Oh, Moli. What high hopes you're giving me! Paying my rent? I could cry. Really.
My story; it's a long one, and I like to ramble, but I'll try to keep it simple. I grew up in a horrendously dysfunctional environment, but somehow beat the statistics and graduated high school (gasp!). My school days consisted of day-old pork chops for lunch and pennies for bus fare, distracting myself from everything by getting involved in everything. Choir, dance, theater, name an extra-curricular activity and I was in it.
So, I manage to go to a tuition-free arts high school where I discover my passion for writing. But, as we all know, unless you're Danielle Steele and your target audience is thirty-something housewives with a passion for cheap, dry erotica, the chances of you making any money from writing is slim to none. I still write on, though. (Right on!)
I was offered a one-way plane ticket from Phoenix to California. I currently live in what they like to call the "lower bottoms" of West Oakland -- like, it's not even bottoms, it's LOWER than the bottoms. Imagine more murders than I can count on one hand happening in the year or so I've lived here. And why does a tiny, blue-eyed 20 year old poet girl live in the Lower Bottoms? ... The rent is cheap. But still hard to acquire. The Bay Area is rough. The cost of living, the cost of EVERYTHING, is insane. I currently lift ridiculously heavy boxes of CDs and DVDs in the back room of a record store to get some sort of paycheck that doesn't even come close to covering what I need. You mentioned ramen? Yeah, for a quarter a piece, it's my main source of un-nutrition.
I still write. It keeps me sane in this world of dollar signs and gun shots and bus rides where the driver will stop mid-route to hit a liquor store (no joke).



Here's my submission; I hope you enjoy it!

this is the winter of my

My childhood tastes like Budweiser in a can. In twenty-four cans. In thirty-six more.
My childhood sounds like referees blowing their whistles and holding their arms up for verifications of touchdowns. Horror Mondays sing "Are you ready for some football?!"
My childhood looks like yellow school buses pulling up to peeling white paint over wood walls and sharp chain-link fences cut by pliers.
My childhood feels like sticking to pleather armchairs in triple-digit desert heat and no-longer-cream carpet splattered with kool-aid and bloodstains.
My childhood smells like cigarette smoke and rust from the choke-sputter-spit of the swamp cooler.

My father looks like a five-foot-ten prison ink canvas, salt-and-pepper long hair pulled back into a ponytail and a crooked, cracked smile meant to make you shit your pants.
My father smells like Camel Non-Filters, Brut cologne, and motor oil.
My father sounds like the pseudo-Harley Davidson parked in his front yard, rasping and gasping to grab and hold and run, run, run with it.
My father tastes like dead skin, dirt and sweat and salt on the palms of his calloused hands, his pores still expelling the speed from ten years back.
My father feels like the leather sleeveless vest he would wear back in the day, feels like age and disease and disgust and fraudulence and anger in a burning ball.

My mother smells like Hawaiian Ginger and Marlboro Reds, mixed with ammonia from her auburn copper hair dye.
My mother tastes like bread, lunch meat and an overabundance of mustard, of pork chops once a week.
My mother sounds like the rushing river wearing down rock, taking bits and pieces of debris along with her on her way to ocean dump, sounds like a song with every existing instrument playing their own tune in their own time.
My mother feels like dead skin on all ten knuckles, red and torn from punching walls on Independence Day, feels like fried but tame hair.
My mother looks like bags under glossy and distant eyes, looks like skin and bone, looks like a thin, cracked, hollow tree trunk.

And I.

I smell like cigarette smoke - Camel Non-Filters, Marlboro Reds, like Hawaiian Ginger and ammonia, rust, and motor oil.
I also smell like milk and honey, of passion fruit, of salty tears and discontent.
I sound like a rushing river towards an ocean dump, of an overabundant instrumental tune, of whistles and motorcycles with engines screaming run, run, run with it.
I also sound like a mezzo-soprano clearing her throat far too often, a child giggling, a dictionary, a Francesca Lia Block novel, a Bukowski poem, and discontent.
I taste like makeshift sandwiches, salty and sweaty palms, like tin cans.
I also taste like green tea and coffee, cinnamon frozen chai, like a kiss - two kisses - three kisses - more, like words too tough to speak so they're swallowed down sour, like discontent.
I feel like dead skin, like stained carpet, like perspiring legs to plastic couches, like a burning ball.
I also feel like a tornado, a hurricane storming, swarming bees, like acoustic guitar string frequencies bending to my discontent.
I look like his ponytail and his cracked, crooked, awkwardly fierce smile. Like her distant eyes, her jutting bones, her hollow center.
I also look like a worn-out ballerina, an actor squinting in stage lights too bright, like the battle wounds on my thighs, and like his, her, your, their, our, my my my discontent.


by hereticpride