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Ironically enough, Major Avenue is merely a small street, extending for three blocks on the outskirts of the city.

A long time ago, I lived on that street, and I made friends with the neighbor girl. She was gap-toothed and hyperactive and nine years old, and she lived with her widowed chain-smoker mother, two younger sisters, and a dog, in a beat-up 50s ranch house smelling of urine and mold. Like any of childhood, the friendship didn’t last long, and I saw her less and less frequently. One day she disappeared. The neighborhood gossip was that her mother died–lung cancer–and she was sent off to live with relatives in a faraway state. After a while mail to the family ceased, but the daily papers kept piling up on the lonely doorstep. A ‘For Sale’ sign was erected, then removed. The front window was boarded up, and the house was silent.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to her, and her sisters, and her dog; why I never heard from her again. I can hardly imagine how it felt to be orphaned at such a young age. I can’t even remember her name.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.16.2010 @ 4:55 pm

THE MADNESS OF LADY MACBETH: Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

(We were going to use acrylic paint and FD&C Red #40 for the blood, but soon realized it would have been ironic in more ways than one.)

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.15.2010 @ 5:24 am

Saturday. Twelve inches of fresh powder and a sometimes best friend with sungoggles and a wobble in her snowboard. I ski faster than she, and leave her eating the snow in my wake. I ditch her and ride the lift alone: Black diamonds and blue distant mountains, rare stars and darkness with red warning sky too far away for my care. We take pictures, but nothing lasts longer than memories (jagged forest, swerving, and tears frozen solid)

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.13.2010 @ 7:10 pm

Bamboo furniture–a sad staple at all-in-one marts and a cheap, highly breakable attempt at Oriental elegance. Largely purchased by college students, hoping to bring a hint of the exotic to the mundane dorm rooms of their lives, and by the men and women who freeze in winter, trying in vain to heat their hearts with withered Asian jungles.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.11.2010 @ 7:52 pm

“In a Relationship.”

It was their joint status updates that first alerted me that their connection was more than banter. Here were photos, proof–she’s sitting on his lap, they’re kissing. My secret boy-love, frowning at the camera, possessive arm draped around another girl. I’ve waited for you, waited for years! And now–I saw them holding hands in the hallway today, and my tenuous soapbubble of hope

burst.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.08.2010 @ 8:58 pm

flavor of the day–

a drive-thru frozen custard stand, middle america. night. our old red car (with headlighta popped, open like eyes) pulls into the glittering asphalt lot (ground glass inside the pavement, recycling of a sort; ingenious, really). it’s summer, and the lamps are on in the courtyard, and the artificial waterfall’s switched on, so my mother and brother get out of the car, and I (the big girl) help my dad buy the ice-creams and bring them out into the summer night. I always choose chocolate, and it always dribbles down my shirt and stains it; but my mom’s adventurous (or maybe motherhood has just taught her the value of surprises), so she closes her eyes and picks the flavor of the day. as the night grows long we will travel north, and I will roll down the window to feel the silken night air between my fingers (so like custard), trying to catch and hold a breath of summer sweetness for a talisman come winter.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.07.2010 @ 9:47 pm

all the good-looking ones are taken. go figure.

A PORTRAIT: A figure silhouetted by the picture window, clutching pens, sketches the figure. Her beauty is yet in his grasp. (One beautiful woman remains; may the vultures descend.)

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.06.2010 @ 9:50 pm

it’s one a.m. and my mind’s racing. my sluggish, confused brain, mired in exhaustion: “what have I forgotten? I have my statement, have my portfolio–ohfuck I need a shower–have all the paperwork–I need a pen–where are the damn files?–this better not break in my bag–do I have everything? do I have everything? do I have–”

my mind is racing and all full of cellos, an army of cellos and black violins, a locomotive of (frantic, hazy, bows upon strings) bearing down upon me, faster, faster.

anxious.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.05.2010 @ 10:37 pm

nomeansno-the tower

“I see red–” You dream. You see, again, the skyscrapers, awash in orange morning light, rising above the mist or fog or smog or whatever the hell it was. The sight is inspirational as you remember it, but the obscuring clouds of (what? of something…) marred the beauty of dawn.

“I see a tower against the sky–” The tallest one–staring from the murk–reflecting–something–or was it–

“Beneath a red unblinking eye–” Is it in the tower, or in the sky? Even in dreams, you can only wait, locked mute and rigid–you meet the gaze of the eye on the tower and–

Waiting–waiting for–

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.04.2010 @ 9:38 pm

this ship has sailed.

“As I leave shore, I ponder the Titanic, and so many other doomed ships. My craft, a kayak built for two but holding only one, glides through the predawn haze. And as I cleave the water with my paddle, I think: Of course it was foolish to escape here again, to run away from my demons instead of confronting them, and I’ll regret it later. But for now, there is only the swiftness of the craft and the rough wood of the paddle and the still morning water–quiet as I navigate the churning oceans of my own mind, and steer around the icebergs of my own (dumb, stupid, foolish!) creation.”

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.03.2010 @ 9:57 pm

shifting gears.

when I was sixteen, I learned to drive stick. I had no choice. My family’s only car was an old girl, red as a siren, with a cassette tape player and crank windows, and naturally a manual transmission. It was difficult for my teen brain to learn when to shift gears, for it required a shift of the mind. But now–it’s instinct.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.02.2010 @ 9:31 pm

peacoat, trench coat, icing on the cake, butter coated, feather coated, tarred and feathered. white feathers, down coat. one lonely coat in the school lost&found, one coat missing at christmastime. a homeless child, coatless, shivers, cruel wind whipping alleys and boughs. a coat is warmth and security. a coat is family, and comfort, and love.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.01.2010 @ 9:35 pm

Please be advised that this film is rated R, and contains strong language, nudity, violence, and a point of view that will totally shatter your pitifully tiny mind and thrust you into a brutal reality where not everyone is happy and not everyone is like you.

Viewer discretion advised.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.30.2009 @ 9:42 pm

Birdhouse: Code name for the old abandoned barn down the interstate, two miles past the Millers’ house–the tall one, with the red peeling paint and the collapsing shed beside it. Named so for the flocks of lusty, flighty young women that flit in for the keggers. Take heed, young man; they’ll entrance you too, with feathers (thin papery dresses, obscenely cut, and strawberry locks) and song (hip-hop blasting from iPod speakers), and it’s all to easy to be swept off your feet in the flighty female flock.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.29.2009 @ 9:04 pm

The connection is too great. It clasps to me; I clasp, and don’t let go. It is me. I am too many sick memories, too many hospitals. and too many false good-byes. I am–

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.28.2009 @ 10:55 pm

the folder sits on the desktop, alone and empty, waiting for documents to be dragged into it, waiting for a use. its virtual corners are creased; it sits bedraggled and lonely in the corner of the screen. newly birthed from the right-click menu, it awaits its purpose in life–but unnamed, unloved, it is dragged into the recycle bin and summarily deleted, ending its short life.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 11.30.2009 @ 8:38 pm

frasier crane, and niles crane. cranes like swans, eagles, white, long neck and organge bills. crane one’s neck. construction cranes, orange like the bills of birds. hooked bills, and hooks on cranes. white cranes, long wings, long legs, whater birds, webbed feet, organge feet. organge and white cranes.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.04.2009 @ 9:07 am

the bee, the queen bee. royal jelly. bees sketched on paper, winnie the pooh and the honey tree. bee stings, honey, honeyed words. worker bees, drone bees, american society, the urban jungle, the urban nest. honey, gold. stings from a bee, from a rose, like thorns. petals are the honey.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.01.2009 @ 7:24 pm

golden lantern, paper lantern, sailing down the river into the dark, carrying a candle for a lost soul. we sit on the river bank, watching them fade away, fading with them. it is the longest night of the year, and another fleet of souls is departing into the mist. leaving for destination unknown, into the ocean, into the gloom of night.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.16.2009 @ 7:49 pm

transmit radio signals radio tower power lines all alone in the gloom, under a dusky sky with the silver flickers of the wires and perchance a lone bird perched and waiting for the sunrise. snow falls softly on the hills, my train is passing and the radio’s on, soft acoustics and heavy voices crooning out a melody for the dawn.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 12.14.2009 @ 7:23 pm

keychains on the back flap of a backpack worn by a pop-punk princess with rainbow cropped hair and a silver ring piercing coral lips and a boyish demeanor: a rubber anarchy A, a yellow smile sphere, two mini sharpies (violet and green). scrawled across the top: “Fuck you.”

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 03.15.2010 @ 9:12 pm

a perfect idiot for staying up so late. shall I be thus condemned, even if by staying up late I’m learning, I’m learning?

often am I searching when I should be sleeping.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 03.01.2010 @ 9:28 pm

In the winter of my fourth grade year, in the midst of a move from a small house to a smaller apartment, my family rented out a storage unit. Being nine, I had no comprehension of the sadness that accompanied the move, or the shame of having more stuff than we could handle gracefully; didn’t understand why my parents shuffled to our unit with a nervous urgency, formidable towers of white moving boxes in tow.

For my part, I liked visiting our unit. I’d wander down the corridors with my brother and become happily lost. Sometimes we’d wheedle our father into taking out our bicycles (which had no place in our small apartment), and we’d wheel proudly through the facility, passing along the way innumerable other unit owners, furtive as my parents, their own children hidden in corners and stilled with a Game Boy or a scolding.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.28.2010 @ 7:08 pm

“Yogawhole”–the slogan’s painted on the outside of my mom’s friend’s house, where she teaches yoga classes. My dad makes fun of it, saying it sounds too conspicuously like another kind of hole. I sometimes think about the women who take these lessons, and their SUVs and Starbucks and children. Does yoga make them whole, or just ‘holes?

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.24.2010 @ 8:52 pm

“I’m sorry,” my guidance counselor told me late Thursday afternoon (with more than a hint of disapproval). “You have failed creative writing.”

“But–college! My GPA! My life–” I choked, quickly descending into incoherency.

She glared at me, and shoved a thick packet into my confused arms. “You’d better start studying for your AP Calculus test.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you must have me mistaken–”

“No. I signed you up. Frankly, math’s your only hope now…”

—

My most frightening nightmare in memory left me shaking and clammy. My mother told me I was screaming in my sleep for days afterward, something about derivitives.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.21.2010 @ 9:20 am

he lays sprawled and translucent on the cheap sheets of a Montreal flat. with glassy eyes and invisible breaths he tells me it was his friends, fifties-Beat stoners wielding poetry and persuasion, that drew him into it.

but he and I know he was only self-medicating, trying to escape. the opiates dulled his paranoia and soothed his racing heartbeat to a hiss. how could he not take a syringe for his lover?

he said he’d never meant to go this far. but looking on his jutting bones and the pale illness etched in his fragile, fleeting ecstasy, I know he’s hooked.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.19.2010 @ 8:40 pm

“majesty/faithful me/pour yourself/into me”

we are the devil, and devil in us. it’s a pleasant thought that we may control our fate, our demons–

but I’ve sat awake through starless nights, breathless and praying, and only one’s awake at that hour to listen, and he can help, and he tells me souls kindle nicely; but I have midnight-tipped pens, and chains at the ready, and I have a backbone of my own–

and I’d fain pour myself into my shadow to save the twilight.

Posted By Charlotte Ravenswood On 01.18.2010 @ 3:20 pm