dorianmarley

Names

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:04:00 -0500

If lives are named

Like winter storms

Jeff Buckley’s #Grace

Condoleezza Rice’s Face

Did my name change

When your family was no longer mine?

Gwen & Stan - An Introduction to Coming Together and Falling Apart (Part 1)

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:54:00 -0500

Gwen never thought she could love a man who drove a Chevy Monte Carlo. But here she was, sitting in the passenger seat with the window down, carving the Ohio corn fields geometrically along the country roads while the sun melted down on Friday.

“Stan, we’re here!”

Stan pulled his blood-red Chevy over to the side of the road and turned off the ignition.

“Come on, Stan!”

Gwen was already disappearing into the golden, uniformly thin corn trees by the time Stan could close the driver’s door. So he ran too.

The air was cold as it filled his nose, softened by the sweetness of the ripening stalks and the spice of burning wood. Stan zipped up his flannel jacket as he jogged after Gwen, crunching dried corn debris with each step. He had to bow his head to keep the loose silk from rasping his eyes. As he looked down and lightly ran, the corn stalks graced his shoulders as if he were being continually and rhythmically knighted. “Gwen is always getting me into shit like this,” Stan thought to himself.

Dusk cindered while a set of seven torches took over the responsibility of light. Gennessee and Steven waited in front of the crowd; smiling, as everyone took their seats. Gwen and Stan whisked into the back of six rows. The torches were parked about 15 feet behind the almost-bride and almost-groom, flickering shadows on their faces.

A football field grid had been cut out on Gennessee’s family farm. A small patch hidden in the countless acres of corn. The decorations were spartan, but pretty. Lace was strewn along the seat rows, enclosing them from the outside. White flowers had been placed along the ground in front of Steven and Gennessee. It created a clear, but frail demarcation from the audience. Otherwise, there was no stage to highlight the hosts.

Steven wore a navy, loose-fitting suit without a tie. Gennessee wore a mother-of-pearl dress that her grandmother had given her before she died. The sewing on the body was ornate, like a cursive maze. The bottom flowed out behind her like a jelly fish in motion.

Gennessee and Steven stood on a tapestry that used to cover the living room inside Gennessee’s parents’ house in front of the fireplace. It was divided into squares, sewn by Gennessee’s mother; one for each year of life she thought she had left when she had sewn it ten years prior. There were forty two squares in all, and each had a sketch of something she wanted to do before she died. One of the squares held a needlepoint picture of a red, hot air balloon.

There was no priest nor pastor nor judge nor emcee at this ceremony. Steven and Gennessee wanted to do it on their own. “If we can’t conduct our own wedding, how will know how to conduct our marriage?” Gennessee had said at their engagement party. It was best not to argue logic with them, because they never based any of their decisions on it. And the conversations beget by mentions of logic always ended up with amorphous, tautological discussions of the universe and inertia.

Gennessee was raised a few inches from the ground, on top of a white satin step that looked to be a pillow on top of a step stool, underneath a sheet. Everyone had been seated, and without saying anything, Steven took Gennessee’s hands into his. Left in left. Right in right. He then began to speak.

“I feel you inside my marrow. This pledge today is an afterthought. Tonight is where all these people get to see me look into your chestnut eyes with the indivisibility of a husband. This is where they see us interlock our hands in a promise throughout time. But what they don’t get to see is how we were formed from the same manna, you and I. We were created as interwoven swaths from the same coat.

“Gennessee, we will never break—not even death’s crisp grasp will peel you apart from me. Not even senility can rip the image of your gentle jawline from being burned into my hippocampus. Because, don’t you see, all else in life is but a series of mirrors in which I see your reflected image? It is not that these friends here today; your family; our future children, are not all vitally important. I love them. But they only make sense because I get to see you look back at me with your oak-stained eyes that I see even when you blink. I never need anything else other than your clenched-lip smile you make when I enter a room, your smile that seems to say, ‘why can’t life always be this easy?’

“So please, Gennessee, say you will marry me? Right here, now, in this field among our cherished people? Because I can’t believe in the future one more minute without knowing that you are legally my wife.”

A man seated two rows in front of Stan and Gwen took advantage of the lull, and cleared his throat. Gennessee’s mother dabbed at some tears. Gwen moved Stan’s hand onto her lap while she kept both of her hands gripped on his firmly from top and bottom. Gennessee then began her reply.

“Steven, I hated you the moment I first saw you. I looked at your 500-tooth-filled smile and despised the world for making someone that could look so happy. For years, I was a proud misanthrope until you belied my firm grasp on cynicism.

“I looked in the mirror this morning, Steven. I looked at myself as if I were already your wife: Mrs. Milton. And I have never seen so many teeth in my entire life.”

Gennessees’s eyes bulged from her low brow like a set of wet pearls.

“I have never believed in soulmates. Or God. Or ‘good cholesterol,’ for that matter. But, Steven, I believe in you. When my head rests in your chest, I lose all the fears I had the moment before. I wish I had religion so I could have scripture to guide me as I venture deeper into your heart.

“I give you all of me today. Everything I have ever done, and will ever do. I give you all of me today while my mama watches. I leave with you today while we are encircled with these corn stalks that fed me since I was born.

“I have always loved you, Steven. But now we are family. My blood now spills into yours with the same platelets and plasma. We are forever now, Steven. And I have already begun counting backwards from eternity with my smile that says ‘dear God, I can’t believe this gets to never end.’ I am marrying you now, Steven, because our beginnings and false-ends need a moment to look upon to rest their hats. I am yours now, Steven, so please take my hand now as my mama watches us walk away?”

Steven pulled in her left hand and stared firmly into it before pushing a golden ring onto her finger.

Gennessee and Steven, with their hands still interlocked, took several moments in silence while they stared at each other in half-smiles, both their faces scrunched. They then kissed quietly, smoothly. They looked like they had rehearsed how not to look rehearsed.

Steven gestured for everyone to stand. Everyone did. With his left left hand holding her left, and his right hand on the small of her back, Steven led Gennnessee through the small aisle of guests and into the red log barn.

Vanessa

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:26:00 -0500

I got a van and it runs.

Pushes pavement with piston guns.

Salt-licked and snow-tipped,

Fueled by winter suns.

I got a van and it drives.

Nonstop like prescription wives.

Eating feet on the mile sheet.

Speedway for weekly tithes.

I got a van that’s mature.

Just for Men dashboard couture.

Odometer gauge like a banker wage,

Campaigning a final road tour.

I got a van named Vanessa.

My Rand McNally professor.

We slice highways on Fridays;

Staple distant cities together.

Forgotten dream from a Walmart parking lot.

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:31:37 -0500

Forgotten dream from a Walmart parking lot.

Mackerel Coral

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:22:00 -0500

I was told that in the Mackerel Coral,

Where reefs hang like Pegasus’s legs,

Churning in expansion,

We can hide like kisses in a darkened theater.

We will get there soon, together

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:36:00 -0500

We will get there soon, together.

Oven-gloved with winter skin;

Dry, fair and cleanly weathered.

We will get there boo, soon.

Saffron-scented iron pots;

Steamed in kitchen-made lagoons.

We will be there new, flumed.

Arrested in sweaters indigo-dyed,

As months spew like an oil boom.

We will wake there then, raw.

Honeyed, blistered, bone cold.

Snow and lights barely thawed.

We will get there together; fazed.

Flushed forward by half-decade.

Mossed, sanded, ember-glazed.

We will get there soon, together.

Tumbled bed of timber askew,

Paced by the grace of a falling feather.

two thousand twelve

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:27:54 -0500

Last year, I proclaimed the reemergence of the album. I wrote “[t]he album is, and has, been the vessel for musical delivery.” This remains true. Artists still go into the studio, and come out with about a dozen songs ready to deliver to the public. This does not seem to be changing anytime soon. But when I look back on the year, it is a handful of different tracks instead of twelve-song series that filters into my sleep.

There were some great albums this year. Frank Ocean made a statement that felt important. Sun Airway made an album that absolutely works better when not split apart. Miguel put out twelve tracks that are each as good as the others. Cloud Nothings completely reinvented themselves. And while I was not sold on Kendrick Lamar’s production, he continued to push rap in a new direction.

I began these lists six years ago as journalistic time capsules: snapshots of what music was most important to me before the next year’s wave scattered my thoughts. The lists then progressed as a source of “truth” once the national media began to use year-end lists as larger commentary about popular music. Now, I write these for you.

I hope there is a song on this list that you have not heard before. And I hope you listen to it. I hope there are songs on this list that you have heard before. I want you to agree with some of my selections, and disagree with others. While the distinction is arbitrary (why is music released on December 21, 2012, and January 11, 2013 beyond comparison?), this is a chance to enter into the conversation about how and why these songs from the past year were important.

The music released this past year was your soundtrack: the setting for where you were when you were this age. It was just as important as the buildings you passed on your way to work, or the pair of jeans you never second-guessed wearing. Like that bleached-out Instagram you took in June of you and your crew, these songs will forever be temporally tied.

Here are my top 20 songs of 2012:

20. Icky Blossoms – “Heat Lightning”

dorianmarley

Names

Gwen & Stan - An Introduction to Coming Together and Falling Apart (Part 1)

Vanessa

Forgotten dream from a Walmart parking lot.

Mackerel Coral

We will get there soon, together

two thousand twelve

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