Dave Kravetz, his eyes through the smoke watching me read his poems, all those papers in his gunny sack, his camo jacket and cigarettes, his bleached hair a frozen wave crashing over one eye, his bad temperament (some story about him getting violent with his parents and threatening them with a gun, he wouldn’t talk about)—his bad smoker’s breath, his chapped hands, how the fingernails looked more like toes, misshapen, transplanted, cloven. Walking the campus with Dave laughing and smoking and pushing each other, two young writers hanging on for dear life.
Bill Pearse 
Lovely images Bill. That hair breaking like a wave, his cloven fingernails – just perfect. You’ve conjured a whole person in so few words – magic
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You know that frozen wave hair, don’t you? I’m glad you liked it Lynn, thanks. I guess I’m trying my own flash, that’s it.
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It’s a great character study and you give a hint of the relationships too – in it together despite perhaps having writing as one of the few commonalities
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He’s someone I hadn’t thought of in a long time and funny how you see them differently looking back, realize more their role in your life, and his was big for me, the first poet I knew perhaps.
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It’s only with hindsight any of these things are visible – good influences and bad. Picking out all of the moments in our lives that bring us to where and who we are – hindsight makes it all seem obvious, but at the time it’s just life.
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I’m living that now, good clarity in how you put it. Just got done writing something similar, cool. Bill
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All the best Bill 🙂
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Gorgeous, a paragraph-poem.
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Thanks Kristen! Yes, I was playing with these formats this week, inspired by a collection of Raymond Carver poems. Fun trying on new hats, glad you liked it. Bill
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One of my favorites.
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I like this form for you. It’s like a verbal Polaroid print.
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Hey, that’s good Kevin, thanks. I’m just aping back what I’ve been reading this week, that’s given me some new inspiration to try a different format. Freaking Raymond Carver poetry collection, rereading it, blowing my mind again, as if I had any left.
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frozen wave hair reminds me of flock of seagulls.
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It did me too! So went there. So!
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I thought Flock of Seagulls too. And funny thing is, that fleshed out the rest of him for me visually as well. Never set eyes not the guy, but I can tell you what he looked like. I may be wrong, but I can tell you.
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That’s not far from the truth, it worked! Bill
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Great little snapshot. Looks like you’re working on some shorter form stuff. Really full of character for the space.
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Thanks, yes that was fun to try the super-short format. Think I’m back to the 700 word gang now.
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I never understood the whole writing partner thing. How, exactly, does that work? The end product couldn’t possibly be a 50/50 split, could it?
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He wasn’t a writing partner in that sense, he was a guy I befriended and the two of us wrote, though not on shared projects. That’s misleading. I’ve read the same about writing partners and man, doesn’t sound appealing to me at all. Can you spell control freak?
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