Real 1 Scene

Reflective writing prompt:
Outline the next scene. Where do you think this story is going?

Renée K. Nicholson

Upon Watching North By Northwest I Am No Longer Young

                                                               for Derek McCracken

Cary Grant just dove

into a stand of corn stalks,

dust clinging to his sharp

gray suit, when I get a message

from a friend that lost

two siblings last year. One expected,

one not. This summer, my only brother

will be dead five years.

So much and so little

time. The Hitchcock Blonde

is never who she seems, perfect

cat-eye lid and pale lips. We move

between two worlds, celluloid flicker,

and the atmosphere here below, where

the cereal-and-steak lives march on.

I don’t know what to tell my friend.

Growing old feels thin. My brother and I

told jokes about becoming shuffleboard champs

at the old age community. Instead, I watch

Tippi Hedren run with Cary Grant across

Washington’s nose, or is it Eva Marie Saint

across Lincoln’s? All dead, along with my friend’s

siblings and my only brother, and yet some hope

glows brighter than my big screen TV, like an ember

lost from the underworld, or overworld, whatever

world exists beyond. I compose my response, vowels

all wrong, I’m sorry long and bland. Instead, I wish

to extend my hand to his, clutching our feeble dreams.

On screen, Cary Grant’s gestures say

what words never could.

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what to do with grief

Watching Me

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about being watched.

KATHERINE SHERRITT SAGAMORE, 39 YEARS OLD,
AND 8 ½ MONTHS PREGNANT,
BECALMED IN OUR ENGINELESS SMALL SAILBOAT,
AT THE END OF A STICKY JUNE CHESAPEAKE AFTERNOON
AMID EVERY SIGN OF THUNDERSTORMS APPROACHING
FROM ACROSS THE BAY,
AND SPEAKING AS SHE SOMETIMES DOES IN VERSE,
SETS HER HUSBAND A TASK.

Tell me a story of women and men,
Like us: like us in love for ten
Years, lovers for seven, spouses
Two, or two point five. Their Houses
Increase is the tale I’d wish you tell.
Why did that perfectly happy pair
Like us, decide this late to bear
A child? Why toil so to conceive
One (or more), when they both believe
The world’s aboard a handbasket bound for hell?
Well?

                        Loie Rawding

SORRY STREET by Aaren Perry

One block up from Sad on Angry
Sorry Street cuts into Nightlife
at the same angle she’d look at me
when she wasn’t telling’.
These days I pass by without a glance.
I can’t see down Sorry anymore.
Been blocked for months. Power’s out,
sidewalk’s piled with the rubble of repair,
the blue cobblestones of Pity Alley
buckling down there under blinkin’ sawhorses.
That’s the corner where we used to play this game:

Her in the street like standing like Stella
staring at me starring on stage smoking.
She’d tell me to come back to her, push me away
when I did, slapped me for trying, cry
when I said I was leaving, see if she could stand it
when I stayed. Then we’d kiss and say, sorry.

We used to do shots ’til Patty’s pub closed
then hopscotch stooped stooped down Sorry
all the way to Drunk and Rage. We both wanted out
but couldn’t see it. Now I wonder if it’s her
smoking in one of those tiny TV-lit row house windows,
her face blue as an alien, or if she just finally
met someone special down the Agony Steel Plant.
I just came back for one last look.
Tomorrow I’m moving out
Of the Innerdoubt section of town, altogether.
I can’t even see down Sorry.

Reflective writing prompt
Write about the intersection of Joy and Sorry Streets

Street Life, Harlem – William H. Johnson

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about the street where you live.

The Boy at the Circus, as if in a Dalí Painting
–after AR

 The boy has the key to a savage party. What can he unlock here? The acrobats climbed ropes to swings and flew like skilled bees. There were suited capuchins, dwarves in gowns, twirlers, spinners, rollers and tumblers, and the flowered clowns. He took water to the elephants who wore skirts and honked for hay. The horses were crowned with peacocks. The band played at music and the dancers danced baroque steps. The crowd roared as a choir of lions yawned. The Barker passed him the tallest hat and the scalloped boots, and he led the parade, as the players waved, as the swans landed to fly him home to cloudy mirrors and an empty quarter.

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what’s in the tent