Excerpts from Lorrie Moore's "How to Become a Writer"

"Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life."

--
"Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called 'a really great sense of humor' and what now your creative writing class calls 'self-contempt giving rise to comic form.' Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have."

--
"At undergraduate cocktail parties, people say, 'Oh, you write? What do you write about?' Your roommate, who has consumed too much wine, too little cheese and no crackers at all, blurts: 'Oh, my god, she always writes about her dumb boyfriend.'

Later on in life you will learn that writers are merely open, helpless texts with no real understanding of what they have written and therefore must half-believe anything and everything that is said of them. You, however, have not yet reached this stage of literary criticism. You stiffen and say, 'I do not,' the same way you said it when someone in the fourth grade accused you of really liking oboe lessons and your parents really weren't just making you take them."

--
"You will read somewhere that all writing has to do with one's genitals. Don't dwell on this. It will make you nervous."

--
"You have broken up with your boyfriend. You now go out with men who, instead of whispering 'I love you,' shout: 'Do it to me, baby.' This is good for your writing."

I'm at the end of my little rope, and I am swinging back and forth about you.

I.
Sometimes I think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom then we turn and climb again
and it seems by the time that I have figured what it's worth,
the squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse.

-- Death Cab for Cutie, Expo '86

Short Fiction 1: Employee of the Month

Erica Brennen’s forearms were laden with burn scars – little pink zig-zag ridges traveling up her wrist to the inside of her elbow. Sometimes, if she looked at her left arm from a certain angle, it appeared as if she had “VII” branded onto her. She used to joke that she did it on purpose to commemorate her seventh year as an employee at Delilah’s Diner, but most people squinted their eyebrows apprehensively and mentioned something about how they used to cut when they were younger too.

“Oh, don’t lie, I was a teenager once too,” a woman had said to her earlier – a twenty-something with hair so blindingly red Erica thought Ronald McDonald had stumbled into the store looking for directions.

“Did you work in a restaurant?”

“Pardon?”

“Or a fast food place or something?”

The woman squinted, focusing on Erica’s nametag. “No. I was depressed.”

“Oh. I worked with a lot of deep fryers. When I was fourteen I couldn’t even lift the damn things, not to mention manage six of them at a time! That's how I got all these burn marks. But yeah, sometimes I just tell people I did it on purpose because it looks neat, don’t you think? I probably could have paid to have this done to me, you know? Kids are always getting weird things done to their bodies nowadays.”

“That’s cool. Can I get a chai?”

Erica was used to people not paying attention to her, especially people who wore pea coats and ordered chai tea. It was four AM now, her seventh hour at work, and she scrubbed the table nearest to the window diligently; it was coated in ketchup and spilled salt. Though she put ketchup on almost everything she ate, the smell of it alone nauseated her.

“Erica, can you change the lightbulb above that table too? Then you can go home. Thanks, babe.”

Her manager, Amy, was ten years younger than she and had been working there four years fewer. She had a college degree, long legs, and long strawberry blond hair. Erica always figured that if her own legs weren’t so stubby and her own hair weren’t so brown and short, she would have been the one to get promoted, with or without a bachelor’s degree.

“Sure, hon.”

“Hey.” Amy suddenly appeared across the table. “Thanks for all your hard work. You know everybody really appreciates it.”

“Oh, sweetie, it’s my job. I just do the best I can.” Erica was still scrubbing away at a brown ketchup stain on the edge of the table.

“But really, this place would go to shit without you. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re being taken for granted. You work too hard. You should have a day off, really. How about tomorrow? You can hang out with your family or something.”

Erica paused, growing faint. “Can you excuse me for a second?”

Before Amy had a chance to respond, Erica dashed to the restroom. Inside, she locked the door, leaned against the cold tiled walls and breathed heavily. She felt her heart beat anxiously as she caught a glance of the “Employee of the Month” sign beaming at her from across the room. Her sloppy, sideways smile in the photograph mocked her, her hair matted down to her face with sweat.

October 2006. Erica Brennen has been a member of the Delilah’s Diner team for seventeen years. A customer favorite, she enjoys reading, watching baseball, and knitting.

She rushed out of the restroom as quickly as she had rushed in, nearly knocking over Amy as she thrust open the door.

“Erica? Are you okay?”

“Of course, babe. I don’t mind working tomorrow at all. Actually, I can stay today until seven if you need me.”

“Are you sure? That’s a lot of hours for two days. When are you going to sleep?”

“It’s fine, Amy, really. I want to.” She spit the words out quickly as she shuffled back to the table by the window, certain that she had missed a spot.


draft one : work in progress

There is a place

that makes you feel so dirty, you’ll cower in a hot
shower stall, knees to your nose collecting tears,
your body tainted with blush. There is a place
before the sadness, vomit splashing back into
your face like a fist.

Poem for MiMi the Cat

Today MiMi
sat like a sausage
in front of the fan
Her tail curved
ever so daintily
toward me
The storm scares her
and she listens
attentively
to stories
of going to the store
&& buying milk
The woman on TV
needs closure for
her mother's murder
Dainty paws needs only me
a spot of carpet
and a fan.


- Nicole Karlyn, Ashley Anne Henderson

Parental Proverbs

The first time my mother said Beauty
takes pain, I don’t think I gave a shit
about beauty – I made my limbs so
heavy and limp she could barely drag
me out of the sandbox as my yowls
pierced the air like a needle
into a birthday balloon. She
scrubbed the sand off my knees and
elbows in dirt-tinged bathwater, my
voice amplified by the acoustics of a
bathroom – I hate you! I hate you!
I’ll never know why she didn’t lick
her palm and slap me good and hard, why
her tired and sunken eyes stayed focused
on the task at hand – pulling my whirlwind of
hair into pigtails and forcing that lavender
dress over my flushed, frustrated face.
My father looked on, smirking, and said:
Like mother, like daughter. I didn’t know why
she slapped him good and hard, but that
was the last time I ever heard that one.

Elegy to the Cicada

Has anyone mourned your death,
or were we content on crushing your
frail brown skeletons under our boots -
we who would swerve to avoid a tire-flattened
groundhog but hesitate to push your
remains to the side to clear a path?
Even the vegans and the Buddhist monks
winced at your song; pressing
their pious hands to their ears, they must
have prayed for your death as some cheeky child
pulled your filmy wings from your molting
bodies. Maybe we're envious of a life of
fucking and dying, while we're still
trudging hopelessly among the
trees you coat like caramel, the same
ones we passed seventeen years ago.

Fire Island, 1991

Look how my mother's wrist hangs limp as she points,
as if there's something tangible in the waves
that soak the sand and seep towards us. Our
skin is drenched the color of cream-drenched coffee,
softened by five days of Fire Island sun. Watch
the wind clutch our clothes and try to pull us back,
as if there's something dangerous in the water
that already has us buried up to our ankles.
The fabric clings to my curveless young body,
breastless, hipless, and pantsless; here my mom
didn't fret about what boys would think. Under
swirls of white and gaping holes of blue,
as if the world was never proven spherical,
as if Jesus were never so blessed, I look ready -
longing to skim across the surface with my
blister-kissed heels, to challenge the wind and leave
my unwashed hair fluttering behind me, to run
as if muscles couldn't ache and lungs couldn't tire,
to see what would happen if I jumped right off
the edge of this little Atlantic Ocean.

Love Me Like -- (A Found Poem)

Love me like
the seventies -
aggressively
bantering
room by room;
get bossy, and
use
me.

Braceless

The Rockwell gracing these
sterile walls
held a child and
her cheerless, rouged
pout -
a white dress,
a contorted doll, and
a magazine -
as his rubber-clad
fingers forced
the chapped
corners of my lips
wide,
wide open.
His breath was dense,
heavy behind
his mask
and how badly I wanted
him to say
Rinse. This
would be the last time
after the yanking
and scraping and pulling;
the last time
my smile
would be barred behind
metal, with their ever-
alternating décor:
usually blue.
I closed my eyes,
studied the darkness there –
the shapes and colors
and how they faded,
until he said
Rinse. Then –
white teeth, white walls,
and that fleeting sense
of flawlessness,
like Rockwell’s girl
must have felt
with that magazine in her lap.