Writing exercise #2

Getting warmed up by using http://www.amazon.com/Old-Friend-Far-Away-Practice/dp/1416535039
and some of her writing prompts

Memory of my mother...
My mom cooks like nobody's business. She's magic. I see her and hear her humming and singing as cast iron pots move and are prayed over.

Her coca-ebony skin glows with a little chicken grease from the spatter. She laughs and smiles as she moves collard greens and ham-hocks to happy tummies.

Memory of the color red...
Blood on my clothing from sparring again. Throbbing blood-shot eyes from sparring. Trying to see through a vermilion haze to my sparring partner.
Punch, spit blood. Cross, jab, hook, spit blood. I try to remember a time without blood in my mouth, a cleaner, younger time.


Memory of a sound...
Summertime sizzles on the grill. There are no mistakes in this season. The ice cream truck jingle-jangle marks the shank of each afternoon of play. I wish for my seesaw time with Shelly and Chris. I long to be torn by the splash of swimming pools too full and parties I was supposed to go to.

Picture of a teacher I had in elementary school...
I wished I could an call angel by her first name and Mrs. Williams chided my for asking. I didn't know what possessed me to ask an adult that question, but I do now. Mrs. Williams singsongy  memory lives my my head and on my notebook, and on the side of my new white sneakers, her name with hearts and stars.

A meal I loved...
The first part of the ritual is you stand in a long line with the other devotes thinking and re-thinking your meal choices. Pork marinated to just so. Onions grilled with jalapenos, You can't see it from here, but you can smell it and that is almost of as good as owning it, the way it will own you later. Mumbling into my crusty-soaked white bread, "Gawd-damn, this is good."

A memory about rain...
Alone and naked laying in the backyard, laughing and a little afraid. What does it mean when a grown man leaves his clothes in the house to go lie in the tall, tall grass. Talking to the raindrops as though they were tears from God, or mother's milk. Letting the drip, drip of the over and over, and over, between my thighs and over the bridge of my nose.