Portholes

I am the next one up at the poetry slam. My whole class of girl poets is performing. Not a problem I think, I'll just go through the poems I have memorized and choose one. I can't think of a single poem. I start getting a little worried and my waking brain kicks in, "maybe my 'poems' are songs" I guess that I could poet a song, but I keep trying to think of something else, I tell my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Vanderlip that I have to go into nature to collect my thoughts, then I hike up into the dark wood behind the stage.

I come to a lake surrounded by black rocks. There is path of rocks out into the water that lead to a boulder. I walk out the island and look into the lake. There is a man with no legs swimming in the water below me. He looks happy. His red flannel shirt tails float around nothing. I wonder how he's swimming so well.

Somehow I know that he is not alive. He is a ghost of someone who lost his legs in the lake. Then I am aware that he is with another ghost, but she is invisible because she died in the lake. I think that I could probably write this down and make a poem out of it. More tourists come up the boulder and I leave, but I get freaked out when I touch the water because it's had dead people in it.

I return to my impending poetry performance. It's over, and my teacher tells me I'll have to perform in tomorrow's show. I am relieved and disappointed.

Later I am attending a writing workshop we're reading a poetry example from the Wilderness Charter School (where I went to high school) The poem is mine. It's very Lorca-esque with references to animals and the color green and some nice little surreal moments. I remember I wrote in in another dark wood by a little stream.

I realize I am watching a film of the writing workshop. It's of my college class. In it I am soliloquizing some important idea and I get a good reaction from the class for showing my solidarity with whatever it is. Then the cameraman leaves the room, and so do I and a bunch of my friends because we're still in the video. We come to a door labeled "Campbell Club" and "Cooks." All of my friends are either members of the Campbell Club or have the name Cook. We go in. It's a bathroom. Cool.

We leave and I ask my friend what he thought of the poetry example in class. I can't hear what he says but I think he didn't like it that much, I dig out the paper and look at the back. My copy is the original and has the rough draft on the back. I read it. It's so bad, so ridiculous that I don't want him to see it, I hide the worst parts with my hands. He falls asleep at the table and because I'm in a movie from the past I kiss him and tell him I love him.

The End.