This year’s holiday house was down a dirt path that boarded a salt marsh pond by tall wet grass and the harbor. The smell of fire was in the distance and when faded was replaced by rings around a fresh moon through fog. The water by my uncle’s house seemed to bend under the weight of light. All of this was so serene. For a moment, I felt as if the harshness of my world softened. The fog warped time. My world lost its abrasiveness, contour, boarders and cruelty.
I eased myself onto the pebbly concrete walkway leading to the front door. I watched the yard darken, the fence posts flattened into silhouettes, the breeze stirred and brought a smell of damp bark, mulch. He had his outboard motor torn apart on the bench. The carburetor soaked in gasoline. (Same exact scene as last years Christmas)
At the door, I hesitated, peered into cobbled mews through a thick glass pane in the oak door. Sand stuck in my hourglass and I thought myself dead.
Inside everything passed slightly downhill with no grip. Flames striped my face, tipped with blue lace while pine oil rubbed my juvenile hands along a beveled oval mirror supported by two serpentine arms, three banks of drawers with curved fronts and cut glass pulls. The wood, blond, mottled with fudge colored whorls. My dull limbs and swollen finger joints no longer able to hold my lost tongue. No more heroic acts of patience and that was the day I learned what Birds Eye Maple was after I fell into him, landed six feet under desperately needing air in a room without contour.
His eyes like a cold white moon, bloomed of steel. Hair was a curious grayish-black, sparser than last year. Reduced now to one thick wadded clump which grew from low down on one side of his head and the top bald. That wadded lump of hair wandered and spread like a matted growth stuck on a salted path heaving its wake while he mind fucked me time and time again like instant replay. After I rock minutely, arms around knees anticipating the next bite, I am in tune with him and I called him the shovel man.
His wife bent under a stingy halo of light, folded her arms at the waist. She looked so unsteady, or not unsteady exactly, but inward. Perplexed by the bony roots of spruce. No make up. Her hair a plain brown and gummy looking. Skin around her eyes no thicker than a dried flower petal with an icy set of lips.
I manage to locate a can of pork and beans. I walked the sauce pan outside, as if my leave of absence would show me off in a miraculous new light. In the silence, I formed barnacles and minor revelations ambushed me. I swallowed him and he became my ulcer while I felt the nausea of him sweep through. I ran back inside, poured soapy water over the pan, turned on the transistor radio a top the ice box and listened to the national news as if it concerned me intensely.
I sat with a beer and let it roll down my throat. I slid the bottle against the bare skin of my inner thighs between swallows while I wished for them to silently stop. I always assumed I hid some spirit. A palpable otherness, but then they all came. The relatives bearing gifts, when really they only bear themselves. Their sky held no angels that could save me.
A face in my hands, a knowing stumbled on blind through the dark with arms sheer and a mouthful of grief, I managed to swallow their leftovers. A savage storm changed to a soothing calm and a clean ozone smell impinged on my expanded awareness of presents I would not hold.
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Author notes
I know you wanted short... if this isnt any good let me know and I will take it out of the contest. --- hey.. where you been? I thought you were back by now?
A contest entry
- prose contest. by iverbthenoun.
875 points, ended November 1, 2008, 7 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 27 of 27
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Well deserved gold. From time to time I read something that really captures the soul of the writer at a particular moment and provides an insight into that person in such a way that the insight is universal and applies to all people. This is one of those times. This is something so common to many people . . . and you have rendered it so perfectly clear. With understated emotion, you bring the reader to your viewpoint through a series of images that wind closer and closer to the heart of things. You approach it all with a reluctance that speaks volumes . . . the awkward moments where you focus on details that distract you from looking at what is all around you . . . until you can avoid it no longer. Even then, when you look the situation right in the eye, somehow you distance yourself emotionally.
Your work is subtle and very well crafted. You never push the reader into the feeling, but rather draw the reader in, gently and persistently. This is excellent. Certainly one of the best things I have read in a long time.
Garrison
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Congratulations on the Golden Chalice!!
I really like this piece, and am glad "The Shovel Man" snagged top prize!!! 
Keep on keeping on... Peace, love & hugs always, xx Cyn xx 
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hmm you're quite the author, you really pull a reader into your work, it just comes to naturally to visualize your settings and characters, the sense of humanity in this was over whelming, it comes across in a subtle way, and doesnt really hit until the ending, which pretty much left me in a surreal state, wonderful reading
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fresh, everything about this is alive and cleverly articulates thoughts, feelings and clarity that we all have but just cant let out
opening sections flow very strongly and each image percice.
the simplicity in "and I thought myself dead." is what made it however.
just epic, nothing more
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*oops who clicked the clappymen?
it was unintentional i swear.
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Oh God i don't have words for this. but you know i did feel like crying out loud... you know how little girls like me are? lol... i was being sarcastic, but i think you do know that i meant i felt like crying- in the sense that i was completely drawn into the whole thing.... your narrator, PHENOMENAL, made me feel her pain. there is nothing to change or add here. and this is a short prose/story. but it has so much poetry in it too. THANK YOU. (i wish i could clappfy this one...)[may come back after judging the contest]
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You are so very good at incorporating the whole environment, you know that? I was there. I felt the heat of the fire, the chill of the company. And the presents... it's funny.. I was just saying today how you can kind of pick presents for people based off what they would pick for you...
More often than not, I find that people pick things out that they like themselves, not quite as much what they think YOU would like...
I know, that's a little irrelevant given the mood and feel of this, but somehow, maybe it is a bit of a nail on the head -- at least for me.
You're damn good at this prose stuff, Heidi. I wish I could capture a place the way you have here.
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I read the piece and the comments. They were all right. This is good prose. Your imagery was so good that I felt as if I were there with you. I do not think you are a bitch for not wanting critiques on the emotional ones. Sometimes we have to write for us. Without the concerns of filler words, puncuation and the like. Very nicely done.
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ahhh thank you for your comments...
actually tara and i are in a workshop group together and i tried and tried to start this as a poem... the great ladies in the group were making suggestions and it was just hard for me to change what was in my head... i tried to workshop it as a poem but failed miserably so i turned it prose...
i am always open to critiques though and just wanted to explain what i meant by what i said to tara.. its kind of like walking into a conversation started somewhere else LOL... so basically-- i gave up on it as a poem in our workshop due to its emotional tie.
i am really glad you enjoyed it and took the time to leave such a beautiful comment. -
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I love prose. I write quite a bit of it myself. Usually, I am open to critique as well. I recall when I first started ap on an old account. All I knew was how to rhyme. If it were not for a few specific poets here, I wouldn't be where I am. However, I do occasionally write a rhyming piece, or one so personal that I would rather not have the critiques. Especially if I have worked it to death already. I enjoy the critiques because they help me grow. Thank you for all the kind words you left on my poetry as well.
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I've been here a few times now to read this piece.....excellent imagery..I can't tell which I like better...but I think the prose like this=)
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i worked on this a lot yesturday....
i have to leave it as it is...
i am never ever ok with it broken up and end up going way to out of the box - where if read it makes no sense...
and i really dont want this particular poem written with others suggestions... i think because of the emotion in it for me...
or i am just a bitch.. one or the other lol
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remarkable!
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This is super writing, Heidi. What wonderful images and detail and mood you've created here. Really good - and I loved the story line too. You should write more prose like this!
~ Nicolette
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ha i see you got the praise you deserved on this remarkable piece i cant tell you enthralled i was when reading this and i totally admire how intricate each scene was you are amazin darlin'
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Hey Heidi, this is quite a write you've penned
Much more vivid than the usual
I really liked it.
Much luck in the contest my friend, but you probz wont need it
Ken
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man, do i love this title.. i agree- this is really, really strong prose
the story breaks my heart-
i do think this could be an amazing poem also.. but i am still not sure it needs to be...
i think your heart will tell you that... i love this piece
m
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I don't know what to say, this is sooo good. You're really good at this prose stuff hon.
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This is full of imagery, and emotion. Quite an impact on me. I really like some of the lines in this. And my favorite is:
Their sky held no angels that could save me.
Wow !!
Four stars.
Joe
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Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.
I am glad that a line jumped out at you
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You did good Heidi...
I like the prose version alot...more details and completely understandable. The part about you calling him the shovel man made me giggle and think of home alone the movie
...remember the pigeon lady?...I love that movie...lol.
I wish you the best here.
♥Becky♥
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Thank you Becky... I am not sure if I can turn this into a poem... it might be a really really long one LOL and i am not sure if i can single out some of the images clear enough. I am not confident on this one being a poem for our group... but maybe you guys can all help teach me how LOL
LOL yes i remember the pigeon lady- you are so funny.
this guy just kept shoveling shit my way and i would take it to the barn lol
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All I can say is WOW, seriously, kinda speechless at the moment. This was amazing, it sucked me in with the first few words and just awed me with the emotion behind it. Quite the piece you have here, best of luck in the contest.
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Thank you for really taking the time to read it. Means a lot.
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As soon as I glimpsed at the preview I couldn't not read it haha. This really is fantastic. Ya know, I think I'm positively green with envy at the moment haha
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green is only a good color on you temporarily
lol besides.. you have some hellavagoodones yousself :
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Hahaha well thank you ^_^
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