It’s Quadrille Monday over at the dVerse Poets Pub! Today our prompt is the word, glow.
∞
That exquisite glow
in your velvet-brown eyes —
even the flecks of amber sparkle
like topaz bathed in moonlight.
I try to imagine
what thoughts may evoke
such magic,
but it is quite
impossible
considering
it has nothing
in the world
to do with me.
Today at MindloveMisery’s Menagerie we are asked to write a story or poem in which opposites attract. Here’s mine:
∞
Theirs was the kind of love that even Calliope could not charm into verse. Though inspired to the brink of madness, troubadours were graceless to make melody of it.
Simply, it was its own symphony.
Universally taboo, yet pure in its essence. Unnatural and inescapable. Illogical, inexplicable and endless.
**
At first, both families thought it was rather sweet: a puppy love, a curiosity, an infatuation that would surely wane. They viewed it as a mere “jumping the fence” phase that some kids go through.
But it wasn’t.
Rather, as time passed, this all-encompassing desire and devotion flourished. It grew beyond even itself.
“What will people think?”
“What about children? Think about what they’d look like and the living hell their lives would be! You could never…could you?”
“Think about your future…Please, stop this now, while you still can!”
On more than one occasion, either family would move across the country in an attempt to quell the sweet sting of Cupid’s misguided arrow.
No matter. Even when separated by miles of interstate, the hapless inamoratos always found their way back to one another. Vladimir and Vivienne were two halves of a whole; one was the missing piece to the other’s puzzle.
Eventually, the families acquiesced, but on one condition:
Vladimir, the Russian Wolfhound, would be neutered and Vivienne, the Maine Coon, would be spayed.
So you see, in the end, love conquers all, as true love is wont to do. This is why it is so important to make sure our pets are spayed and neutered.
It’s the Sunday whirl #434! Below are the words we are to use:
Lana shuffled out of Bob’s Basic Bar, bereft of cheer. Since her divorce — coupled with the death of her parents, every day was lonely, but the holidays seemed to rub it in. Watching people who had families and loved ones, reminded her of the way life once was and will never be again.
Deep in her soul Lana felt the familiar surge of despair. Her stomach churned in protest of too much Chardonnay and not enough food. She’d forgotten to eat again and promised her empty stomach a grilled cheese sandwich when she got home.
The streets were deserted; the only footsteps she heard were her own. Steam rose from the manhole covers and she wished it would swallow her up. Sometimes, if she’d drunk enough and her eyes were unfocused, the swirling steam took on ghostly shapes. When this happened she’d wish it were someone from the Other Side letting her know they were okay and still waiting for her, but no dice. It was just plain old steam.
It was a clear, cold night and the stars glittered like rhinestones decorating the midnight sky. Mesmerized by God’s (or whoever’s driving this crazy bus) handiwork, Lana tripped over an uneven slab of sidewalk and kissed the dirt of someone’s dead garden.
She glanced around to make sure no one had seen her fall, and they hadn’t. For a brief moment she wished someone had, and would rush over to help her. It had been a long time since she’d felt the touch of another human being.
Lana pulled herself up and brushed off her jeans, fighting back the sudden onslaught tears. Luckily, her apartment was just across the street. Once inside she could cry as long and hard as she wanted.
But then, through her tears, Lana saw the silhouette of her three cats in the living room window, waiting for her. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Sometimes, blessings come in the form of hairy folk with four legs and a tail. Lana thanked God for each of them.
“Hey, Abdul!”
“Hey guys, what’s up?”
“Where’ve you been all summer? It’s the first day of school and we never even got to hang out!” Habib complained.
“You’d never believe me.” Abdul shook his head with a wry grin. “It’s too…amazing.”
“Sure we would. C’mon! Give it up!” Ali urged.
“Well, okay.” Abdul shrugged. “My dad had to go to Cairo on business, and…”
“All the way to Cairo?” Habib interrupted. “That’s exactly 313 miles from here!”
“I know,” Abdul replied. “It’s a three-day camel ride, for real.”
“He took you with him? And you went by camel?” Habib inquired, removing his glasses.
Abdul sighed. “Yes, he took me with him, and no, we didn’t ride camels,” he explained. “‘A three-day camel ride’ is an expression, you know?”
“Will you shut up and let him talk?” Ali was impatient. “You ask the stupidest questions, Habib.”
“Geez! Sorry!” Habib busied himself wiping the fingerprints from his glasses, muttering under his breath.
“So what happened in Cairo, Abdul?”
“Well, my dad was in meetings most of the time, so I had…”
“Meetings? What kind of meetings?” Habib finished with his glasses and was now digging in his ear.
“For those CamelToes™ jeans he designs. They turned out to be a really popular all over the world! Almost every woman wears them, from what I understand, because guys like ’em.
“They do?” Habib inspected the ball of earwax he’d rolled between his thumb and index finger. “Why?”
“Really, Habib?” “Really?“
“Now, what?” Habib flicked his ball of earwax at Ali in irritation.
“Do you guys want to hear the story or not?”
“Go ahead, Abdul.” Ali said, shooting Habib a warning glance.
“Pfft!” Ali stuck his tongue out at Habib.
Abdul cleared his throat. “Okay, so my dad was in meetings a lot and I got bored. So, he told me to go play in the desert.”
Habib opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it.
“The desert was just as boring as CamelToes™, until…”
“Until what?” It was Ali’s turn to interrupt. Habib cocked an eyebrow in satisfaction.
“Until I found…a spoon!”
“A spoon?” Habib couldn’t help himself. “What’s so great about a spoon, and how did one wind up in the desert?”
Ali waved Habib’s comment away and waited for his friend to finish.
“Remember how we used to try to dig a hole to China in our sandboxes?”
“That doesn’t work, you know.” Habib piped up. “You don’t end up in China. You end up in very south of the Pacific Ocean halfway between Adelaide, Australia and Buenos Aires, Argentina.”
“What are you, Habib? A walking world atlas?”
“More or less.” He beamed with pride.
“ANYWAY…for lack of anything better to do, I started digging, spoonful by spoonful. I dug for hours. It was so hot; man, was it hot. Sweat was pouring off of me, but I kept digging, and digging, and digging. And just when I was about to give up…” Abdul paused for effect.
“What? What happened?
“Yeah, C’mon. Tell us!
BRRRRRRNNNGGGG! BRRRRRRNNNGGGG! It was the school bell. Class was about to start.
“Darn it! We gotta go in. I’ll finish telling you guys at recess.”
“No, now.” Ali said. “I gotta know what happens!”
“Yeah, just say it real fast.” Habib begged. “Please?”
“See you guys at recess!”
With that, Abdul trotted off to class—hoping he could think of something ‘amazing’ to tell them by recess.
It was a time when Polak jokes ran rampant and I didn’t want to be one of them.
As a kid, I found my Polish heritage to be a source of embarrassment rather than pride. Our neighbors were the Butlers, the Johnsons, the Millers, and the Jacksons. My surname stood apart in its wild morphing of two incompatible letters from opposite ends of the alphabet—a “C” and a “Z”—guaranteed to slide the Mayflower-arriver’s tongue into spasm. And, to put the final shred of cabbage in the pierogi, my defiant last name finished up with a vowel which, mysteriously, seemed only tolerable if you were Italian.
My playmates had stick-straight blonde hair while I sported a mop of unruly dark curls. Myron Floren’s In Heaven There is No Beer and Too Fat Polka blasted loud and proud from our house in the suburbs when The Polish Cousins came in from the city to visit. Exotic aromas of Kielbasa, Pierogi, and Galumpki permeated the neighborhood. One time cousin Stosh (Stanley, had he been American) delighted us with a batch his homemade kidney stew— tainting S. Hickory Drive’s Anglo-aromas of fried chicken and meatloaf with the hot reek of an August Port-a-Potty.
The next day: “Do all Polaks drink piss?”
Oh, yeah. The neighborhood kids were a laugh riot.
Christmastime was special. The parties were usually hosted by my parents since my dad had built a family room large enough to accommodate The Polish Cousins, eight Polish-American aunts and uncles, and their families. What a wonderful mob! Myron Floren took turns with Perry Como and Dean Martin spinning ’round on the blue plastic record player as everyone danced, mixed high-balls and sang along.
Later, after the adults had acquired the necessary buzz, one of my portly uncles, Nick or Mac, would don a Santa Claus suit. He then would swagger-stumble from my parent’s bedroom through the kitchen and into the family room, thundering, “HO-HO-HO!!! Yak zhee Maszh!!” (Polish for “How are you?”). It never failed: the raucous Polski Santa would “HO-HO-HO’!!!” at least one of the younger kids to tears and damp underwear.
Not remarkably, the traumatized child’s angst only worsened when we veteran Polski Party attendees revealed the identity of the Polski-Santa-uncle. Admittedly, for the kid who was not in the know, his or her first Polski Christmas could easily knock the stars from one’s eyes. The inebriated Santa in my family room was a startling contradiction from the refined Santa at the mall. One by one, Santa would pull us onto his lap, and give us a crinkly gift and a bourbon-breath hug and let us go. Once a kid got used to it, it made for a happy Christmas memory and fun fodder for writing assignments.
After The Polish Cousins and the rest of the crew had departed for the city, my dad and one particularly hard-drinking uncle partied on. Swaying and crashing into one another like sloppy sailors, they’d try to sing On the Good Ship Lollipop and We Three Kings. So what if they didn’t know all of the words?
No one was listening but me.
Mom was in bed asleep, but I lay awake; ears straining to catch a drop or two of what drunk adults natter about when kids aren’t around. To my chagrin, Dad and my uncle babbled in unison. In Polish. So I fell asleep.
My people had come from Poland and immediately and politely assimilated. They’d learned English quickly, but held fast to Polish language and culture, making sure their children were armed with both alphabets and knew how to use them.
My people had always known exactly who they were and are, while as a woman of a certain age, I remain on the verge of “Susan.”
Ergo, the Ogre 