Too White To Fit In With The Rednecks by rowens

[Leanne]

Timmy Smith used to take his shirt off when he got mad.
His chest was so white that if anyone touched him
the red marks would stay on there for days,
and as hairless as his half-sister
we caught him molesting one night
on a couch behind the fish 'n' tackle store.

Nobody cared very much,
they knew he was doing it,
and the girl would be pregnant,
dead and buried within five years
as far as any of us knew.

But we used to sit outside the store
at night,
unplug the drink machine to play our tape player.
Nobody knew where his sister went,
but Timmy came climbing over the fence,
took his shirt off,
and was looking for trouble.

I don't remember what he said.
He was mad for no reason,
nobody cared.

Then C.W., whose papa ran the store,
came running out of the next door yard
and chased Timmy off with a piece of the fence
that Timmy'd accidently knocked down,
shouting something about his property.
C.W. was only six years old.

Later that night, we all took turns
looking out the window facing the store.
A couple of men got out of a car and were
walking in circles around the shirt, pissing on it.
When they couldn't get the drink machine to work,
they got back in their car and left.

The next morning,
we went and plugged the machine back in,
and C.W.'s uncle's dog pissed on Timmy Smith's shirt,
and when there were no cars going by,
we pissed on the shirt too.




The original thread can be found here

[Todd]

This is a good choice Leanne. It's one of Rowens better pieces.

[billy]

bugger me (that's not a request )

i missed this one. you have some great narrative in there rowens.
the last stanza is excellent.

very deserving of the hoglight

[lewis taylor]

This is really cool, it has a real 'back when I was a lad we used ta climb dat tree over yonder til one day old bill come up...' kind of vibe. You know? With the characters and the setting and the language, feels like childhood only with a certain ominousness.

[Truerenigma]

I love this poem. Somehow this imagery just pulls you right into the story. I'm almost felt as if i was there that day, waiting for the traffic to clear so I could get my turn pissing on Timmy Smith's shirt.

[newsclippings]

Nobody cared very much,
they knew he was doing it,
and the girl would be pregnant,
dead and buried within five years
as far as any of us knew.

^is probably my favorite stanza

[rowens]

I figure you're all trying to coax me into writing more poems that people might actually like.

[newsclippings]

Who told you we didn't like your stuff?

[rowens]

The little devil that stands on my shoulder and prods me with his pitchfork of self-deceiving cliches.

[Leanne]

Yeah... tell that bastard to shut his mouth... you write what you want to write, when you want to write it. Maybe we'll like it, maybe not. This one is pretty special though.

[rowens]

I would get rid of him, but he's good at getting free drinks, and sympathy from drunk girls when I'm out in public. And he also reminds me of my mother.

[newsclippings]

What a horrible pestilence, to have my mother sitting on my shoulder.

[Leanne]

I would be crippled for life.

[rowens]

My parents were the most anxious and paranoid people that ever lived.

My mom once threw me out of her house for frying eggs at midnight on the fourth of July. She said it was not something people do, and it was disrespectful. She tried to have me arrested for smoking cigarettes once too.

But I have a great system of conflicting demons and monsters that inspire my writing.

[newsclippings]

My parents were the most anxious and paranoid people that ever lived.

My mom once threw me out of her house for frying eggs at midnight on the fourth of July. She said it was not something people do, and it was disrespectful. She tried to have me arrested for smoking cigarettes once too.

But I have a great system of conflicting demons and monsters that inspire my writing.

Still sounds better than me mum to be frank.
Them foreigners will do you in bad.

[milo]

My parents were the most anxious and paranoid people that ever lived.

My mom once threw me out of her house for frying eggs at midnight on the fourth of July. She said it was not something people do, and it was disrespectful. She tried to have me arrested for smoking cigarettes once too.

But I have a great system of conflicting demons and monsters that inspire my writing.

So, midnight - fourth of July - was it 12am beginning the fourth or 11:59 ending?

[rowens]

I was alone in the house. Then she came home around midnight and had me sleep outside. She never let me come back. She said I would "poison the stove" by fixing eggs so late, and if anyone found out, it would be disrepectful to the community.

She's done far worse, but I was trying to stay on a lighter note.

[Leanne]

Are you sure you don't live in American Gothic? (the film, not that stupid tv series)

[rowens]

I liked that show. But then again, I liked "On the Air". Did you ever see that? I remember the school teacher in the "American Gothic" tv show. And the movie used to sit on the shelf at somebody's house, but I don't remember if I ever watched it.

---

And where I grew up, we were taught 12 midnight and 12 noon, but no 12am or 12pm.

So midnight must be an ectotime, outside of any date.

[ChristopherSea]

It's good story telling, even chock full of all those pissing rednecks. The unplugged vending machine fiasco was a riot! Nice slice of reality and satire. Cheers!