This
blog is devoted to a select group of poets. We're starting with poets
from the Ann Arbor area, but, hey, if you're from Detroit, Grand Rapids,
Saginaw or the Upper Peninsula, then that is okay, too.
Our goal is to provide you with a prompt every day from which you are to garner inspiration and submit a poem. How to submit will be very easy. Just put your poem or short story in the comments section and hit post. You may not immediately see your post, but it is there under the "Comments" section. You may need to click on "Comments" to see your poem. It is there on another page.
Today's poem or short story prompt is "oil".
Our goal is to provide you with a prompt every day from which you are to garner inspiration and submit a poem. How to submit will be very easy. Just put your poem or short story in the comments section and hit post. You may not immediately see your post, but it is there under the "Comments" section. You may need to click on "Comments" to see your poem. It is there on another page.
You
may need to have a Gmail account to post in the comments section. Most
of you do have Gmail, but for those of you that don't it's extremely
worthwhile to open up one now! That way you've got a chance to get your
work out there in the world.
Today's poem or short story prompt is "oil".
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ReplyDeletePART 4 of 7
ReplyDeleteJoe woke up hungry. He lifted his head and turned to look at the clock. It was twelve minutes after seven. His back was getting stiff, something else to look forward to. He never mentioned it anymore. His friends would nod and say "we're getting old". He wan't getting old. He just had a sore back. There was a difference.
The clock had been a gift from a co-worker. It happened like this: the company needed someone to travel to Singapore to help close a deal. What kind of deal? What job did he have at the time? He barely remembered. (And why would you want to know? It doesn't affect the trajectory of the story in the least. Don't ask so many questions.)
They asked Joe if he wanted to go. He was young enough that it sounded exciting, so he said "yes". He prepared and they prepared and two weeks before the trip, they told him they were sending someone else instead. There wasn't any reason, they'd just changed their minds.
When his co-worker came back, they didn't speak for several days. Joe was upset and angry, there had been no discussion, no reason, nothing. His co-worker was uncomfortable. He gave Joe a clock he'd bought in Singapore, making it sound like he'd bought it as a gift and just hadn't got around to giving it to him. Joe knew better and he knew that Joe knew, but they patched things up and worked together until the other man left to pursue his lifetime dream to be an architect.
Joe had brought the clock home, since he needed one for the kitchen. And now, it was telling him it was thirteen minutes after seven. His stomach didn't know time, it just knew "hungry".
Joe stared at the notes on the wall around the clock. Some were taped there, some held with thumbtacks or pushpins. All were in his scribble - unreadable to anyone but him and sometimes not even - and all in black ink. He detested blue ink but wasn't sure why. He'd never had the energy to explore that question and now it was too late.
(It would be nice to tell you that they were notes for a novel, or even some research project, or legal briefs or even vacation and travel plans, but they weren't. They were mostly old grocery lists, reminders about television shows, and just doodles he'd done when particularly bored. Why he kept them, he didn't know. But the wall was nearly covered, all except a semi-circle near the upper right corner which - for some inexplicable reason - he couldn't bring himself to violate.)
One of the shopping lists occurred m0re than once. The items were "milk, kalamata olives, tomatoes, olive oil, pancetta." The ingredients for a pasta sauce he'd invented and lived on now. Except for the milk. That was for his Cheerios. He'd bought that same list of items over and over. He wondered why he still needed to write them down on a list, but he kept doing.
The lure of the familiar, he imagined.
- Mike Fedel
August, 2013