austin universe prose project gets a little bigger

Hey guys, here's another addition to the AUPP from Jeff Barnyard Daily. He's got some magic up his sleeves, yes he does. And please please please (as James Brown would say), don't go, send some more material, all you happy campers out there. Thanks.

p.s. the reading order goes me, Erin, anonymous, and Jeff

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.

--

The America she knew was quickly fading. She hailed a cab and when she finally flagged one down the backseat had used condoms and the smell of b.o.

"Take me to 21st and Main," she said.

Her heart was racing. The museum had brought back painful memories. Why did she go and stare at the Rothko's? Why did she feel swallowed up?

--


topics and suggestions for future prose:

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