I Left a Boy on Raecher Road

[lazariuk]

You're going to have to work a little harder to make that last sentence be anything other that what it is; a straightforward description of shoveling snow.

Oh were the sentences before that other than straightforward ?

[Manna]

The sound - the movement of the word as it is formed by the tongue and lips and teeth. Bathrobed is a word that has to bounce around too much (the same way bubble bath does). The sound of bathrobed widow has too many short sounds. I don't know the technical term, maybe plosive? (B, D, P, T) Softer longer sounds would fit what the widow is better - S, R, M, Th, vowels.

[lazariuk]

Now you have me confused, Manna. I thought you meant as though she had just emerged from a bubble bath and slipped on her robe before going outside. By bumpy, do you mean her figure beneath the robe? Or what?

I think she was saying that she didn't want it to sound bubble bath and then later that she didn't want it to sound bumpy

[lazariuk]

oops you already explained that, we must have been thinking concurrently.

[lazariuk]

though i must admit that i still pictured the widow getting out of the bubblebath and her bumps bouncing into her bathrobe

[Manna]

Is she hypoxic as well?

[lazariuk]

Is she hypoxic as well?

It wasn't goosebumps that i was picturing

she wasn't blue going into a red bathrobe
she was red going into a blue one

LOL

[lizzytysh]

Actually, Jack, the others were just as straightforward... they were just easier for you to contort.

Thanks for your explanations, Manna [and Jack]. You just happened to choose a means of explanation that was so befitting the bathrobe that I went the wrong direction with it. Sort of like Jack's addition... except, once again, the bumps I imagined were different. Mine related to the impacts of aging.


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Haha on Manna's and your exchanges. Just when everyone thinks they're being perfectly clear...


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

Lizzy I should point out that I think the way you are picturing things seems to work just as well as how I am picturing things. I went off in a certain direction because it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. I'm not always in that kind of mood and the way you went seems like pretty firm ground. What I am trying to say is that just because my picture is differnet from yours doesn't mean that I think yours is not right. In reality a shovel is just a shovel.

[Manna]

And sometimes a shovel is an Irish Banjo.

There used to be folks called Gandy Dancers. The first transcontinental railroads were built in part by Irish laborers, and one of the jobs was Gandy Dancing. They'd take a short work train out with a sleeping car and a cook car and a tool car. They'd stick a Gandy Shovel (aka Irish banjo) under the rails, step up on the end of it and dance a little jig step. That would lift up the rail and then they'd throw some gravel under it to level the road bed so the train wouldn't fall off, which would just be a big drag for everybody.

[lizzytysh]

I went off in a certain direction because it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. I'm not always in that kind of mood . . .

Oh, yes, I know what you mean, Jack. Bicycles come to mind.

On the contorting, just teasing, of course.

And, then, as Manna suggests. Sometimes a shovel isn't a shovel, at all... or is an inverted sort of one.


~ Lizzy

[Manna]

I left a boy on Raecher Road,
his heart as red as the dream cars
pinned to the walls of his bedroom.

This hatless blue jean turbulence
roughed the frozen alfalfa fields
in a flurry of tumbling snowball fight
against the hulking wind, white
and frothy as dairy farm milk
pulled gently from the teat.
We drank it raw and warm,

and later, he told a ghost story
set on the widow’s property
where he pulled a rake in fall
and pushed a shovel in winter,
his hands too young to creak
the way hers had that morning
and too keen to wave no thanks
at the dollar offered quivering
at the end of her bathrobe sleeve.

~.~

Jack, I can't answer your question about the ghost story. She's a widow, and beyond that, I'm going to leave it up to the reader. I think it's ok, and I like what people have come up with for it.

[lizzytysh]

The way I'm seeing it, since it says "later," the ghost story could have been told late one night in the barn, while lying on some bales of hay... enough warmth to get you by. I like the finished poem, Manna.


~ Lizzy

[Jimmy O'Connell]

Manna,
After all the suggestions.... I still prefer the original.... except where I suggested improvements... (how egotistical is that!!!)

That "bathrobe" is STILL not working for me..... it says nothing and too much at the same time...

Oh well....


Jimmy