Camp K by Meg Pokrass
Soon, she will allow the other campers to know she’s not fucking around, this is life! She is still young and attractive, and can play bingo with a large group of night people. She looks better than most women her age with a beer, arm raised.
One silly loose ceramic tile in her front yard left her widow to a sweet, pot-bellied man (her husband, Jim) who died on the ground from a brain bubble, while an army of white coats moved around him – picking him up like a toy and taking him to a vehicle. She remembers the medics as a swarm of ants eating elderberry pie.
At breakfast, she is almost alive, and still, she feels like eating the other campers. She hates them and their laughing. She does not know why her friends said she should be ready for this, for a vacation by herself in a place of sectarian forced fun, such as Camp Kierkegaard, or whatever the fuck they call it. The camp and it’s a cool-assed multi-stalled bathrooms, and bare “cabin” look and feel. Expensive, and still, they appear to be sharecropper shacks. They could be filmed in black and white with some rickety looking, skinny child-model standing on the slat porch holding a broom.
Instead, it is inhabited by traumatized urban couples, here to escape life grinding down around them. They hang out by the lake talking about France – slathering SPF 50, Comparing water sandals, hanging up their dry and wear while cocking their heads sensitively.
After breakfast she will listen to her CD with sounds of rain, insects, and goats bleating. An Irish healer created a series of numbered CD’s to make the feelings of a widow less dangerous. She holds the promise of this around her middle like a warm cat. Somehow there’s the sound of crickets now when saying hello to people over pungent eggs and potatoes.She can sit alone or in a community with others and listen to her own, special moods – smoothing a worry stone and a bottle of ketchup.
© 2009, Metazen. All rights reserved.
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great imagery, meg, i like this piece. “Camp Kierkegaard”…made me laugh. i feel compelled to look for my black sweater and the horn-rimmed glasses that i last wore when i read camus in the tube, holding it up for all to see. sex is around the corner here and yet, it’s not happening. the end is open, arm raised.
I love the pathos of this Meg… I want to scoop this character up and nurture her back to fiesty female until her pain is soothed… It will never go away …but it can change shape into mellow memories.
“What becomes of the broken hearted?”. x
Beautiful piece. I could almost feel her pain and anger.
thank you Finnegan, Heather, and Andrea!
Kick to the ass! Wow.
brain bubbles…