Anonymous poster number 1 for the Austin Universe Prose Project, holy schlamoley

Thanks to the anonymous poster who gives us the next phase of the Austin Universe Prose Project. Also, it's really great to see Erin's Austin World Poem Project taking off. Congrat's Erin, and I can only hope my tiny baby can grow to the size of yours. Alright, here goes, original prose piece followed by Erin Vaughan's followed by anonymous number 1. Cool, daddios.

In the museum of love, Katherine heard an old man singing. Oh so long and forgotten, I am America, he chanted, over and over, and she believed him. She wanted to grab his hands and clap, to make him bend on his knees and rejoice. It was the heat of the day, summer being as blasphemous as ever. She wanted him to be wrinkled and deathly and beloved. Hieronymus Bosch and the great landscapes, she thought, and skipped on her heels. But he begged her to leave him. I am no girl in a museum chanting the songs of my fathers, she thought, and slapped the man across the face. In a window, a coffee shop beckoned; she left. Oh gosh, she was hot and cold and caffeine. I believe believe, she chanted herself, and forgot about the tinny man begging for his old time glory hanging from the rafters. My point of origin, thought Katherine, is the old sea, the old country, and a camera. She grabbed a lamppost in the midst of the street. It is wonderful to twirl, to spin, and I hope, she whispered, that it is all make-believe and forgotten.

--

Through the long hallway of heat, a woman is bending at the waist. The true waist, which is the point of origin for the world.

In the crushed corner by the couch, that girl is thinking that there had better be an end to this. She holds her drink up to examine it, and just for a moment, her eyes are like a gleaming key hitting the light in a hall.

I have often thought of this moment later. Her slim eyes. How I have longed to be like them, their cosmic metal slipping into gear on remote; on opening.

Or how the simple working of light bent to her like a moth before a flame.

--

Cuba Gooding Sr. wrang his hands until he discovered the method of hula hoops. Crack open the plastic, and sand pours out.

--
and here are some suggestions and topics for all you other eager beavers out there:

museums
hearing America singing
heat
Hieronymus Bosch
coffee shops
points of origin
vinyl records
cowboy boots
Spain
math equations
seagulls
Cuba
salt
method
hand-wringing
hula hoops