Wednesday, October 26, 2011

5 Excerpts from SWEET SPOT by Lorene Delany-Ullman


Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian, and received her M.F.A. in English from the University of California, Irvine. She formerly worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Company and Impulse Research, a public opinion and marketing research firm. Her book of prose poems, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, is forthcoming from Firewheel Editions in Summer 2012. She currently teaches composition at UC Irvine.


The five posts excerpted here are from a work in progress tentatively titled, Sweet Spot. 

Lorene writes: ‘Sweet Spot is the memoir of my life as the wife of a minor league baseball player during the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. As a hybrid form of short prose pieces, this collection endeavors to tell the story from the wife’s perspective in language that is both lyrical and candid. The vignettes strive to address not only the domesticity, but also the adventure and tragedy of minor league life—from food stamps and league championships to murder and divorce.’ 





  

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Spring Training)

 
 
Spring Training

St. Pete, Florida, 1979

For the first week, we rented a motel room with a kitchenette. No sink, a stove with two burners enough to warm the baby’s bottles. An hour into our stay, Denis left for practice, hitched a ride with another ballplayer. The woman who showed us the place told me to keep the screen door shut or the chameleons would get in. I didn’t know she was talking about lizards. I took the baby for a walk, pushed the stroller to the end of the lot, into the new world—flat and feverish





 

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Good Cotton)

 
 
Good Cotton

          Little Rock, Arkansas, 1979

Marie’s pregnancy sent her home to Savannah. Her left-fielder husband was a power hitter; carried the gentleman of himself in his pocket. I borrowed his car just to smell his cologne. I let loose a sigh—it was easy—we were all hungry for something. His clothes were heaped in the front seat, freshly laundered. Fingering one of his cotton sleeves, I remembered what Marie said: it all comes out in the wash.




 

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Sinker)

 
 
Sinker

          Little Rock, Arkansas, 1979

Hand over hand, I lathered and rubbed with water and soap, my kid climbing my leg. The groupie next to me washed, too, then smacked gloss between her lips. I’m gonna sleep with every player on the team, she drawled. I checked out the sink—its white notion of enamel and cast iron, the fine crack near the drain—listening hard. She and her friend giggled like girls getting ready for their Debutante ball. The sink being fine and all, I picked up my child, and quit.





   

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Sacrifice)

 
 
Sacrifice

          St Petersburg, Florida, 1980

In St. Pete we studied the Bible. A dentist and his Mrs. called the players and wives together for devotionals. Because we rented a house with two couches, the lessons were held at our home. The shortstop came clean—he was looking for dope near a fence, and found a palm-sized Bible instead. His girl, Mary, came all the way from California to wed in a fan’s backyard.



The more schooling we had, the less we’d believe, the dentist said. He pinned a map of the holy land on our living room wall, pointed and smiled while we followed the feet of Jesus. That summer I asked Him to forgive me—we bowed our heads, held hands, and prayed to win.





 

Excerpted from Sweet Spot (Road Trip)

 
 
Road Trip
August 31, 1981

His mother was murdered—I called our Little Rock neighbors first, asked Liz to check on Denis. His older brother phoned him with the news. After nine innings behind the plate, Denis was alone, probably smokin’ a jay, a frozen bag of peas on his left quad. I was in California with our daughter and infant son. That night he drove straight through—Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico—must’ve stopped somewhere for gas—maybe all cried out by Arizona. Before Denis hit our state line, husband number seven had her cremated; later, Ray showed us her plans for their new house.

We never talked about her—only the yellow nylon rope around her neck, carpet fibers in her hair, the Arizona desert road where a man riding a scooter found her. How she was robbed of her cash and credit cards. Later, the words that meant the most were “circumstantial evidence.”

She’d bought life insurance a few weeks before. We bought a Volkswagen bus with the money she left us. The orange-brown plaid curtains swung with every turn.





Thursday, October 13, 2011

'Guzzle' by Amorak Huey

 
 
There’s a saying about the wisdom of being drunk in a small boat.

There’s another about sex under a full moon, possibly also on a small boat.



Or is it sex with an ex? Or breakup sex? Or a bottle of Boone’s Farm Kountry Kwencher.
You can’t believe it’ll be that bad. Until you’re puking over the side of a small boat.



1989, her driveway. She said we were ruining our friendship. She was right.

At Scott’s lakehouse in Pell City, she stayed ashore. It was, after all, a small boat.



My favorite summer: the year I worked at a bait shop. Learned to talk like a fisherman.

Didn’t write a word. Got a good tan and my first muscles, from dragging around small boats.



A question of ethics: When you break up with someone, should you be honest about why?

What if it isn’t very nice, or makes you look bad? It’s a long way from here to a small boat.



Ghazal, I’m told, is Arabic for “talking to women.” The couplets should be linked, like couples.

They should also be detachable units. Like, for instance, a series of small boats.



If I said I was never very good at talking to women, I would want you to think me a liar.

I once drank a bottle of wine while nightfishing. The story ends like that, in a small boat



in the dark – I’m breaking the rules here; detachment isn’t as easy as it sounds –

where was I? Oh, yes: in the moonless dark, moaning her name from the bottom of a small boat.






"Guzzle" appeared in Gargoyle 56 (2010)

'Short History of the American South' by Amorak Huey

 
 
                    “Blood where the sky has opened.”

 – Jorie Graham



“You may bury my body, ooh

down by the highway side

So my old evil spirit

can catch a Greyhound bus and ride”

 – Robert Johnson



Up early. Water level low enough to walk

a hundred yards toward horizon: mud flats

crack and squelch underfoot. No one

                                      else is here

this morning. Unfamiliar sun awaits,

hungry dark lingers against gulf’s goodbye kiss,

last girl in the dance hall, first one

to meet your eye. A wink is a promise

and a threat: follow or sit down.

In this part of the world we are never



alone and this is not my story.



How many songs before you understand

why a body must keep moving?

That when you stop, you die. This is said

of certain sharks, though it might be untrue –

but we do all of us sense blood. Imagine:

single drop: one million gallons of saltwater. Still,

there is nothing evil in this world –

your chances

of being divine so small as to be invisible –

                           to peel back

what is known about the visible

requires a sort of wisdom,

an awareness of danger – you find yourself

in this spot where the last rivers end

and sky folds into ocean –



closer & closer, then farther away.






"Short History of the American South" appeared in Blue Earth Review 8.2 (Spring 2010).

'Sept. 11, 2004' by Amorak Huey

  
  
For a while, in the newsroom, we stopped

using words like “bomb” and “slaughter”

in sports headlines. We complained



less about micro-managing editors,

weak coffee, system crashes,

incompetence in the composing room,



we pitched in and made our deadlines.

We felt like, no, not quite a family,

but a team, at least. We looked around and were glad



no one in this room believed

in anything with enough fury

to shave his earthly body clean



and plunge us all headlong into the milky fire.

It was an exciting time. We did not pity the planet,

we felt renewed with possibility, knowing



all our best love stories

have a backdrop of crisis, calamity, cholera.

We counted our blessings,



counted our fingers and toes,

counted ourselves lucky

to survive, we felt proud



we were first to see this date as the proper noun

it would become, we were responsible

for its becoming, we were patriotic



because we didn’t flinch

at the risen cost of gasoline. We were resilient.

We kept the Friday Doughnut Club alive, fearing



to do otherwise was to let someone else win,

all we had to do was wait

for time to pass, for a holiday, even a somber one



the kind marked with a slow parade

and black crepe paper,

to be born in tragedy’s muck. Three years,



turns out, suffices for most of us. We made love

and war, we had babies due in June,

we miscarried on Thanksgiving,



football on TV downstairs and our future

bleeding into a cold toilet one purple clot at a time,

our bodies helpless with cramps.



There’s more than one anniversary today.

Twenty years ago in Leicester, England,

before that Monday’s first cup of coffee was gone,



someone unlocked DNA’s inner chamber,

uncovering the unique self

written in that knotted helix,



the double strand that determines

guilt or innocence, that decides before birth

whether we are strong enough



to live in the first place

or to meet death with the angry word

of god burning like jet fuel on our tongues.






"Sept. 11, 2004" appeared in Crab Orchard Revew 13.1 (Winter/Spring 2008).