From Our Writers

Crossroads

The following is by Writer’s in the Grove member, Lorelle VanFossen, inspired by Prompt: Three Random Words with Same First Letter and Share. The prompt was to write down three nouns that start with the same letter and have nothing to do with each other, then pass them to your neighbor for the writing prompt. The words were truth, trouble, and transition.

She stood at the crossroads of her life as well as the intersection of Hindspitter and Fredricksville Roads, next to her car, a boring, blue Mazda like millions of other broken down, boring blue Mazdas on the road over the past twenty years, ignoring the steam hissing from its tightly clenched jaws. She chewed a broken thumbnail, the result of five minutes trying to force open those jaws to inspect the damage. It remained closed, as did her options for rescue.

Her cell phone gave up contact with civilization about 5 miles ago. Sarah stood in the middle of nowhereville rural Oregon, on the eastside where rain rarely visits. The old junker barely made it over the pass and couldn’t cope with the rising morning temperatures, and neither could she. She gave up on the thumb and ran a sleeve across her forehead. It didn’t help.

With no car in sight, the truth was life looked as bleak as these roads. She had 20 minutes to either magically repair her car or get rescued to make her job interview in Fredricksville. This was a long way to come for a job, but there were few options left closer to Portland. Fifty-six job interviews in six months since losing her high school teaching gig, it must be a world record. Job hunting was expensive. With no wand or wizard in sight, she could hear even more money sliding down the hole in her already empty wallet. Damn car.

A vulture swept down and landed on the Hindspitter street sign and hissed at her.

“Wait your turn, buddy,” she glared at him. “I still got some fight left.” She leaned back against the overheated vehicle and closed her eyes against the relentless sun, considering her lack of options.

Who names a street Hindspitter? Was there a family who owned this hunk of desert, or some unfortunate who died along the wagon road, his name forever immortalized with a blue road sign? Hindspitter. Imagine introducing yourself. “Hi, I’m one of the Hindspitters.”

The car hiccuped and spat a new burst of steam out the front grill.

She sighed and replied, “Wrong end.”

The Book

The following is by Writer’s in the Grove member, Bev Walkler, a poet, author, painter, and family historian.

It laughs, it cries, it shouts, it sings,
  and makes no sound at all
It’s a photo, a painting, a place to live
  you can hold in the palm of your hand.
It holds everything you can ever imagine,
  and sees nothing.
It has no hands or feet or brain
  to do what it proclaims, still
It builds a house, makes a quilt, sees an atom,
  takes you to the moon.
It comforts, cajoles, strikes terror, or peace,
  Depends on what you put in it.
It is the still small voice
  of all there is, was, or ever will be.

The Writing Exercise Instructor

So what do you do when the prompt of the day to write a 100 word sentence gives you lemons? What I do is not make lemonade, but rather to pick on the teacher. This is my complex sentence:

At the beginning of the class, she said to simply write a single sentence of 100 words, she then paused after her bold statement, with a wry smile and her signature dancing eyes behind those modern style corrective lenses, highlighted the teacher, the do-er, the know-er requesting a task from the writing group staggered around the make-shift tables, her contained zest for the mere notion of the writing prompt danced about visibly thus belying the fact her ideas could not stay internal as she said to the group to go start writing before she bowed her head to her computer terminal and began her own exploration of just what the writing prompt meant to her.

118 Words

Meeting Our Selves

The following was written and submitted by our Writer’s in the Grove member, Ralph Cuellar.

Our “selves” are like spirits
Until we meet in the flesh
and misunderstand each other
When we’re offered information
we’d rather not accept
When we’re confronted with alternate
versions of our dreamed reality.
Our external world is like a series of
collisions in a bumper car amusement ride.

Lost Child

The following is by Veronica Weeks-Basham, a member of Writers in the Grove. It was inspired by Prompt: Being Brave.

I have decided that I don’t exist.
That person died when my parents refused to accept or even see
The person that I was discovering myself to be.
That person, like the mythical Atlantis,
Sank beneath a sea of criticism, disregard and approval
When my being reflected back their own comfortable version of themselves.

Possible

The following is by William Stafford, a member of Writer’s in the Grove.

He really did believe it could be possible.

He had been collecting possible all during his 70 plus years. He had stacked them in the corner of his room and the stack was about 4 feet high. The weight must be considerable.

He was always wanting to dig through it, but had a hard time. There wasn’t any light in the room, except for the light coming through the small gap at the bottom of the door and when that light was out it was a black, black place.

He knew that the basis of his possible was prejudice. He also knew that common consensus was prejudice was synonymous with racial problems, well he thought that was sin ominous. Prejudice was learned and perpetuated by all of those surrounding the younger generations and through actions and words planting bad seeds. We can be prejudiced with food, politics, weather, color, smell and almost anything else that we face daily.

What he wished for was a new plan.

He wanted everyone in the world to get a box and each morning write those things that they were prejudiced about, on a piece of paper. Vow not to be that way today. Fold that paper and put it in the box. At the end of each month everyone in the community met at a central location and burn those boxes. He hoped the heat would sooner or later end prejudice and end his search for possible.

The Car Had a Mind of Its Own

The following was written by Writers in the Grove member, Lorelle VanFossen, inspired by Prompt: The Haven, to write an anthropomorphic description of something.

The car had a mind of its own. Warm morning starts were appreciated, purring with the welcome strokes of affection. Cold mornings were greeted with angry whines, coughs, shutters, and sighs, none too eager to leave the comfort of the cave.

On the flat, it raced and roared, a lion exploding from a crouch among the grasses with a burst of speed, seizing the nape of the road with blood thirsty glory.

Hills made it gasp and wheeze, an old man dragging himself, cane in one hand, banister in the other, up each dreaded step, questioning each one, evaluating the true reward at the top.

Downhill, I swear the car held its arms over its head and shouted “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” like a child tearing down a wintry hill barely holding onto the cardboard under its body. Downshifting to control the free fall brought little result save billowing clouds of blue smoke out the back in protest of being called home for dinner when there was fun still to be had.

The job of the little car was to get me there and back safely. It took its responsibilities seriously, never letting me forget how hard it worked for me. Thus, it deserved its name: Martyr.

Treasure Hunting the Streets

The following is by Writers in the Grove member, Lorelle VanFossen, based upon Prompt: Dumpster Diving.

“I need a foot stool,” I said, balancing on a chair to reach the cupboard over the fridge.

“Have you checked the streets? You don’t look safe on that chair.”

“Not yet. Just realized I needed one.”

“Here,” my husband said. “I’ll get this. Check the streets. You’ll find one.”

And I did.

The streets of Tel Aviv and much of the big cities in Israel are famous for three things.

Constant and never-ending reconstruction of the sidewalks. They tear up the brick and sand to lay down new pipes to supply water, electricity, and gas to the buildings. Then they tear them up to add cable and telephone lines, then rip those up to fix the pipes that were damaged by the cable, tear that back up to add improvements, then start all over again as one or more of these processes messed up the previous processes, and up goes the sidewalk. It’s a constant battle as you move through the city to walk in and around sidewalk construction and reconstruction as well as half-cobbled sidewalks.

Dog shit. Numerous attempts at poop-and-scoop laws brought little foot placement security to pedestrians as the laws are rarely obeyed by a society that decided a long time ago that many of these laws were for other people, not them. Certainly not them, the dog-walking owners.

Lastly, the streets are a treasure hunt for household items. Shops filled with second hand, used goods are rare in Israel. At the time we lived there, I believe there were four in the entire country. Decades of sanctions, import restrictions, over-priced and taxed goods, and poverty made every article of clothing, every dish or pot, every plant, every stick of furniture precious. Clothing worn out became rags at the worse, cut down and remade into something else to wear or cover a bed or warm toes watching television in the winter, a technique known today as “upcycling.” They mastered the technique ages ago. Rarely does anything go to waste. It was a necessity of life as it is around much of the world. Use what you have and make do with what you can find.

When you are finally done with something, you set it on the street corner. Someone would walk by and check it out. If it met their need, it would find a home. If not, it would wait for someone else, but not long. Rarely did anything last more than a few minutes on the streets.

Within two days a step stool appeared on the corner a block away. Two steps up, finely crafted stained maple, it folded up to a scant width for easy storage. Perfect. Home it went.

That night, my husband found me atop my new stool reaching into the cupboard over the fridge, now within my reach.

“I see I’m obsolete now.”

“Not completely.”

“Where did you find this. It’s beautiful,” he asked, examining the beautiful workmanship. A few nicks and scrapes here and there, but still a lovely piece.

“It was a street sale.”

“Of course it was. I wonder how many feet have been lifted up on this over the years, moving from home to home.” I stepped off and he picked it up and held it up to the light for closer examination.

We laughed and the stood became a part of our lives for the next four years, always there to lift our spirits and bodies to a higher level. When it was time for us to leave the county, it went out on the street corner to find another home, and continue its journey.

I met a man at the dumpster

The following is from Writers in the Grove member, Susan Schmidlin, and based upon the Prompt: Dumpster Diving.

I met a man at the dumpster
Or rather, our garbage met at the dumpster

His in his left hand
Mine in my right

We each swung our bags above shoulders
and arced them toward the square metal bin
The bags bumped together above the opening
Each bag refused to give an inch
and bounced unceremoniously outside the desired location
before hitting the ground

Mine on his left
His on my right

Busting open and spewing remnants of the last few days
Apologetically and with eyes down
we each traded sides
To clean up the mess that was created

Both of us unwilling and ashamed to have someone else
see the discards of our life
and know exactly who we really are