New Flash Fiction: Converse, a Brand Name

Well, first, pal Robin's Dutton's Brentwood event for The Wild Irish was a raging success, as was her San Francisco stop, so thanks if you were one of the folks who stopped by. She spend last weekend and early this week in Chicago, where I'm sure she also hit the city by storm.

As for me, now that Halloween is over, I'm doing the desperately needed revisions of the first drafts you've all seen of my Halloween prose poems/flash fiction (they're better already, I swear). In the meantime . . .

Converse, a Brand Name

I know you of old. I sit on this covered pool table well after midnight in this five-buck cover place. You stand up there on the stage with your five-buck cover band.

You’re thicker. Not heavier, exactly, just . . . thicker. The skin around your eyes doesn’t look the same as it used to in that harsh light.

You smile at me. You know me because I like your band. You remember me buying your CDs a couple of times, your T-shirt once.

I am not a groupie. I am the oldest member of your audience.

I remember you lean, I remember your shoulder blades and face sharp, not that long ago, I’m sure.

How many times have I seen you look down at that play list handwritten on lined notebook paper set on the stage in front of you? How many times have I sat here in thick Doc Martens and flimsy black dresses, absently twisting one of my fourteen earrings?

“Ein, zwei, drei,” you count, like Johnny Rotten before you and John Lennon before him. I’m not your stepping stone.

What’s up with you, huh? What’s with that shot glass of Wild Turkey straight up soda back sitting on your amp instead of your old Rolling Rock? Where’s that bleached blond bass player you used to cut up with on stage? Where’d he go?

Look at your feet. Don’t you know they’re all wearing Converse One Stars now? Don’t you know they already only wear the All Stars in memory of us?

Say something to me. Play me “Sister Goldenhair.” I never loved you before tonight, and now it's hitting hard, a sea storm welling up from somewhere in the middle of my body to smash me against a covered pool table shore.