1) The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
2) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
3) A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
4) Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
5) Wrecks and Other Plays by Neil Labute
5) Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
6) Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
7) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
8) New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
9) Savage Beauty (the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay) by Nancy Milford
10) Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11) Eclipse (currently reading) by Stephenie Meyer
If I just had one more, I would have read the equivalent of a book a month. Humph.
-clare
Friday, February 22, 2008
A Poem
At Work With My Father
I’m not old enough to go to school,
So my father takes me to work with him.
Sputtering down the road in a borrowed orange Rabbit,
I peer over the dashboard, bounce in my seat,
Press my face onto the window till the warm seeps into my cheeks.
My dad’s left arm is darkly tanned,
It always hangs, dancer-like, out of the window
With a cigarette gently balanced between his brown fingers.
I love to look at the thick skin on his knuckles,
The creases transfixing me, blurring under my stare like a candle flame.
Daddy does drywall, a real man’s man Mama says. A beautiful blue-collar man.
He has a soft spot for me, his sidekick—
Gives me a board and a bucket of nails,
Lets me hammer away—
“Hold it like ‘at. Then tap, tap, and hit the nail home.”
He is ten feet tall, my dad, in worn Levi’s and scuffed boots.
Shirtless, his muscles are lean as he lifts that drywall to the sun,
Hangs that sheetrock as if building an altar, a bright white heavenly altar.
I sit in the shade, eating cheese crackers in the back of a dusty truck,
Legs swinging in time to the echo of my father’s hammer.
At the end of the day, at the end of the sawdust and the sun and the blisters,
At the end of the sandwiches with mustard and the cigarettes in the gravel—
My father drives us home.
He smiles over at me, tells me I’m magic with a hammer and nail.
Beaming, I grab his hand—it is cut now, a deep wound, the blood drying on his thumb.
At home, at the supper table, I run and get a washcloth.
Clean off his thumb, put on five band-aids just to be safe.
He winks at me, says he’s much better now.
Pulls me up onto his lap and I fall asleep there
To the smell of beer. Sawdust. My breath on his sun-browned neck.
Clare Brewer
10/12/05
I’m not old enough to go to school,
So my father takes me to work with him.
Sputtering down the road in a borrowed orange Rabbit,
I peer over the dashboard, bounce in my seat,
Press my face onto the window till the warm seeps into my cheeks.
My dad’s left arm is darkly tanned,
It always hangs, dancer-like, out of the window
With a cigarette gently balanced between his brown fingers.
I love to look at the thick skin on his knuckles,
The creases transfixing me, blurring under my stare like a candle flame.
Daddy does drywall, a real man’s man Mama says. A beautiful blue-collar man.
He has a soft spot for me, his sidekick—
Gives me a board and a bucket of nails,
Lets me hammer away—
“Hold it like ‘at. Then tap, tap, and hit the nail home.”
He is ten feet tall, my dad, in worn Levi’s and scuffed boots.
Shirtless, his muscles are lean as he lifts that drywall to the sun,
Hangs that sheetrock as if building an altar, a bright white heavenly altar.
I sit in the shade, eating cheese crackers in the back of a dusty truck,
Legs swinging in time to the echo of my father’s hammer.
At the end of the day, at the end of the sawdust and the sun and the blisters,
At the end of the sandwiches with mustard and the cigarettes in the gravel—
My father drives us home.
He smiles over at me, tells me I’m magic with a hammer and nail.
Beaming, I grab his hand—it is cut now, a deep wound, the blood drying on his thumb.
At home, at the supper table, I run and get a washcloth.
Clean off his thumb, put on five band-aids just to be safe.
He winks at me, says he’s much better now.
Pulls me up onto his lap and I fall asleep there
To the smell of beer. Sawdust. My breath on his sun-browned neck.
Clare Brewer
10/12/05
Thursday, February 21, 2008
My Father
Last month was the 14th anniversary of my dad's heart transplant. Our family is going to take a trip this Spring to meet the donor family. My dad told me about 8 years ago that the doctors estimate he'll live 15 years after the transplant. So if they're right, that gives us a year. Then, on Sunday, I was talking to him on the phone. He said he got a Christmas letter from his donor family, and they mentioned that he is the last living transplant recipient (their 19 year old son died and saved 6 people by donating his organs--my father included). And I am so glad that my dad's alive! But I am so afraid to let him go! It will be one of the great tragedies of my life, watching my father leave this world. But I will watch it. He is my greatest hero.
Love, Clare
P.S. If you're not already signed up to donate your organs, please consider it. You can't possibly imagine how much good you can do. And saving lives? Not a bad way to go....
Love, Clare
P.S. If you're not already signed up to donate your organs, please consider it. You can't possibly imagine how much good you can do. And saving lives? Not a bad way to go....
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Written on a napkin, while Edna waited for her lover to return to the table:
"Let us be fools and love forever!
There was a woman, if tales be true,
who shattered Troy for a shepherd boy
less beautiful than you."
If only we could all write like that--on pages or cocktail napkins. She was a genius, that's all there is to it.
-clare
"Let us be fools and love forever!
There was a woman, if tales be true,
who shattered Troy for a shepherd boy
less beautiful than you."
If only we could all write like that--on pages or cocktail napkins. She was a genius, that's all there is to it.
-clare
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