Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Austin Univers Prose Project update


Hey there fellow starbrights, Erin Vaughan's already replied (and so has someone else; who can it be? I'm not telling yet) to the AUPP request. Hers is an inspired piece of grand prose. Me like. Also, her suggestions for you future posters are at the bottom of the post. Also also, any anonymous posters out there need only post a comment and you too can be included in this most historic of endeavors, plus I'll blow kisses to you across the interweb. Great!

here's the genesis paragraph:

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.

--

suggestions:
Cuba

salt
method
hand-wringing
hula hoops

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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