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INFO CLASSES VISITING WRITERS LINKS ENGLISH DEPT.
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Poetry
- Berkeley by Cathy Che
- Harvest by Krista Hanson
- The Kiss by John Bower
- Return by Samia Rahimtoola
- The Seine at Argenteuil by Kate Peebles
- Speaking To The Mirror by Joey Rubin
- ‘Work of Mourning' by Elyse Fenton
- MISSOULA by Mackenzie Cole
- Gift by Chalcey Wilding
Mud Roads
Theme for November, 1953: Read this week’s Avoca Journal-Herald. Choose one article of local importance and argue in defense of or opposition to the Journal’s position.
According to this week’s Journal-Herald, next spring our township will pave the road from Oakland to Avoca, and horses won’t get gravel in their shoes and go lame, and girls in nice skirts won’t raise dust behind them, walking home, and fewer cars will poke their tires out on sharp stones, and everyone will be able to driver faster, so, going to Oakland with Uris and Dean and Dean’s younger brother Luke to see the cattle show, we’ll get there faster, and we won’t have to listen to “When the Stars Get in Your Eyes” four times on the radio but only three, and even though the heater doesn’t work anymore, no one will have to crowd too close to Uris who doesn’t like cousins; and we’ll be able to get home faster, so we can spend more time looking at the cows while our breath puffs up like little cartoon talk balloons, and I’ll draw the prettiest cow longer, the pencil making that scratch sound a little longer; and when the sky starts looking iced over, we won’t have to worry, because on a paved road you can see the edges even in a storm. And then, when the storm is closer to raining our thought-bubble breath back on us, when it’s cold and wet and the road looks like flannel and just the one windshield wiper works, we’ll be able to inch along home, just the same, because pavement won’t bog down as soon as rain hits it, and we won’t be stuck in the mud. And because we won’t be stuck, Uris and Dean won’t have to roll their mufflers up to their eyes and swear with words Mama doesn’t know we know, and I won’t be left in the car with Luke while they huddle away to find a man with a team who will pull us out of the slurp of the mud. And it won’t be cold enough in the car for me to shiver like involuntary dancing, and Luke and I won’t talk in a bird feather language of cold about horses and cows and drawing and his older brother’s darned car, and he won’t cup his hands over my freezing ears and I won’t feel my ears thaw or think about the fire jugglers we saw four years ago when each of us was ten, how they threw the clubs straight up with one hand, perfect rhythm, and how they caught them in the other, like holding eggshells, because that’s how Luke holds my ears, and I won’t ask him whether he remembers the jugglers, too. Because drives won’t be long I won’t be wearing a sweater and a coat and when he moves a little closer on the seat I won’t not know whether it’s him or the coat collar touching my cheek, and I won’t be certain I am the fires the jugglers held, and my hand won’t twitch toward his, my nipples won’t jump up for the first time under my coat and my sweater, my heart won’t splutter up like a flaming stick, and we won’t touch, and in the ages that grow up and pass before Dean and Uris get back, I won’t lose track of my icy feet, I won’t be suddenly warm enough, his mouth won’t be against mine, his teeth won’t hit mine; the storm won’t pave the windshield of the car in pennies and dimes and quarters of rain, and the little plumes of warmth we won’t make won’t frost it, kissing Luke kissing Luke kissing me.
~ Chalcey Wilding
Last Updated: May 11, 2009
