Works In Progress?

[bluemaydie]

Boards have been quiet lately. Everyone must be working.

What's everyone working on?

Me: assorted poems. Attempting to write lyrics and convince my parish's liturgist to set them to music. I'm ambitious that way. Also, raising boys, housework, re-reading Dorothy Sayers. Checked out some Rumer Godden from the library yesterday and will give her a go.

You?

[Bernardo]

I'm working on a memoir, on preparing for the end of the school year, and on moving to Dallas. The boards have been silent indeed. Actually, I've been wondering about how we can either remake this section or, perhaps, get rid of it? It has had its moments now and then, but it has never really taken off.

Actually, I'm more curious about the following: does anyone have ideas for how we can make the com-boxes on the new site more active? We're getting plenty of web traffic, but commenting remains limited. To a certain extent that's reasonable given that we don't tend to publish a lot of "controversial" stuff (i.e., politics, church gossip, etc.), but I think we could be doing better in any case.

Thoughts?

[bluemaydie]

I don't know if this would increase comments, but I have wished that the front page were laid out more like a blog--with older posts still visible as you scroll down. That way people could see and compare newer things with older.

But I think for lots of comments, you have to go with controversy, and I have my doubts about that being a good idea.

[job]

Here's the opening chapter to my novel or short story or something in verse. Its based on the first tale of the first day in the Decameron.

I
“Holy shit! Lytlewood’s coming to town!”
Lonnie Cash’s huff-puffing bulk almost
Reached the room and his brother Peyton’s frown
Before his fat squeal filled up and crossed
The office doorway. His brother was lost
In thought, his exquisitely thin fingers
Drumming desktop for some sullen sunk cost
The way a hunted animal lingers
With haunting hungers in shadow’s hidden dangers.

“Yeah, Lonnie, he’s coming alright – I heard
About it this morning. One of Frankie
Music’s men had rang in an early bird
Reservation,” Peyton said, his lanky
Frame rising slowly, painfully, frankly,
To greet his brother with the same cool regard
Lonnie’s perpetual anxiety
Always – the way Peyton saw things – incurred.
He watched as the word reservation registered

Within the sallow jowls and sag-heaping jaw
Lonnie would bounce and jounce with confidence
Like pistons as he worked a plug of chew
Embalmed in Juicy-Fruit. His countenance
Made counterfeits of intelligence,
Dismaying his friends, surprising his foes,
And disgusting, with thick-headed offence,
His brother – so it was that Peyton was
Fond of slapping Lonnie’s fat face with good bad news.

“Reservation?” Lonnie repeated. “Here?
“At The Burgundy?” “Where else?” Peyton said,
And pretended more quietly, “My fear
Is that our Mr. Biggy Lytlewood
Wants someone’s due – Music never yet did
Send Biggy but the business required
A heavy hand’s caress, some smarts – and blood.”
The piston in Lonne’s jaw devoured
The news fiercely – then froze his face as he inquired:

“But why…The Burgundy?” A seven-story
Red-brick affair, old as sin, the inn was built
By hands long-lost in graft’s deep pockets; hard
And fast, yet ramshackle to a fault –
It stood in comic pride almost at a tilt,
Each room dirty with money’s satin sheets
And ghosting dirty looks from shades of guilt
Down at the crawling business of the streets
To figure shapes of darkest days and lamp-lit nights.

By the blood-red of its own furnaced brick-
Work, it was rechristened – and not too long
After Cash and cash had made specific
Arrangements to get and gain for a song
The Singerman Arms after Virgil Strong
Relinquished it as compensation for
Arrears to Frankie Music’s sturm und drang.
(Some say Strong’s coffered corpse still minds the store,
Inspiring the Cash boys to filthier lucre.)

The brothers held court in the dingy nook
Behind the registration desk, itself
Bare but for the leather-bound ledger book
Spilling pages from it’s cracked spine, each leaf
Holding a secret history no shelf
Of Shakespeare could fill with such confessions.
Biggy Lytlewood’s own tale had its life
Reserved in The Burgundy’s discrete lessons
Made columnar and quick as dead letter questions.

“Lytlewood will be on the evening train,”
Said Peyton as he rolled a cigarette
With barely a pinch of weed stuck between
His fingers. “So I’d just as soon as bet
A wage of sins as that train’s coming late.”
In one motion he lit and took a drag,
Exhaling his words, "So… Be… Early." He let
The unspoken – for once – hang like a fog
In smoke between them. With no hope for epilogue

The falling silence bore up each second
The office clock was chipping out like ice.
“Sweet Jesus! Peyton – I hadn’t reckoned
We’d see Biggy’s ugly fox of a face
So soon after…after…” And he held his
Hands up – four digits apiece. Each lacked a thumb.
He’d submitted them, a small sacrifice
To Music’s men for dues to something dumb
Of Peyton’s doing: unpaid interest on a sum

Of loans to keep the Cash’s solvent grasp
On Burgundy’s lease. “You’re going to hold
That over my head ‘til my deathbed gasp,
And no doubt after,” said Peyton. His cold
Sneer of fraternal hate only retailed
The wholesale hurt his brother tried to fling
At him with rare wit so rarely revealed:
“You know, Peyton, there’s not a goddam thing
A man less than an ape can hope to be holding

At day’s end.” Sunlight, oily and urban,
Had seeped down through the city’s upper spheres
To bleed through dirty window blinds and span
With gridlines across Lonnie’s face. Faint tears
Angered his dull grey eyes black and shudders
Of past pain held him a moment beyond
The surety of hatred the brothers
Made in compact – to contract, expand as wind
Of lung and word of tongue agreed to contract, expand.

But lets now leave in uneasy conference
The brothers – unable to speak or know
Their minds in confidence of alliance –
And further shape what will come tomorrow
By glancing back at yesterday’s afterglow:
See, already dawn ignites the daily lamp
A final time, should time alone allow,
For Mr. Biggy Lytlewood – his limp
And sleeping form began to stir to life undreamt.

[johnblood]

I'm working my way through several stories, about 10 or so. There is a Catholic detective story that takes place in the early 1900s; and a Dashiell Hammett-style hard boiled story. This is not include finishing the last two parts of a sci-fi trilogy and rewriting the first part. I have have a comedy/mystery in the works and a longer than usual (for me) locked room mystery. I have lots of work to do!

[dorfle1]

I am working on a new monster story. My immediate audience (male) likes monster stories.