Last night, me, my sisters and a couple friends drove to Buffalo to see Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. It was a free show! Which I still don't believe. It was wonderful. The weather was a bit chilly but other than that, I had no complaints. Alexander, Jade and the rest of the band were very nice/welcoming/close to each other and the crowd. Their set neared almost two hours long but it flew by. They all seemed so intimate on stage together. It was more of a collaboration or a poetry reading or a group of friends playing music for the hell of it rather than a show. I think I enjoyed it so much because it was evident that they genuinely had a love for the music they played and enjoyed doing it. Before playing each song, Alexander would announce which band member wrote the song so the crowd would know whose work we were about to hear. They were all extremely talented and it was a wonderful thing to experience their music live--definitely one of my favorite shows.
Besides the show, I've been trying desperately to write new poems/stories and read more from my stack of books. It's so difficult to get motivated in the summer. Everything is so lax, no deadlines, no stress. It messes up my normal writing flow. But me, my sister Courtney and my friend Josh have concocted a plan in which we are going to show new material to each other every Friday to kick-start our productivity for the summer. Today (finally!) I finished a poem. It's brand new, so undoubtedly very raw, very rough right now, but I thought I'd share it anyway. Any comments/critiques would be very helpful. It's nice to have a new set of eyes on my writing. So here it is.
FOR THOSE UNSURE OF WHAT THEY WANT
She walked through the door without knocking.
She started doing it a few days ago after he told her
he didn’t like surprises. In one hand was a McDonald’s bag
crumpled between her fingers and in the other, a half eaten parfait.
“Hey, how are ya?” she asked, sitting down and throwing
the bag on the coffee table. He knew she would leave it there
until he threw it away.
She was nuts.
He knew this but kept allowing her to come over.
“I’m fine.” Her hair looked different.
Lighter. As if she’d been spending a lot of time outside.
“You?”
She shrugged in response. Leaning against the arm
of the couch, she ate the remains of the parfait.
After she had sufficiently scraped the bottom
of the plastic cup, she slowly extended her arm out in front of her
and dropped the spoon to the carpet in an exaggerated fashion.
She would leave that there too.
There was something else in her movements though,
something he couldn’t quite determine. Like desperation, but not.
She turned to him and smiled.
He hated when she smiled. The way one of her front molars
turns slightly inward as if to hide behind the other.
Her lips thick, pink, pleading attention. The way the skin
under her eyes lift themselves up to be closer to her eyelashes.
He thought, Maybe that’s why I keep her around,
but discarded the thought because it was ridiculous.
They sat in silence for quite a while
like they do on occasion. She stared at her toes
spread and close and spread and close against the edge
of the table. He was attempting to read the next paragraph
from Chapter 3 of the General Physics book he had to read for class
but kept looking at her toes.
“Hey, can you stop that?”
“Stop what?” she said without taking her eyes from her feet.
He sighed and shut his book. “So what do you want to do?”
She turned to him, flipped her hair across her shoulder.
“How about a movie?”
“Okay.”
He got up and rummaged through the plastic storage bin
containing the few movies he owned, most uninspired,
most there for entertainment but those are the ones he liked.
“How about Pirates of the Caribbean?”
“Which one?”
“The first one.”
“Okay.”
He slid the disc into his Xbox and sat back down on the couch.
She scooted across the cushions until she was next to him
and laid her head on his shoulder.
He thought, You feel warm, but didn’t say it out loud.
“I think you’d be a good husband.” She said while Jack Sparrow
and Will Turner were sparring.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Come on, I’ve only known you two weeks.”
“I’m not saying you’d be my husband. Just someone’s husband.
And you’d be good at it.”
“Why do you think I’d be a good husband?”
“You have strong arms.” She reached over and pinched the skinabove his wrist. “And you don’t get angry.”
“I get plenty angry sometimes. You’ve just never seen it.”
“Don’t lie. You’re incapable of getting mad.”
“Just watch the movie, alright?”
By the time the end credits rolled, she had fallen asleep
on his lap. He looked down at the profile of her face—
her mouth slightly open, a few strands of blonde hair
falling against her forehead, her skin pale
underneath the fluttering black and white light
from the TV screen.
He leaned his head back to sleep, thinking about
how fragile she looked.
He woke to the sound of his neighbor’s drum set.
His head felt heavy, awkward. She had already left.
He leaned forward, rubbed his eyes, adjusted his eyesight.
The empty bag and plastic cup were gone.
Dust settled on the couch like barnacles.
The drumming stopped.
