Write an up to 200-word story (microfiction) story or poem using these AWP-inspired prompt words: luggage, prisoner, Denver omelet, rave, schmooze - The prize is a Terri Kirby Erickson's wonderful "Telling Tales of Dusk", from Press 53! Post your entries here on this blog!
Post your stories/poems in the comments to this post.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Walking through airport the prisoner began to talk. “Oh for some poetry, for one last schmooze and booze at AWP. The Association of Writers & Writing Programs. It’s more poetic with one W. Don’t you agree? I used to be a writer. Listen,” she sighs, pointing with her manacled hands to those she identified as AWP attendees, “even the sound of their luggage rolling is beautiful. Buhbum buhbum buhbum.”
ReplyDelete“My wife likes poetry,” said the man, escorting her to ADMAX in Florence, just south of Denver. “And tote bags.” He picked up the rental car and drove to the Hyatt Regency. They headed straight for the coffee shop where Denver omelets were all the rave. Even with her hands shackled, the prisoner ate like a poet. Not one bit of bright green pepper escaped her fork.
They attended readings, listened to adulations in the hallways, the bathrooms, the elevators. The prisoner remembered why she turned to murder.
When the escort had totes and mugs aplenty, they got back into the car. The prisoner’s head was bursting with words. She felt a migraine coming on. As they cruised onto I-25, leaving AWP behind, the prisoner whined, “Are we there yet?”
yay! the first story!
ReplyDeleteMom's Recipe
ReplyDeleteHe assured me sun-dried tomatoes were a must for a Denver omelet.
Morning air crept beneath the wide legs of my plaid pajamas. The grocery parking lot was empty except for a couple employees yawning into work. I followed them, thinking I could schmooze my way inside.
"I need sun-dried tomatoes," I told the woman who smelled like citrus.
"We open at eight." She tried to close the door, but I thrust out a flannel leg, lowered my voice. "I have a new lover."
Her eyes glinted, then she grunted and told me to wait.
On the ride back with my jar of processed tomatoes, I replayed the previous night as if my head were a movie screen at the Pussycat Theater. I ran a red light. Almost hit a crossing guard.
The aroma surprised me. The skillet on the stone contained the remains of egg, bits of ham and onion.
My TV was missing and my laptop. My jewelry box, 1962 Spider-Man comic book, and Louis Vuitton luggage all gone. He was gone too.
I’m still a prisoner of my mother’s misconception that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
Crap. Skillet on the stove, not stone. These are not neanderthals!
ReplyDeletesorry, I'm a rule breaker.....mine's 320 words....because my computer's so old it couldn't calculate word-count accurately?
ReplyDeleteSee it here....or below
http://dougbond.posterous.com/bruce-a-mile-high-but-never-so-low
Bruce, a mile high but never so low
Bruce was livid. His cooling fan hit 300 rpms and processor zone #2 was heading well north of 50 Celsius. This was the Danger Zone alright and he knew it. How dare she just log out and take that damn iPhone to the AWP Hipster Rave instead of him. Bruce had never felt more a prisoner of his flimsy plastic casing. He wanted to schmooze too. It wasn’t right,after all he'd done for the Serious Writer. He was still ticked, the flight to Denver, the way she shoved him so roughly into that worn out carry on luggage of hers and then casually tossed him into the overhead bin.
Maybe she was getting back at him, had figured out he was hoping to pick up that hot new iPad (well he and everyone else at The Rave for that matter...Oh, Man! that sweet slick screen, so, so tactile!) Sure, he couldn’t really touch an iPad…shit, he didn't even stand a chance of getting near it, what with the hype and all. He was just an old laptop, an underpowered one at that, but Bruce had certain skills, and had his French cables all stashed and ready. But forget it now….No sweet synching, no Hot Key action, even WiFi was out of the question. All he had to look forward to for the rest of the night was some furtive rebooting after she left.
Then Bruce heard it, that obnoxious Lady Gaga ringtone, the special one for the Serious Writer's lover man. She gets up to grab her iPhone, and pushes the room service tray with a half eaten greasy Denver omelet towards him on the table. “Yeah, I’m here honey. Just had a bite to eat. Heading down now.”
Sure, kick him while he’s down. The door closes and Bruce knows it’s coming, waits for it, the screensaver and the wildly swirling colors, to take him to a better place.
"Zenda, as in 'The Prisoner of'? That's a shit name for a baby."
ReplyDelete"But it's so beautiful," my mother says, popping another bite of Denver omelet into her mouth. She knows the smell of bell peppers makes me queasy, but ever since her stroke, she's been diligent about getting her 5 a day. "Five a day, five a day, fruits or vegetables, five a day," she sings. She claims the singing hides the slurring, but I think it's more likely she's suffered permanent brain damage.
The other day, for example. Rolls a set of luggage right into the nursery. "For the baby," she says, tugging her shirt back in place. "My Parents Went to a Rave and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" it reads.
"What I could really use is a crib," I say, choosing to ignore her outfit. I mean, who is this woman?
"The salesman told me all new moms want luggage. I'm too trusting. It's a curse. You schmooze, you lose," she says with a sigh. "A crib, a crib," she sings. "My kingdom for a crib."
She's crazy, but she loves me, which is a lot more than I can say for Bobby.
In order to trim mine to 200 wds, I had to cut out all mention of 'facial paralysis,' which, coincidentally, is both a side-effect of strokes and AWP-schmoozing.
ReplyDeleteOOOH NOOO. I NEED TO PICK A JUDGE!!! I CAN'T DO THISS!!!! THEY ARE ALL GREAT. DAMN.
ReplyDeleteheavy is the head that wears the crown, Meg. Or the cute floppy hat, as the case may be.
ReplyDeleteShe had a thing for ex-cons, so she called her small publishing house "Prisoners with Promise". Her list was a who's who of penitentiary prodigies whose work, she would rave, was raw and edgy: the over-rated hallmark of great "literary" fiction. No one bought it.
ReplyDeleteShe schmoozed with prison guards and underpaid cops over Denver omelets in greasy spoons, searching for an inside to the next Cervantes or Capote. She marketed herself to the orange-clad masses with home-baked cookies and safety razors. It was her mission to set the captive voices free; to break down the barriers of the literary world. She didn't quite succeed.
Her clients never made the best seller lists, she never made the literary world headlines; but when they found her body in the luggage compartment of the last train to Opelika, they all made the morning news.
Of all the luggage that Frank Andrews brought back with him to California, none had more of a global impact than the omelet that came from Denver.
ReplyDeleteFrank was a schmooze. He sold exotic birds. He took them prisoner, from their exotic homelands, then to Colorado, the heart of the United States, where he sold them for big money.
During the exotic bird boom of 2000, Frank made a fortune, especially in Colorado. For a while, exotic birds were pretty rare there. But not anymore. Thanks to Frank, it’s like a bird rave in Denver right now.
Anyway, it was noon on a Sunday in 2000. Frank was at the Denver airport, getting ready to go back to California, sitting at a table in the empty cafeteria, and thinking about cockatoos and money.
Frank wasn’t hungry, but he knew there would be no in-flight meal. So, just in case he got the munchies, he bought a $12 omelet. In a few napkins he wrapped it, then stuffed it in his pocket.
He never ate the Denver omelet, though. He tried to throw it away, but missed a trash can in California instead.
And that’s when the exotic birds came west.
My luggage was held prisoner by an Irish airport guard who suspected me of shenanigans. He dug through my bag and made conversation, raving about how he loved Canadians.
ReplyDelete“I’m American,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
I was tired. I had come to see 7 Eccles Street—the Georgian from Ulysses—only to find it had been torn down and replaced with a maternity hospital run by nuns. I went in, and one of the nuns tried to schmooze me up because she could swear I was Kelly Clarkson. The whole trip was a bust.
“In that case,” he said, “I love the Denver omelet.”
Here was my security problem: I did not expect “Do you have items with batteries?” to be among the Dublin airport security questions.
Alarm clock. Camera. Book light.
Massager.
“Massager?” he asked.
“You know,” I said. “A *massager*?”
“The kind that *vibrates*?”
I nodded. He giggled.
“Well—“ He called over another guard, who stood behind me. “You’ll have to go with him.”
He nodded to the other guard. “Take her to The Room. She is a threat of the worst kind.”
I felt a gun in my lower back. It buzzed.
I am going to have to say that Katrina Gray really got me giggling with this one. Katrina, congratulations!
ReplyDelete