creative writing assignment 4-Experimental Memoir

This is a rough draft.  Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

The tear in my side cannot be mended.  If left open germs could fester and infect not just me but the patients who sleep on me. I could hear the on the phone.  I am not just cleaning it and putting a sheet on it.    What if it was your family member?  There are more mattresses in the closet.

 So now I’m waiting for the porter to take me to the dreaded compactor room and my destruction.  I will be replaced.  Maybe he will get one of my friends or family members from the closet.  I wonder if they will know of my demise.  My comrades.  We held each other up in that dark closet, leaning against one another awaiting our fate.  We were not the elite mattresses.  We are simple folks, stuffed plastic sewn on the sides to keep or insides in. No the elite serve to comfort patients in intensive care.  Sometimes their stints lasted months, sometimes a day.  Briefly they would be deflated of air, bathed and replaced to their home.  Discarded rarely.  No, we are the plow horses of the mattresses.  We are providing comfort to new mothers, sick children, and the terminally ill. 

The maid has removed the sheets and now I am naked.  I feel her lift the pillow and heard her toss it in the garbage.  I can hear the motor of the bed and feel my legs and head being lifted in to the air.  Squeezed together I form a v shape while she washes under me.  The drawers of the nightstand are opened and soap, toothbrush and any remnants of a patient are discarded, making room for the next one. Depending on the maid the TV is either turned off or turned in to Univision and Sebastian, foretelling the future for Gemini’s.  Once I heard two maids discussing the novella.  One was giggling when music played.  She asked her friend,

Bravo, who is she?

She is a very bad person, killed a lot of people, but she’s ok now.

The broom swishes and then I feel the cold wet rag on me.  My top and sides are scrubbed.  She leaves me to dry while I hear the broom. After I am dry, she tucks in clean sheets and tops the bed with a pillow of dreams.  Then the baths the blue rag bathes me head to toe, and along my sides.  Refreshed I hear the click of the light as she turns it off. 

Day one:   I would feel the weight of him lighten.  Like a king on his throne he would sit in the chair, the head looming over him, a blanket to his chin.  His cane rested like a specter on his armrest.  I could hear him greet the maid with “Buenos Dias.”  And her response in English good morning, he giggled and I heard her replace the bag in the garbage. 

Day two:  he has not moved.  His tears rained on me in the dark.  He shifts and whispers, as the nurse adjust his IV.  Tiene hambre,  tiene hambre he mutters.

Day three:  the weight is lifted.  The sheets have been removed, and I wait for my bath. This is the ying and yang of a Brooklyn hospital. 

Don’t feel sorry for me, I have been witness to joy and sorrow.  Before my stint on the cancer ward I was comfort to the new mothers who nursed and cuddled their infants.  Siblings crawled in beside to adore and wonder at the new member of their family.  Spouses and cousins, in-laws and friends, ate feasts of pernil and rice. After three days I would be bathed and clothed and another woman would climb in and begin snoring soundly.    

Eng. 274-Blog Assignment 5-Angela's Ashes

If asked to list my favorite top ten books, Angela’s ashes would tie with Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.   Frank McCourt uses language of a child and slang to effectively transform his readers to Limerick Ireland.  One example is his recreation of the hardships of his youth.  He describes the reasons for his family’s move.  “Mam says she can’t spend another minute in that room on Hartstronge Street.  She sees Eugene morning, noon and night.  She sees him climbing the bed to look out at the street for Oliver and sometimes she sees Oliver outside and Eugene inside, the two of them chatting away.”    By using the word Mam, a term of endearment, for his mother, I immediately felt a sense of cultural identity and camaraderie.  He continues by explaining her sorrow and in doing so illustrates the hardships of poverty. 

McCourt then shows how religion had an effect on his philosophy on life.  He illustrates this by retelling the story of his father’s treasured picture.    He tells of his father, “He’s the only pope that was ever a friend to the workingman and what are we to say if someone from the St. Vincent de Paul Society comes in and sees blood all over him?”  This illustrates how his father revered this pope and only this pope.  He insinuates that other priests and popes were not as compassionate for the poor.  He also shows how his father worries about what the church will think of him, illustrating his fear of the church.

I found it interesting that the author did not use the formal method of quotations; he does not indent or use quotations.  His dialogue is intermingled with description and action and the experimental writing creates a sense of youthful vision, a story told from a child.  In addition the dialogue reads as part of the story being told.  

Finally, McCourt offers another example of how his parents formulated his personality.  His father took great pride in dressing properly, thinking that it presented an individual as respecting himself, he tells his children, “A man without a collar and tie is a man with no respect for himself.”     The father believed that by dressing well he might receive an opportunity and if he was not dressed for the opportunity it would pass him.  He was teaching his children to be prepared for that oppourtunity.

Like Jonh Steinbeck before him, McCourt offers an honest vision of poverty.  Because of his imagination and determination he was able to overcome his difficulties and pay homage to his mother.  Some day I would like to do the same for the family that worked so hard for me.

Candle

 

 

I light the candle,

                   I light it with the lone lighter that remains,

          I found this one clinging to life in a drawer.

 I light the candle in the dining room,                                         and it fills with the aroma of vanilla. 

The smoke catches a ride on a light breeze,

and caresses the photos and memorabilia on the shelves    

                             above me. 

knickknacks, photos, my grandpa’s cameras,

 Below the shelves to my grandmothers paintings.

 I return my gaze to my candle and I inhale deeply,

                                   once more before I extinguish the flame.

writing exercise

Writing Exercise, Reflection


I found my eyes reflect on squggling linguinis,
                  compelling my attention.
It looks like soapy water.
                 My next idea was a curious one,
I have no desire,
           I can't be meek.
Draft dodgers alking or steppin backwards,    
   sat still, as if bewitched.
Soon I'll become a salt cellar,
            peppered with ice and slush.