Naked Writing

Write About Breakfast

I stand in front of my refrigerator for 5 minutes, sometimes 10, wondering what I can cobble together for breakfast.

My stomach rumbles like this_____________.

“What can I make with one egg, some margarine, leftover parm cheese and rice?”

New York 1 news is on in the background. All at once, I’m listening for Weather on the Ones, and for Pat Kiernan to say something snotty about the American Media.

“If I add some water to this orange juice, it will taste less sweet AND be healthier for me.”

I start to wonder what Pat Kiernan would eat for breakfast. Maybe he would make some waffles or french toast. Maybe he would drip syrup all over his plate in tiny dots and cut his cold butter in even rectangles.

(Love that Pat Kiernan.)

Maybe Pat Kiernan hates orange juice, prefers plum juice instead with a little bit of seltzer water. I could see Pat Kiernan standing at this kitchen table, tie tossed over his shoulder, trying not to get syrup on his chin.

Breakfast yesterday:

1 egg, three scoops of rice, a lot of soy sauce, and not enough orange juice

Breakfast today:

2 eggs, toasted raisin nut bread and water

AKR

City Burial (Write About Cold)

There was a lot of gray. I remember that many men wore gray suits and held gray, somber faces. I can’t remember much about the colors of that day—there probably were none.

His father’s head was full of gray. His mother’s head had none (Clairol perfect color perhaps?)

His sisters wore shades of black. Some pieces of clothing lighter than the others. Gray bars layered to mimic black.

The gray seeped into the air and the smell. I can’t really remember, but I think gray smells like the freezer when you first open it. Mostly, you can’t smell anything, but then if you stand there long enough, you’ll notice a hint of must among the frozen air.

The air was definitely frozen as we stood around his casket and the place he was to be buried. His mother placed her hand gently on his casket to whisper good-bye. I almost couldn’t stand it. It was too much pain.

There was snow mixing with dirt in the cemetery. I stared at this dirty snow as they prayed for his soul. They spoke words and threw flowers in the unfilled hole. As they lowered the casket into the ground, I couldn’t help but look at everyone’s faces.

Eyes shaded by dark gray tinted sunglasses. Gray tears. Gray and shaking hands. The air was cold, cold and gray. The feeling was like standing in place forever. Then, there was nothing left and we moved on.

AKR

Write About Something New

There was no familiarity in anything. Touching your ear and nose and neck was all new. No memorized crevices or comfortable spots. Each reaction was new. I didn’t expect you to breathe like that. Or moan like that. Or look at me like that.

I wanted to see what it felt like to do something new with someone I’ve never known before. It’s awkward because there was no choreography. Each move was improv and each step felt like it could be wrong.

I think we almost fell off the bed at one point.

There was no way to understand when it was ending or what was beginning. I was only sure that each thing was new. New eyes staring at my old body isn’t an easy thing for me.

My birthmarks aren’t new, nor my scars.

Your pauses were new. Your silence and fingerprints and saliva. Your lips were new. Your hair tickled and your face said everything I never knew. It was new, we knew. But it wouldn’t be new forever.

AKR

Afternoon Snack

It looked like a slug. The dollop of hummus that fell onto her keyboard while she ate lunch and read the paper online.

It made her jump.

It made her wonder where the slug could have come come from. Did a mama slug get lost on its way to Rancho Cucamonga or perhaps Des Moines? Little slug eggs strayed on their way to birth—Found in a bathtub, then squirted onto this laptop.

(What could lay these eggs?) Had this slug been incubating for months, waiting for just the right moment to surface and scare a poor, hungover girl while she avoided doing work? She stared at the hummus. Took her finger, wiped the dollop off the spacebar and ate it.

AKR

Crooked

It was as good as anything.
I was a little disappointed,

It’s entirely believable to believe this
Hear the sound of the vase.

She wore a gray suit and would say,
“Flowered dress around productive routine,”

Then it was okay. She smiled and you respected it.

She’s my affair with that bubble,
A finely shaped skull. Very common.

What happened to that white cushioned room
and the parsley under the knotted-up lap?

Disappeared. High forehead. Slight body recession.

Jeans, pointy—
She dressed like a small nose.

“No, no, I—”
The tape recorder wrote mainly from side to side

Wide gray eyes, glasses that sat.
“But you seem like tea?”

God, this is a slice of pastry. Same with poetry.

Tree or two. More often their cutlet and the cut—
A pocket in what I meant. What I know, it’s fact.

“Let me explain: noon the machines.”
She hardly feels the hallway.

Then the stanzas.
I sat crookedly on her,
I modeled floating in it Clusters of tiny cranes and bulldozers

Nothing happens in the tele—
Quiet and a moment
Who do you think you know?

Dumb fucks. I, Iowa, so
Poets paint nudes
Handsome women grinding down below

So here I am, muffled by umm
Cleaner than shit-black soil, treated like a couch
And spread sexually. Change here? Yes. Way to be real assholes.

She was molested as himself, thinking about his third wife now.
Smoking gives him red shoes and words, “Girl World.”
Boardinghouse carrying a small rock’s ass.

I publish what I can.
My first meeting the generous expanse.
“Not now,” she said, gazing out. Read the words.

Become contemptuous.
Can I myself? Which is a lot.
An indecipherable picture, pause—

AKR

Charlie the Perv

I saw a disgruntled banana rowing with one broken oar in Prospect Park the other day. He turned and turned in circles as the geese and ducks swam to the edge of the lake to pick up bread crumbs. He cursed out loud in a strange berry vernacular. Shit became strawberries. Fuck figs. Assholes apples.

“I hate this strawberrybag apple figging up my boat ride!” he yelled into the clouds as he threw the damaged oar overboard.

I contemplated helping the banana (whom I renamed Charlie in my head), but was having too much fun watching him flail about. Charlie attempted to use his left leg to supplement the lost oar. His awkwardness resembled a video still from some kind of softcore porno created for sailing fetishists.

Only then did I notice that Charlie wasn’t wearing any pants.

“Do bananas wear pants?” I wondered to myself. “Or is this just some perv in a banana suit?”

AKR

a love story

An amazing thing happened today: He became my somebody and I became his. What I wrote when we first met: it’s cold outside and the bed is too large. This room is empty and it’s missing a night light.

Every time I close my eyes, I see the scratches from my pupils. Lightning bolts in my eyelids. The absence of light makes it easier to see. There are 5, maybe 50 scratches.

I forgot how much peace there is in contentment. Something is happening and I’ve no idea what it is.

What I wrote when we first met: Let’s never find that place again.

I remember trying to write love stories. Tried only because I needed to feel that feel. Feel it enough to stop feeling the feel.

Instead, I just got felt up.

Tomorrow is only love stories.

AKR

Painting ballerinas

The bus is driving 15, maybe 20 miles per hour (maybe 60?). The dashes on the road move in slow motion. Daaaaash. Daaaaash. Daaaaash. The ballerinas in the painting are hungry. Poised in forever plies.

The left one has eyes that say, “Will you bring me a Snickers bar? Please?”

The original paint by numbers code called for purple in the background, but the artist, in an uncharacteristic show of defiance, chose to use blue instead. With that one liberating choice, he proceeded to make even more decisions regarding the  ballerinas, defying those oppressive paint by numbers dictators.

Brown hair instead of blond. Red lipstick instead of pink. It was incredibly satisfying.

It lead, eventually, to making decisions in real life: Wheat or rye? Wheat. Over easy or scrambled? Poached. Girls or boys? Both. (As many as possible.)

He found that previously crippling decisions were just as easy to manipulate as the previously predictable code.

AKR

Good-bye

Dear __________,

I’m writing to submit my resignation. In two weeks, we’ll no longer bicker about the arbitrary placement of commas, the lack of lookie-loos, the quiet emptiness that creates a distance now too large for us to connect with one another. I’m not sure if it’s your age or hair color or social status but we never did connect. The closest we came was after his death. Your wisdom, experience, and hair color came in handy. You lived through something similar, actually, something far worse than similar.

You know what it is to say good-bye—to wake up the next day and continue living life as though none have ever ended. You have immense strength. I have learned from you. It is not easy doing this, saying good-bye. Every time I do it, I feel a walnut in my stomach. I’m a glutton for guilt.

As you know, we will keep in touch (we always do). It will be like before, only with more time in between.

—Until one day we think to ourselves, “When was the last time I saw her? She was wonderful.”

AKR

Frustration

Donna had been trying to untie this knot for 10, no, 20 minutes now. She pulled at the knotted yarn with her teeth. (Incisors to strings, some saliva catching and drying on the individual strands). Maybe if she ripped right though it, the stubborn twists would come undone.

She held the yellow, green and red ball in her lap, the freed strings laying flat across her right thigh. Donna’s untied hair kept falling down into the knot, into her lap, making the process that much more irritating. The arms on the clock moved derisively forward: 7:01. 7:02…

It was Sean’s fault. He had given the strings to the cat, a gesture of friendliness between two enemies. Snickers pawed and leapt at the yarn until it became entwined with itself three, four times over. Donna had come home, ready to start her scarf project. Perhaps it would have included some decorative fringe, if there was enough yarn left.

The knot was a messy gnarl of loops, twists and curlicues. Every spiral she managed to straighten only lead to another tangle to unkink. It took patience and precision to pry the pieces of string away from itself. Her fingernails were starting to hurt.

Donna cursed and accidentally dropped the knot on the kitchen floor. Snickers leapt quickly. Donna wanted to kick the cat. Instead she walked into the living room and yelled at her boyfriend, “Sean! You owe me some new yarn. Get your ass to Michael’s.”

AKR