 6:1 - Stuck in my hair

“Is the spring stuck in your hair, or is your hair stuck in the spring?” Cece asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

Tess whispered, “Just fucking help me.”  This Pilates training course was not going well already.  The last thing Tess needed was for the instructor, always cool and smooth and graceful, to notice she’d got her hair tangled in one of the trap table’s springs.

 

Cece put her body between the table and the instructor and grabbed the heavy spring on either side of where Tess’s hair caught.  She yanked like she was opening a Christmas cracker, the coils of the spring released Tess’s ponytail, and all was well.

 

“Exhale as you extend the leg,” Cece said loudly as the instructor approached to see how this pair of students was doing.

 

Tess obediently let her breath out and pushed the bar up against the resistance of the damn spring.

October 2024 Flash Lit 5:3 - Hand over Hand

Hand over hand,
muscles stretching
and groaning,
the held breath:
the only way out
of the quicksand.

October 2024 Flash Lit 5:2 - Hand Over Hand

“See,” said Hal, “all you have to do is double your bet and add a little every time you lose a hand.  That way, as soon as you win, you’ve recouped whatever you’ve lost and won some, too.”

Matt snorted.  “You’re not very good at math, are you?”

 

Hal eyed Matt suspiciously.  “I’m good enough,” he said, and rubbed the back of his head.

 

“How many hands do you think you might lose in a row?” Matt asked.  “Ten?”

 

Now Hal rubbed his upper lip.  “Well, maybe, if things don’t go well.”

 

“If you started by betting $2,” Matt said, sounding just like a textbook come to life, dry and condescending.

 

Matt shifted.  “I was thinking more like $10,” he said.

 

“Stick with me on the $2 for now.  We’ll also leave aside the idea of you adding extra over doubling for now.”

 

Hal said, “I don’t need this kind of negativity.”

 

“You lose the first hand, so you bet $4 on the second,” Matt went on remorselessly.  “Then $8 on the third.”

 

“I can multiply by two,” Hal said peevishly.

 

“Then $16 on the fourth, $32 on the fifth…”

 

“Still not worried,” Hal said.

 

“The sixth would be $64, the seventh $128, the eighth $256, the ninth $512, and the tenth $1024,” Matt said.

 

“That’s,” Hal sad.  “That’s not right?”

 

“If you kept going and lost 15 hands, that would be $32,768,” Matt finished.

 

Hal slumped in the chair for a minute.  Then, perking up, he said, “But I’m going to win.”

 

“Hand over your wallet,” Matt said.  “You’re not going.”

October 2024 Flash Lit 5:1 - Hand over hand

This used to be easier, Jenny thought, as she swung hand over hand across the monkey bars.  I was lighter then.

 

She pictured her first-grade self in her little white-collared dress and the shorts she had stealthily put on underneath so her panties wouldn’t show when she hung upside down.  There were a lot of things she didn’t know then, but there were calluses on her palms from swinging bar to bar over and over.  It had been almost effortless, free, rhythmic.

 

Not, however, when she was learning to skip a bar, and then, eventually, two bars.  Every time she missed and fell to the tanbark below, she heard the jeers from the line of kids waiting for a turn:  “You fell in the hot lava!”

 

Focus, she said to herself.  Here in hell, the lava was real. 

October 2024 Flash Lit 4:3 - On the Tip of My Tongue

Sweetness lives
at the tip of the tongue,
so why
do words I don’t say
taste so bitter?

October 2024 Flash Lit 4:2 - On the Tip of My Tongue

Ellie’s cold nose touched my ankle and then just the tip of her wet tongue.  Two heavy paws thumped on to the edge of the bed.  “Down, Ellie,” I said.  “I’m not dead, just sleeping.”

We did this, or some variation, over and over last night.  Sometimes she checked on Brent; sometimes she accompanied the ritual with a little whine.  Once Ellie was reassured and once we convinced her that no, we were not going to share the double bed with her, too, she resigned herself to sleeping near her sister Izzy.

 

And then, when I got up this morning, there was the thunder of paws and barking.  It was either joy that finally I would stop being mostly inaccessible or a recognition that awake I might be a whole different person.

 

I redeemed myself for this disruption by providing breakfast.  And now they are snoozing at my feet.

October 2024 Flash Lit 4:1 - On the Tip of My Tongue

 

“It’s not like there are brain cells in my tongue,” Lou protested, tucking her hair behind her ears.

 

“It’s an idiom, idiot,” Cindy said.

 

“But it’s a dumb one,” Lou continued.  “Gut feeling turned out to have some basis in fact.”

 

Cindy turned a page in the book she was half-reading.  “You’re just mad that I remember.”

 

“Remember what?” Lou eyed her sister suspiciously.

 

“That you used to say you loved people with all your heart and lungs.”

 

Lou said, “It makes just as much sense.”

October 2024 Flash Lit 3:3 - From Head to Toe

The metaphor-makers
got it before
the anatomists.
Score one for the arts.
The largest sense
Organ in the body
stretches under the skin,
a network of fascia
full of receptors
stretching head to toe.

October 2024 Flash Lit 3:2 - From Head to Toe

It made my whole body tingle, but not in a good way.  It was the crackle of anger and disgust and shame pulsing from head to toe, plus an aching in my chest and a stomach threatening to reject all contents.  And I wanted to cry.

Yes, it was an extreme reaction, but I don’t think it was disproportionate.  The provocation was a guard tower with a place for a searchlight and soldiers with guns at Manzanar.  Those guns were pointed inward.  At Americans.  At children, for God’s sake.  The only difference between the people held at Manzanar and me is that they were of Japanese ancestry.

 

I don’t know when I learned that my own country rounded up thousands of people and put them in makeshift concentration camps for years, but it was not before college.  I grew up somehow believing that Americans were the good guys now that we’d gotten rid of slavery.  We valued all people from all places, whatever color they were.  I wish that had turned out to be true.  We cis/straight/white people have a lot to answer for.

 

Seeing the history of Manzanar in front of me, the bones of the sheds people lived in, the toilets without partitions or privacy, the photos of families mourning their sons killed fighting for a country that questioned their loyalty, was powerful and horrible.  Seeing what the people confined to Manzanar managed to make out of their horrible conditions made me marvel at the resilience of people.

 

We Americans can choose.  We can choose to face and thereby begin to transform our racist history.  We can continue to try to sweep our mistakes under the rug.  Or, as more than I would like to admit want, we can embrace and expand that racism.

 

Vote, people.  Like our souls depend on it.

October 2024 Flash Lit 3:1 - From Head to Toe

Fran looked in the mirror over the cracked sink in the bathroom.  She imagined the montage from all those movies.  There she was in the glass, the very picture of Before with home-cut bangs and a button about to shinny down a loose thread to escape from her blouse.

She saw herself wander into the massive department store—the kind that she was pretty sure didn’t really exist anymore—clutching the single correct accessory, a credit card.  A chic but kindly salesperson pounced upon her.  Scenes from the spa ensued.  Hair in a towel turban, cucumber slices on her eyes.  Toes splayed with rubber dividers, pink and smooth.  Snippets of hair on the floor. 

 

Then the dressing room:  the old clothes in a puddle on the floor while lacy underthings and fashionable everything flew through the air.

 

At the cosmetics counter, dabs of this and that adorned her skin until, with a last slash of red lipstick and spritz of Chanel Number Five, the salesperson pronounced her done.

 

The camera would pan up from the stilettos to the artfully tousled curls.  Head to toe, a new person.

 

In the films, no one ever had to pay that credit card bill.  Fran sighed and the button dropped into the sink and down the drain.

October 2024 Flash Lit 2:3 - Stretched to the Limit

Stretched to the Limit, or Myofascial Lines for Pilates

 

Twelve hours later

I know the superficial

fascia stretches, spongy

beneath my skin,

but the visceral fascia

holds its shape.

This is so my heart

won’t fall out

of my body,

even if it breaks.

October 2024 Flash Lit 2:2 - Stretched to the Limit

Marv was getting on Ellie’s last nerve.  Ellie knew it was metaphorical, and yet she felt like she could see the yellow-gray axon stretching across her chest and Marv bending it toward the floor so he could stand on it.

“On page four, I want the chart centered,” he said.

 

“But you said you wanted all the charts to be on the left for consistency,” Ellie pointed out.

 

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said.

 

“We have to finish today,” she replied.

 

“Maybe if you would stop arguing and make the changes…” he said, curling a lip at her.

 

The axon made a protesting twinging sound, but it held.  Until Marv insisted on changing the font for the captions six times and ultimately chose a highly unreadable script font “to class things up.”

 

The nerve, stretched to its limit, snapped, flinging Marv across the beige office in a shower of sticky blue goo.

 

Ellie was also propelled by the force of the recoil.  Her wheeled office chair scuttled backwards into a world where physics was also apparently dislocated because the chair whooshed around corners, up hills and down, until it came to rest on a lovely stretch of beach.

 

Ellie sighed with relief as the cool wind off the waves caressed her face.  A waiter in a white jacket appeared next to her with a silver tray.  “Your Nerve Pill, madam,” he said.

 

She took the cocktail glass and raised a solitary toast to Marv, wherever he had ended up.

October 2024 Flash Lit 2:1 - Stretched to the Limit

Marilyn eyed Derek suspiciously.  For one thing, he was young, still having the smooth, thick skin of a child in spite of his adult proportions.  Then there was the jargon.  He was on about chakras and asanas and mudras again.  Those were doubtless all useful thing—at least, Marilyn hoped so—but how could she tell from what he was saying?  And finally, there was the bracelet.  Marilyn knew it was narrow-minded of her, but she could not quite take Derek seriously because he was a man wearing wooden beads on an elastic string around his wrist.  It just looked silly.

But the doctor, nice, sensible, Dr. Chen, had suggested yoga in that way she had that was more like Marilyn’s mother’s if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you tone than Marilyn liked.  So here she was in her pale yellow track suit sitting on a mat that looked to be made of the same stuff she used under the wine glasses in the cabinet, except purple.  Why didn’t that stuff come in purple for cabinets?  That would be much more cheerful.

 

“Breathe in deeply.  Breathe out and let your thoughts follow the breath, clearing your mind.”

 

Right.  She was supposed to be paying attention.

 

Derek demonstrated how to put one’s arms in a prayer position, except that his arms were behind his back.  “This can help deepen the stretch in the chest and shoulders, arms, wrists, and hand,” he said.

 

Marilyn tried.  She really did.  Just like the time she’d tried to get into that shapewear tube thing for Ellen’s wedding.  But it was like wrestling an invisible python or something.

 

“Respect your body,” Derek said, glancing around the room at the class’s varying levels of success.  “Only stretch as far as you feel comfortable.”

 

There was a popping noise and then a rattle.  The elastic holding Derek’s bracelet together had snapped, dropping little wooden beads everywhere.

 

Marilyn got up, rolled up her mat, and headed for the door.  “I’m stretched to my limit,” she said.

 

She bought a cappuccino on the way home.

October 2024 Flash Lit 1:3 - Curled Up in a Ball

Curled Up In a Ball

 

Sleeping in fetal

whorl, I dream.

a photo booth,

a guy dancing

with a skateboard

on top of a cigarette

machine,

a line of oil tankers

can-canning

just off the beach.

The angel of dreams

clearly curled this

scenario into a ball,

hurled it at the

trash, and hit my

head instead.

October 2024 Flash Lit 1.2 - Curled Up in a Ball

“Well, shit,” said Bib.  “That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Mallie blinked.  “Do you think they’ll notice?”

 

“Of course they’ll notice!  Even they’re not thick enough to think this is normal.”  Bib paused, used the stick to scratch that unreachable place between her shoulder blades in a thoughtful way.  “The question is whether we can make it work anyway.  Here:  you take her feet.”

 

Mallie grumbled.  “She’s heavy.”

 

“Oh, fairy-up, you flutterhead,” Bib said.  “We don’t have to carry her the whole way.  And we don’t want to have to file an unhappy ending report.”

 

Mallie shuddered.  Management had a grim view of unhappy endings.

 

Both Bib and Mallie were sweaty and nearly out of fairy dust by the time they arrived at the castle.

 

“This better work,” Bib said as she swirled the stick through the air.

 

The dancing crowd parted with an amazed sigh and the prince hurried forward, entranced.

 

There, in the center of the ballroom, lay the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, curled up fast asleep and barefoot.

 

“Phew!” said Bib.  “Now let’s see if we can get yours to cut her finger on one of these shoes.”

 

The two fairies vanished as the prince woke the girl with a kiss.