Posted 4:46 PM by melanie

(A work in progress, I hope)

Amanda's house. My Grandmother's house on Bartlett Street in Baton Rouge.

I listened to my grandmother die
In short shallow breaths
Like prayers that couldn’t quite reach
The alveoli of God’s lungs
No exchange seemed to take place
Even her rosary beads
Fell like drops of blood
In crushed Kleenex at her bedside
Her big green oxygen tank
Sat next to her as holy
As Mother Mary Statute
And helped her continue
I never saw a priest or a doctor visit her
But a big smiling bald man came twice a week
With new tubing and a tank
Exchanging our prayers
For handshakes and oxygen
A signed bill
And always an introduction
Every time like the first time
She called me her favorite grandchild
A pat on the head from him
And a whole night in her arms
Made her my patron saint
And the best part
Of my childhood
Was spent heating her soup.

Posted 8:54 AM by melanie

The Zetzer Bowling Alley

I’ve seen a picture of it
All black and white and red
Every chair in place
The bar in the back
Every glass hangs shining
Circa 1963
I think
Opening day
His sons have it hanging on their wall
So, It’s still a favorite hang out
Stalwart sons remember and know
And understand the pride
Of their father
Gone for years
Condo parking lot for the rich
You used to be a bowling alley
You were working class
Class
At it’s utmost
And in the picture you still look accessible
To everyone
Brown wooden chairs and stools
Maroon colored plush cushions
Champagne bottles and glasses on the bar
You were
All that to young men growing up
In the alleyways
All polished, waxed, gleaming
What an example you set
Pinned to their walls now
Gone before your time
Like your owner.

Posted 8:01 PM by melanie

Getting Screwed

“I was warned about you.” He said as I walked into the overly plush, mortuary/museum type office and sat in the large overstuffed chair, my ankles barely crossed, my purse hadn’t even hit the ground beside me. “I was warned about you,” he said again, as I leaned back in the chair and adjusted my chin so that I could see him more clearly. He had that, "Now I’m dealing with a stupid woman." glaze on his face, as he adjusted his tie and I knew he wanted to straighten out the folds in his crotch and didn’t dare do it in front of me, but the intent was still there. I gave him my best “Ok, asshole so I’m a dumb bitch am I?” look and then I grimaced visibly at the games; old, old games that some men will play with women when they’re involved in a business deal with one that they consider to be a vapid airhead, which is 99.9 percent of all women with those guys with the exception of their daughters and that’s only if they’re not banging them or thinking about it.

I looked at him and said, “ So what?” I wanted to say, “Fuck you asshole.”
“It’s OK,” he said, “We’re friends” and he leaned over and pretended to look earnest. I couldn’t ever remember being real friends with him or even fuck-buddies in all the years that I‘d not known him. Trying to get a straight answer, a good deal, an honest estimation, anything that bordered on logic, or dealt in truth would have been impossible to achieve from him. This was still the old south, the good old boys with their young sons all grown up.

I hoped that the meeting would be over early, as I tuned out the standard "I'm your best friend I've known you for years spiel" that sounded more wooden and preconceived as he droned on and I wondered why he didn't give his secretary a form letter, sign it and mail out the rest of the speech in duplicate, since I could tell that he had used it many times in the past.

First you put them off guard, and then before they recover from the unexpected slight, you put them at ease, and then you deliver the TKO, which reminded me of my favorite daiquiri at the club down the street and I wondered how soon I could get in there and order one and get away from this jerk.

It's all about role playing and them owning the venue and setting the rules and placing you in what they consider your proper place which for me was, dumb witted and pregnant, or barring that, dim and effectively medicated, so that you won't be any trouble to their way of doing business and suddenly in a moment of insight; I understood how it was easily possible for Uncle Earl to rule that state from the loony bin and I thought about getting committed and running for office on 'real issues' (housing, healthcare, workplace environment, ethics, etc) which would certainly seem delusional to that piece of work in front of me, no I thought, better to not sign off on anything, beg off and go for that daquari.

I managed to extricate myself from the meeting intact and make it to the club down the street and I plopped down in a bar stool, ordered my own TKO and began talking to the guy in the seat next to me, a forty something business type, very similar in class and comportment to the one I‘d just left. I thought about a wild night of strange, but was weary from the screwing, that I’d already gotten that day, and anyway I wasn’t in there to do anything expect get a drink, and unwind. Then I noticed the grungy little, twenty something, bartender who was playing hacky sack in the kitchen behind the bar. I liked his long brown dread locked hair and his air of ease, recently smoked marijuana breath, and the way his low slung pants fit neatly around his hips and he had no qualms about adjusting himself in front of me as he caught me staring and gave me that, "knowing you want to do me," kind of coy smile.

He and I began talking, and we played a rousing game of trivial pursuit, choosing politics, as the subject matter on the bar machine; laughing as we picked the most absurd answers from the multiple choice list, knowing they were wrong, and secretly wishing that they were true. When the bar closed, he followed me out into the evening, and we agreed to meet at his apartment on Perkins road.

Later, I lay on my back on a mattress on the floor without my shirt as he leaned over and began suckling on my nipples in between pulls on a roach with a beaded feathered clip. I concentrated on the flatness of his brown belly and the subtle grind of hips and the way every muscle in his calf tensed as he grabbed my hair and rode me to the polished wood floors and we knocked over ashtrays and drinks on a night stand, laughing the whole time.




(More on Getting Screwed;

OR JUST BIDNESS AS USUAL IN LOOZIANA YA'LL


It occurs to me that perhaps I wasn’t wise in my choice of friends and choosing an attorney who built an office that looks like a reproduction of an antebellum home and dedicating it ostensibly to the working people of his state on a brass plaque in front of the entry is a little like a 19th century slave owner dedicating his plantation to the slaves that worked the land and built it, but you know that is business as usual if you’re from the deep south, and you still secretly believe that states rights is going to help your true native country to rise again.

And if you hire the football players and their families from the local university and treat them like illiterate lackeys and make them mix your cocktails in the board room and call them law clerks while trying to explain to the local media why they still sign their exam papers with an X, then who the hell was I, to expect them to conduct their business in an ethical manner.


Note: any resemblance to anyone or any firm in the city of Baton Rouge however intentional is purely fictional supposition.)










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Posted 11:51 AM by melanie

I had one of those disagreeably, dysfunctional, eccentric southern families. We had Azalea bushes, instead of picket fences, and our grass in typical Louisiana fashion was greener than the grass in most other places. I grew up in one of those homes where they put on a big pot of food in the morning and said to everyone (even salesmen) "Ya'll come on in and get a plate." I think my parents have at different times fed half the city. Even when the constable came out to serve warrants he was offered a plate chicken and rice, or pot roast, or red beans depending on the day of the week. I’ve seen search warrants accompanied by coffee and pie in the sitting room "Let's go eat and have coffee first and then we'll talk about all this, Ya’ll.”

It usually started with one of us peering out the window and an exhaled “Oh fuck!” as we counted the number of police cars or sedans and determined whether it was the local, state, or federal. “Ah One, two, no three cars, and wait here comes some more.” and an “I wonder what he did this time?”

Sometimes we had warning, with him arriving just a moment before, drugged out of his mind, and shouting things like “ I don’t care what they say I didn’t rob the drug store.” or "I didn’t beat that guy up and I have 21 witnesses that will swear it wasn’t me.” and always the “They’ll never take me alive.” and one of us saying “Well if they’re coming, don’t you think that you should leave?” and he usually did.



It was always, "Mom the constable's office is here," or "Mom the city detectives are here," or "Mom this time it's the Secret Service," or "Mom it's the FBI." I'd have to count the number of uniforms or suits and get the right number of coffee cups and then serve them on a big tray in the front room.

The front room, or living room as we called it, with it’s overly ornate gold leaf coffee table, french reproduction sofas, lace curtains, large oil paintings, pottery and sculpture, always seemed to take those fellows by surprise. They clearly were not anticipating a tea service cart with fine bone china and homemade pecan pie when they arrived in their SWAT Team uniforms or black suits and sunglasses with wires protruding from their ears; they always sat a bit uncomfortably looking like errant schoolboys awaiting a scolding from some long forgotten Great Auntie; it was my job to put them at ease and I guess I laughed a bit too much under my head and in my own inner dialogue as I witnessed, yet another visit from another branch of the farce. Perhaps at some point when they left empty handed, one said to the other, “Get that bitch. I don’t care how you do it. Get her” Anyway, that's what was in my imagination as they sped out of our driveway, one by one, on to the country highway.

When I was 16, I abandoned the wild scene of my home life, and took up residence with some friend’s who lived on the Mississippi River in a complex with no elevator, and four flights of steps between me and ‘them’; sleeping head to head and side by side in quilts with pillows all over the floor, no electric, and flower arrangements with some of the finest swamp bud grown in that era, long green stalks of dense pretty cannabis, with wild, wiry, resinated, red hairs that stood out like an aura around the green edges; they went by the gram and we always separated our pounds, according the size of the bud, and placed them strategically in different vases and on constant exhibit, next to the scales, in my own version of my parent’s front room. We would stay up all night smoking and drinking Sunrises while laying on the roof and staring at the gray and blue clouds of Exxon billowing out just across the river; listening to Pink Floyd or the Calliope music from the Delta Queen when morning came. No one came to disturb me or my friends until the manager got wise and showed up with the police and an eviction order.

When my father died I had to leave the state. I was never the one they came to see, but they hated me anyway. So I just packed up and left.

It was early in the morning, around 2am, there was no moon out, the sky was pitch black, I was driving into the middle of a thunderstorm, flashes of lightning, occasionally lit up the countryside, and I could make out the lines of oak tree branches hanging over the narrow highway; I was alone and I couldn’t imagine my life being any different than it was, as my tires splashed across the pavement in north Louisiana, and the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers, blended in with the steady drops of rain on the hood of my Dodge Charger, and blunted my consciousness; I was going at a steady speed, well above the limit, until I came to a wall of water in the road, out of nowhere, the beam of my headlights ended into a deep gully, the bridge had washed out, and I was the first one to encounter it, I slammed on my breaks, and hit the water, causing me to do a complete donut in the road, leaving a large plume in the wake around me, I stopped for just a second, stunned, I looked around, and as the water began seeping into doors, I floored it, and I barely managed to make it up, the muddy sloping embankment, and back to safety on the other side, my tires squealed, and I sped on, there were no towns to speak of, just boarded up old ma and pa stores, and a few dark farm houses, with shotguns and dogs, and barbed wire cow fields; I finally made it back to another farm road headed north and then I drove even faster to the Arkansas state line.