Marble Stairs

Hey, you builder of marble stairs,

Look at your hands when you think of love;

Behind your eyes hide the secret of stones

And the baffling fits and turns of your woman's love,

The fickle patterns that it weaves

Into the fabric of your life.

When you bend over tiles of mosaic witchery

That should outlast the tread of passing time,

You see how well your hands have done,

But will they ever be smooth again

As in those days when all you built

Were dream towers in the sun?

Ah, to hold her hands again...

Sweet passage towards the rosy end...

Soon, soon, my love, the stones

Around you cry, echoing your own:

I shall be happy then.

Poor, poor builder of marble stairs.

Bienvenido Nuqui Santos

San Francisco, 1990s

#poetry #bensantos #bienvenidosantos #marblestairs #marlismanleybroadhead

Can I Get You Anything Before I Go, Perhaps a Purloined Pumpkin?

There's really no other way to look at it: I'm a thief.

I didn't pay for it; it wasn't mine; and still I took it.

A big orange pumpkin sat all alone on the very bottom of a cart in the parking lot cart return at Target. Really big. One you could carve the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show into.

How Things Came to a Head in the Music Room

I sub for the Louisburg, Kansas, school district--whatever hole they need filled, I try to expand into for a day. Today, I covered for Broadmoor Elementary's vocal music teacher. She gave me the option of showing a video on drumming and rhythm around the world nine times or rehearsing nine batches of kids for an all-school Veteran's Day performance at the high school. 

I reached for the high note, and 16 classes took their turns warbling their way through six patriotic tunes, some traditional, one really sad, and some great fun--e.g., Neil Diamond's "America." We totally nailed the ending of five exclamations of "TODAY!!!"

White Moths and Challenged Children

A student discovered this white moth on the red brick

building and shared it with classmates filing into the

room after recess, 24 index fingers carefully stroking

the strange, fluffy head.

Some of us are  more special than others.  

I've been subbing in the Louisburg, Kansas, schools, at nearly every grade level--that's how hard up they are for subs. I mean, a former English teacher cluelessly waving her arms in front of 60 band students is probably not how you'd choose to invest your education dollars. But needs must.

I've always known teaching is a great way to learn, but recently I experienced an actual epiphany. Delivered by 24 fifth graders.

Can We Talk? Plan B for Romantics

I know a minister and his wife (NOT pictured here) who struck an agreement early in their long marriage: they would be faithful unless, wait for it... she got lucky with Paul Newman and/or he got lucky with Sophia Loren. They're definitely one of the coolest couples I've ever met.

if you won’t be coming back this way

paint me a landscape

of Navajo blankets

string a necklace of seashells

with life still in them

sculpt a Manzanita bowl

to hold tears and small truths

capture the sigh of breezes 

in tall pines beyond the open window

replicate your smile

in the iridescence of mica

your eyes in starshowers

across the fat cheeks of the moon

engrave a happy ending

into my long white bones 

and touch my hair to the sun

#author #writer #writerslife #poem #poetry #parting

Trophies (short story)

Lorien strained forward in the crowd at the concession stand. She could hear the engines revving and back-firing as the super-modifieds were started for the A-feature, and she didn't want to miss any of the race.  Squeezing ahead of a man who was still reading the menu on the back wall, she ordered the hot dogs and Cokes for her mother and her friends, then bought a Baby Ruth and a pack of Juicy Fruit with her own money.  She tucked the gum into her purse and hurried toward the grandstand.

Some of the cars were already in line by the time she got back to her seat.  Her mother passed around the food and change while Lorien studied the cars at the starting line.  She was looking for number twenty-six, but L. Ray wasn't on the track yet.