Tag: Charlotte Lit

Waiting at the Depot

The waiting game at The Depot Tavern would often set a mind to wandering about the future.

Puddles form at the base of the bottle of Coca-Cola. If you tilt the glass, the brown sugar water runs and you see etched on the bottom far-off places like Little Rock, Arkansas; Jacksonville, Florida; or Rocky Mount, North Carolina. In your hand, the Coca-Cola warms, and more sweat runs, staining the worn tabletop.

At the Depot Tavern, bottles of PBR rest on beer guts that strain the buttons, gripped by the grease-stained, gnarled-knuckled fists of the mechanics at the Chevy dealership. The beer never warms as they order a round and another and another, chasing that buzz between the 5 oโ€™clock punchout and the 7 oโ€™clock chicken pot pies with the old lady and rug rats. 

He asks if you want another Coca-Cola. You lift the bottle, but the drink is warm like spit and you donโ€™t swallow.

Why donโ€™t you go outside, he says. I wonโ€™t be much longer.

Thereโ€™s an old train station across the street. Deserted and gray like the crumbling concrete steps. You stand on the rust-covered tracks and look east down where they cut open the pigs, their blood sopped by sawdust. To the west is colored town and then nothing else.

You think of Little Rock. And Jacksonville. And Rocky Mount.

The trains donโ€™t run

where dreams bleed and gutted,

the long walk back home

Editor’s Note: This piece of Haibun poetry was prompted by a recent Pen to Paper Live session hosted by the Charlotte Lit organization. Charlotte Lit hosts the free sessions weekly. You can register here.

The session was led by Kathie Collins, who said Haibun is a Japanese form popularized by the renowned poet Bashล in the 17th century. “Think of it as a mini-lyric travel essay finished off with an insightful postscript in the form of a haiku.”

57 birthday candles can light a fire

Looking ahead as to what awaits after 57 years can be both terrifying and thrilling. I have absolutely no idea how this story is going to end.

Today, Jan. 23, 2024, I turned 57 years old.

And, if I give it great thought, perhaps my mindset is not much different than that 5-year-old boy who sat at a kitchen table in rural western Kentucky and blew out five wax candles on a cake dripping in chocolate.

I have absolutely no idea of what the future holds for me and that is both as scary and thrilling as a black spider that falls upon my bare arm and starts to inch its way upward.

Thereโ€™s been plenty of living in those 50-plus years between. Iโ€™ve experienced great joy and profound sadness. My heartโ€™s been broken and itโ€™s also found a love like none other. There have been moments when I thought I was at the very top of the heap and a few days when this man didnโ€™t think he could sink much lower.

Itโ€™s called living and Iโ€™ve done it.

I think of the 2008 movie โ€œThe Curious Case of Benjamin Buttonโ€ in which the main character is born an old man and proceeds to age backwards. The film is based on the short story of the same name written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published May 1922 in Collierโ€™s Magazine. Fitzgeraldโ€™s story challenges the idea that life would be better if we could erase its hurts.ย 

In one scene from the movie, a tugboat captain, Mike, says, โ€œYou can be mad as a dog at the way things went, you can swear and curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.โ€

That sentiment took me a good while to fully understand and be willing to embrace, but Iโ€™ve done it and believe itโ€™s made me a better person and improved my relations with others.ย 

Another theme from the story is one of new beginnings.

โ€œItโ€™s never too late, or in my case, too early, to be whatever you want to be,โ€ Benjamin says. โ€œI hope you live a life youโ€™re proud of. If not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.โ€ย 

This matter, I am knee-deep in. There are things I am proud of and a few misdeeds I’d just as soon forget.

For most of my life, I worked as a journalist. But thatโ€™s no more and now I write for others and myself. I continue to work on two novels and various short stories, but thereโ€™s no certainty as to whether the work will be completed and if others will want to read those words.ย 

Itโ€™s a great unknown. Itโ€™s something that will keep you up at night and also kick you out of bed when a new day dawns.ย ย 

Even so, I still like chocolate cake and thereโ€™s still the air within my lungs to blow out the candles and hopefully extinguish the past and light the future.

And Iโ€™m all right with that.

WRITER’S NOTE: These words were the result of a writing prompt hosted by the Charlotte Lit organization on Jan. 23, 2024. Instructor Megan Rich challenged the participants to think of birthdays and consider the two shifts — time and seasons — and how they have affected one’s birthday through the years. The one-hour Pen to Paper sessions are free and held online via Zoom most Tuesday mornings at 9:30 a.m. EST. To sign up for the session go here.

Preacher man preachin’

Everybody talkinโ€™. Preacher man preachinโ€™.
Let’s talk ekphrasis, a written response to a work of art, and my take on Romare Bearden’s “Carolina Shout.”

Words by Michael Banks in response to artist Romare Bearden’s collage titled “Carolina Shout.”

Everybody talkinโ€™. Preacher man preachinโ€™.

Everybody's hands out. Ainโ€™t nobody givin'.

Falling in the water. Red moon a risinโ€™.

Bringing back a dead man. Ainโ€™t that their mission?

Gotta get right. Gotta get salvation.

Ainโ€™t nobody know my sticky situation.

Feet in the mud. Brotherhood of Nation.

Everybody hands up. Meet my creation.

Tuesday mornings, I try to set aside an hour to jumpstart that creative part of my brain. I find it getting harder and harder to do so as the years creep by. But one thing I’ve discovered that helps immensely is Pen to Paper Live.

These weekly one-hour sessions conducted by the founders and staff of the Charlotte Lit organization are held over Zoom. Often more than 20 creators gather and write after receiving a “prompt” by the instructor. Some of my published works have gotten their start at Pen to Paper and I’m always inspired and comforted by the talented writers who gather there weekly.

The words I’ve written above come from the Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022, session led by Kathie Collins, one of the founders of Charlotte Lit. The prompt was ekphrasis, which Kathie described as “a written response to a work of art.” I’ve tried a bit of ekphrastic writing before, mainly with Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield of Crows,” and it surprises me the words that come to me from another’s work of art.

On Tuesday, as an example, Kathie pointed to writer Sharan Strange’s poem titled “Train Whistle” that’s taken from artist Romare Bearden’s collage “Mecklenburg County, Daybreak Express.”

Born in Charlotte, NC, in 1911, Romare Bearden, by the time of his death in 1988, had achieved a stature known by few artists during their lifetimes. He is considered Americaโ€™s greatest collagist and his works are in the permanent collections of most every major American museum.

This entire month, Charlotte Lit is celebrating Bearden and his legacy. Through a series of events titled “Artists Reckoning With Home: Celebrating Romare Bearden,” the arts organization hopes these events provide opportunities to learn about Charlotteโ€™s past and re-imagine its future.

One of the featured events will be an ekphrastic workshop titled “Writing With Bearden.” The workshop, led by Charlotte Lit co-founders Kathie Collins and Paul Reali, will be held Sunday, Oct. 16 from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Mint Museum Uptown. The event is free, but registration is required.

Here where the rain falls

Twelve messy thoughts create one lovely idea.

The rain falls here down near where the South Fork and Catawba meet.

            The branches of the tea olive outside my window hang heavy with water, lime green offshoots reach up, seeking sunlight, but instead itโ€™s a cloud-filled sky. Tiny yellow clusters of bloom emit the sweet scent, but my window stays closed and I fear more rain.

            I think of my great aunt Catherine, she gone nearly 15 years now, and how sheโ€™d tug my ear and say, โ€œMichael B. Youโ€™re gonna do great things.โ€

            But this morning, my mind remains muddied of the dream that lingers from the night before โ€“ me going from room to room, opening doors, only to find four blank walls and empty spaces. The only sound being that of the click of the latch and slam of the door. A constant opening and closing. Click, slam. Click, slam. 

            I sip the cold water from the glass and wait for the coolness to make its way down my throat and spread across my chest. I hope it brings energy. A spark to beat back my malaise. The bed, the warm covers, they beckon.

            Gloom, gloom, gloom.

            The Rolling Stones sing of โ€œWild Horsesโ€ and how โ€œfaith has been broken, tears must be cried, letโ€™s do some living, after we die.โ€

            Iโ€™ve done some living and never really thought of others. Things I should have said, but didnโ€™t. Thought my silence an easy salve, not realizing the pain left behind.

            It is still Tuesday morn here and the rain still falls.

            Each day another red X on the calendar and another day closer to when breath will come no more.

            Until then, these words will be written and songs will be sung. Her smile and laugh and love as constant as the reappearing sun.

NOTE: The above work came from a writing prompt presented during a recent Pen to Paper Live session hosted by the Charlotte Lit organization. You can register here. In the session, presenter Kathie Collins offered a writing prompt taken from a recent workshop led by poet Ada Limon.

The Messy Now

Prompt created by Ada Limรณn

1.         Describe where you are.

2.         Add something you see.

3.         Mention a friend and something that friend says.

4.         Include a dream.

5.         Add something from the natural world.

6.         Say something you need.

7.         Repeat a word or a line three times.

8.         Add a line of a song you love.

9.         Apologize for something.

10.       Give the date or the day.

11.       Tell us something youโ€™re scared of.

12.       Tell us something you love.

Where do we go from here, Major Tom?

A tiny love story from a night when the rain fell in Charlotte, NC, on a late June night in 2014.

At the Fillmore, musicians emerge from thick curtains and fingers pluck at strings and eyes turn upward and ears fill with rhythms and rhymes. Shafts of red and blue sneak from hidden banks, falling upon sweaty faces whispering of desires and regrets. Iโ€™d come for Ziggy Stardust and instead found her. She danced in a pool of emerald. A pert nose, dark eyes emerging from a mass of chocolate curls. We discovered โ€œModern Loveโ€ and she laughed and my heart leaped. I emerged, her number in my pocket and I sang of โ€œStarmanโ€ and life was good again.ย 

David Bowie’s “StarMan”

NOTE: The above work came from a writing prompt presented during a recentย Pen to Paper Liveย session hosted by theย Charlotte Lit organization. You can registerย here. In the session, presenter Paul Reali challenged us to write our very own tiny love story of less than 100 words. “They try to capture in a very small space something that is very important,” he said.

I dreamed of you and your biscuits

Seeing Carl was not unusual. Hearing from Carl was quite unusual.

โ€œI dreamed of you in spectacular color.โ€

ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Carl clutched his backpack to his chest with both hands. He took a step forward. Maybe he was aware of the others. Maybe not.

            โ€œI dreamed of you in this very moment.โ€

            She raised her eyebrow. Seeing Carl was not unusual. Hearing from Carl was quite unusual.

            โ€œYou were making me a biscuit. One of those hot buttered rounds where the strawberry jelly is so thick it leaks and stains the sides. Heavens.โ€

            Jasmine put a slice of cheese and a wedge of ham between the folds of biscuit and wrapped it in yellow wax paper. She stepped to her left, in front of the pail of potatoes, and Carl followed.

            โ€œYou want hash browns,โ€ she asked.

            Carl leaned forward to whisper. โ€œCan you not see?โ€

            Jasmine sighed. โ€œI donโ€™t have time, Carl. You want hash browns or not?โ€

            Carl turned and looked at those who stood waiting. The couples with their eyes glued to their cell phones, their hands in a constant scroll. The girl who pulled the string of pink bubblegum from her mouth, wrapped it around her finger in a loop of three and stared at him.

            โ€œYou are in my dreams. And, yet, you are here before me, now in this presence, serving me a feast upon which I shall savor and accept with the greatest of gratitude.โ€

ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Jasmine walked to the register and her fingers punched the numbers. Her feet hurt. Sheโ€™d been making biscuits since 5 a.m. and her baby needed more formula.

            โ€œThree twenty five, Carl.โ€

ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย He stood before as he does nearly every morning. He wears the same long coat with the holes in the sleeve. His pants are still dirty and his shoes covered in dirt. His hair is thin on top, greasy and unwashed. He smiles and she sees his teeth stained yellow, one missing, completing the homeless ensemble.

            โ€œI see you every night,โ€ Carl says, reaching his hand inside his pocket, where he digs and digs and digs.

            โ€œHey buddy,โ€ says the man with the cell phone. โ€œCan you pick it up?โ€

            Jasmine smells him and she wonders if he joins the others under the overpass by the interstate. She sees them when she drives to pick up her daughter from her mother. Carl is here every morning and heโ€™ll shyly slide a quarter across the counter and ask for a cup of coffee. Never before has he asked for a biscuit.

            He pulls his hand from his trousers and his palm is empty. He raises his eyes and she notices they are brown, as brown as her baby girlโ€™s.

            Jasmine pushes the biscuit across the counter to his waiting hands. And he smiles.

ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย โ€œYou do see. My dream angel.โ€ย ย 

NOTE:ย The above work of fiction came from a writing prompt presented during aย recentย Pen to Paper Liveย session hosted by theย Charlotte Lit organization. You can registerย here. In the session, presenter Kathie Collins challenged us to think of synchronicity. As writers, we are always excavating something or using our writing to explore something inside us.

The Call of the Crow

What do you see when presented with Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield With Crows”? I thought of a man’s impending death.

Photo by narubono on Unsplash

I see the crow and quickly look away.

I hear the incessant โ€œcaw, caw, cawโ€ and I want to place my hands over my ears and hum the words to a happy song. But nothing comes to my lips.

The crow is black. The crow is foreboding.

Is the crow death?

In the river bottoms, the crows come in packs, swooping low over the harvested fields, the broken stalks of corn like the limbs of war dead, half-in, half-out of the grey, boot-sucking muck.

A murder of crows is what they call that pack of black that fills the fading light of late afternoon. 

โ€œFitting,โ€ I mutter to myself, raising the collar of my worn pea coat to my neck, a shield against the harsh December wind that comes from the north.

I, too, am in my final season and I believe the crow knows.

I skirt the field and climb the hill and they fill the branches of the barren oak that rises up and over the farmhouse. The roof has started to sag from the weight of rain and all these years. I know that Iโ€™ll not repair it. 

Inside, where my wife once stood at the stove, stirring the pot of soup, and the brown-headed girl, she being 10 then, came to me with open arms and words of โ€œdaddy, daddy, daddy,โ€ it is now quiet. On the wooden table, there is an opened bag of bread, a slice of white lies to the side left to grow stale. Mold just a few days away.

My breath catches and I feel a tightening in my chest. I retreat back to the cold wind that whips around the porch and I stumble down the three wooden steps. I stuff my hands in my pockets and hunch my shoulders.  

I donโ€™t look up. Thereโ€™s no need. I know the crow is near. 

NOTE: The above work of fiction came from a writing prompt presented during a recent Pen to Paper Live session hosted by the Charlotte Lit organization. You can register here. In the session, presenter Kathie Collins challenged us to respond to the Van Gogh painting “Wheatfield With Crows” and write what moved us. An interesting note is that the painting is believed to be the last work of the celebrated painter.

Getting creative with Pen to Paper: Jelly and whiskey in the Mississippi Delta

Stuck in your creative work? Why not try Charlotte Lit’s Pen to Paper Live!
I ended up with “Jelly and Whiskey in the Mississippi Delta.”

Tuesday morning, Dec. 8, I took part in a Pen to Paper Live! creative program offered by the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, commonly known as Charlotte Lit.

The free weekly sessions offer a mini-lesson and and present a writing prompt. Though I have been a member of Charlotte Lit and its Author’s Lab for the past year, this was the first opportunity I had to participate in one of the writing-in-community sessions, which are usually held in person but were moved online with the pandemic and social distancing restrictions. This one was attended by 14 other writers.

I thoroughly enjoyed the hour-long meet-up and would highly recommend it for those creative sorts who are currently uninspired or stuck. Preregistration is required. For this non-coffee-drinking guy who can sleepwalk through the hours before noon, Pen to Paper Live! gave me a spark and led to me writing this blog and continuing work on my novel.

This week’s session was on Cento. Kathie Collins, executive director and one of the founders of Charlotte Lit, led Tuesday’s session and came up with the writing prompt from a recent article in the New York Times. You can read the article to learn more, but basically Cento is a sort of “collage poem” crafted from lines, words, phrases from other sources and then patching together those lines to create a poem.

It’s a way of allowing you to express some subconscious needs through someone else’s work, Collins said. “Consider it another tool for your toolbox,” she said.

I am far from a poet, as the following selection will absolutely prove, but I did find it a fun, creative exercise. For my assignment, I chose to pull from the writings of author Hank Burdine and his story collection “Dust in the Road: Recollections of a Delta Boy.” The story “The ‘Britchesless’ Bachelor” is one of my favorites, especially hearing Hank read it in person with his Delta drawl and his deep baritone acquired via healthy amounts of good whiskey.

Below is my first attempt at Cento. Let’s call it:

Jelly and Whiskey in the Delta

White-coated valets and 15 blue-haired little ladies

Gather for sundry debutante parties in Beulah in the Delta

Me, a member of the Bachelorโ€™s Club, a pool for the Delta Debs

Made haste to Dossett Plantation in my black two-door Pontiac Grand Prix 

I arrived in a hand-me-down tuxedo with cummerbund

Yet, about to pass out because my britches were too tight

My date, Blanche Shackleford, fled to the slough unencumbered

As the Budweiser had filled her holding tank, quite a site.

Meanwhile, my unhitched pants fell to my knees

And Iโ€™d forgotten to put my car in park

Blanche emerged from the slough and the trees, 

And so, Blanche gave chase, shaking and boogying

So fierce, her left bosom shimmied out of her dress

And there it remained, quivering like jelly.

โ€œBlanche, my Gawdโ€ the little ladies shouted

Upon which, she tucked it right back into the top of her gown

And I, on a quest to drink good whiskey

found Mr. Dixon Dossett where we told tall tales in his gunroom until dawn.

Compiled from “The Britchesless Batchelor.” A story from โ€œDust in the Road: Recollections of a Delta Boyโ€ by Mississippi author Hank Burdine.