Writing

My favorite essays, poems, and chapters from projects past and current.

The Old House Has Fallen

The old house has fallen.
I don’t know what part gave in
Or gave up
First.
Or if every last beam and joist
Just saw it coming
And gave up the ghost
All at once.

Poems From Ecuador #23

Why, aren’t you a haughty bitch
In a nasty mood?

Slinging words like razor blades,

Tearing down simple beauty
Because you have failed,

In your desire for a life free of effort.

Last Night at The Peekaboo

Last Night at the Peekaboo Club

by Kelly Yandell

The bar stool made Lin’s butt hurt. He was sitting inside the door of the Peekaboo Club. A bouncer. There was one more door to go through before you saw any real action. His job was to make sure nobody came in stumbling drunk, and make sure they paid the cover. Slow nights on the stool always made his butt hurt, but he had long ago tired of seeing the dancing. It was dark and boring in the hall, but better than watching men be idiots. The girls were all better looking with their clothes on. He’d rather buy them a cup of coffee in the morning and hear about their real lives.

He got up to wander around the dark vestibule but there was no place to go. Dante knew nothing about Hell. Be careful what you ask for. He looked through the small window on the door that separated the vestibule from the main bar. The walls pulsed. It seemed like more than noise. It was sonic torture. He was letting the new bouncer work the main floor looking for wandering hands, looking for drunks out of money. Those types had to go. The vestibule was as close to peace as he could find and still draw pay for his last few days working at the club.

Footing

Creativity lives in the fragile.
A place where your skin is thin
And your armor is weakened
And you are as easily brought to rage as tears.
Music is ecstasy and becomes your heartbeat.

I remember dreams I had lifetimes ago.
I was standing at the edge of a cliff,
Clouds above, and below.
A towering leaf filled oak
Standing beside me on the precipice,
Roots bare and exposed but never falling.
We looked out over the clouds.
No bottom in sight.

Stand your ground,
Or fly.
But there is no fall.
There is no pull down,
No gravity.
No fear.
Just a wonderful view,

And a mind that has no footing at all.

Close Your Eyes

“Close your eyes momma,” the little girl said. She held a small chunk of concrete out in front of her. Her mother had just taken a seat on a stone bench in the neighborhood triangle. This space was too small to be ever called a park, a green space in theory, but the neighborhood garden folk had planted such good trees that there was no grass to be found. More often the triangle was a salad of dried leaves and rocks, chunks of concrete fallen from trucks, various stones from the drives of this stately home or that one, carried down the road by a heavy rain. But they are nice spaces. Roughly the size of a two car garage are these several triangles scattered about our meandering neighborhood. But they are a break from the pavement. A little more shade. A place to let a child or dog wander for a moment and stand on a rock and jump down. To climb up and jump down. To climb up and jump down. Again.

The woman turned to her husband who had taken a seat beside her. They were young, handsome, content looking, but one never knows. They looked like characters from a novel. Oddly lovely. With a blonde headed doll of a daughter with curls and bumptious glee. The child was now ordering to her father, “Cover your eyes, Daddy.” He closed his eyes. Insufficient. Clearly. Even to me. A lurking voyeur. He was practically cheating. She needed him to buy in completely and that meant picking up his hands and covering his eyes, peek-a-boo style. Read More

For Sale By Owner

A Short Story

Judy straightened her white ironed shirt and pulled a pale blue sweater out of her bureau. She tied the arms around her neck in an attempt to look casual. She wiped the kitchen counter with her hand on her way through to the front door. Threw the empty wine bottle in the recycling bin. I think I was supposed to bake cookies to make it smell like someone might actually want to live in this hell hole. She tried to look like she wouldn’t give away the house to the next vagrant who passed by if they had a ball point pen so that she could sign it away.

Lillian’s sporty white coupe sat in the drive. She had tried to sound aloof on the phone. But this was it. This was the house. Window boxes. White marble countertops. Space for entertaining. An extra room for an office for Derek. The photos had sealed the deal. He’ll have to love it. She could make him love it. But she was desperate to conceal her excitement. Her panic. She knocked.

Judy put on her game face and opened the door. “Please come in,” said Judy. “Make yourself at home. It was Lillian, right?” Dear God, you’re so young. Please be an heiress somehow. Please want it. Please. She forced an open smile.

They shook hands and Lillian’s eyes began to scan the house in poorly hidden wonder. It was everything she wanted.

Dogs, Dirt & Diamondbacks

You know by a child’s cry whether the offense or injury is dire, and I swear you know by a dog’s bark when there is something horribly the matter. I was fifty yards down the hill towards the pond at our ranch in Clay County, Texas, when Birdie, my then young English Setter, started to barking at a new pitch that told me something was gravely wrong. So I headed back up. When I crested the hill she stood alertly looking at me at like she wanted to show me something and like she didn’t really recognize me at the same time. Then she decided it was time to play again, and ran to us, past us and off down the hill I had been headed down with Sally. She ran feverishly, thrilled, to the water’s edge. I followed, thinking I must have misinterpreted her bark, or heard her wrong. I shook my head at the antics of this goofy dog, our first English Setter in a line of Golden Retrievers. To my eye, she was utterly her usual joyful and muscular self, propelling her body through every moment, spring loaded at all times. This was about three years ago.

*****

My life is still mostly in Dallas. One can become aloof about the existence of death by nature there, surrounded by dark parking garages and speeding buses and people, so many people whom we do not know, and whom we have no interest in really getting to know. We begin to think death comes only from bad people and dreaded slow diseases. But barring a freak accident involving a busy tree trimmer swinging through the canopy who doesn’t see me below and drops a branch on my head while I walk through my neighborhood, my chances of being killed by nature, or association with it, are remarkably slim. Stress might get me. My lifestyle might get me. A thoughtless moment piloting a very large vehicle may get me and others around me. But nature is mostly held at bay, pushed out, manicured down to its least threatening forms. The occasional tornadoes notwithstanding, nature is mostly neutered or paved here. I can be outside all I want without really ever being outdoors, with the flood of life and wild that outdoors should entail.

*****

Directions to Where I’m From

(This is a piece I wrote for a class a few years ago. It is probably the moment I started thinking about the idea of Fromness, which I explored in some length in A Texan Theory of Fromness.)

I am of the red dirt.

The basketball post set with a bag of concrete into a flat spot of grass and gravel. Rusted. There must have been a net at some point.

The fillin’ station on the right that hasn’t been anything but a hollow shell for fifty years, when they used big chunks of green glass right along with the hewn stones.

I’m from the evangelical church where no one shows up anymore.

I’m of the railroad tracks.

I’m from where the bluebonnets start and the hawks swoop and the buzzards sit in the road, hard working janitors.

Fromness, noun

Pronunciation: [fruhm-nis]

1. A concept of one’s identity as defined by place, not necessarily being the place of one’s origin or current abode.

2. The conceptual answer to the question, “Where are you from?” not to be confused with “Where are you in from?” “Where do you hale from?” “Where are your people from?” “Where do you live?” or “Where do you stay at?” and is usually an answer derived from a combination of the answers to all of these questions, with extreme deference given to exclusions and embellishments based on either negative or positive experiential memories.

3. A self construct influenced by time, place, landscape, heat, cold, nurturing, nature, love, hate, taste, scent, feeling, family, marriage, child-rearing, attitude, and the desired impression to be made on the questioner.

Caution in use: The answer to the question “Where are you from?” is often complete self-delusion, though usually with a grounding in geography. Fromness is a concept with very squirrelly edges, has roots in both experience and memory, which are rarely perfectly aligned with regard to accuracy. Care should be taken in analyzing the answer to this question, with pre-acknowledgment that it is often a question which may require the subject of the question a half hour to fully explain, and is rarely a simple matter of geography. Therapy may be indicated for the subject of the question, but one should utterly refrain from any such suggestion. Nodding and smiling are safe should you find yourself across from a subject in a Fromness fugue. One merely making small talk is cautioned to use a more specific question such as “Where were you born?” or “Where do you live now?” to receive a brief answer. “Fromness” is a concept that can evoke joy or pain, and is to not be inquired about lightly, and it is also the source occasionally of creative storytelling with no basis in fact whatsoever. Particular care should be taken in analyzing an answer to an inquiry into Fromness made of politicians, who are serial abusers of the Theory of Fromness and will capitalize on warm and tender feelings evoked in a questioner or listener from a truly well crafted Fromness narrative.

“Where am I from? Good Lord, how much time do you have?”

My answer to the question “Where are you from?” is a doozie. Much like “How are you?” in nature, “Where are you from?” is usually a question that someone asks wanting a one location answer so they can move on without getting too involved. It’s essentially rhetorical. For me, From is with a capital F. It’s a big deal. It is an opening of a floodgate. I want to know you when I ask that question. I want to place you in a framework of Fromness. To me, asking someone “Where are you From” is akin to saying “Tell me your life story.”

Where you were born is not necessarily where you’re From. My brother was born in Hawaii and raised in Texas. He lived in Hawaii for one year as an infant. He’s now a six foot three petroleum geologist who lives in Oklahoma City, smokes an occasional cigar and can sometimes be found playing haunting chords on an old guitar. When someone asks him “Where are you from?” he does not say Hawaii. Yet, being born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on an island is damn sure part of his Fromness and might explain a little about why his friends in high school referred to him as Cool Breeze. There’s something there. Hawaii is in his Fromness. Being From a place is akin to being of a place, a concept of belonging even if you never really fit in or got to stay. Places touch you, leave a mark, change you forever, for good and bad, too. Texas surely left a mark on that boy and he is as apt to say he is a Texan who lives in Oklahoma, and it’s coming on a quarter of a century.

(Originally published on The Meaning of Pie in 2019)

It is fair to say that I spend a lot of time thinking about BBQ. It might even be fair to say I’m a little obsessed. I wouldn’t argue that. But, nevertheless, I’d like to share the why. Why BBQ? Out of all of the incredible foods out there, of all the amazing styles and restaurants, why BBQ? This past weekend, I took my daughter to Austin to visit the campus of The University of Texas. She is beginning her junior year of high school. I went to law school in Austin and while the city has changed dramatically since 1997, I wanted her to get a taste of why this town has been a rite of passage for so many. I wanted to make sure she saw her own backyard, so to speak, before her life carries her far away. Austin, College Station, Lubbock, San Antonio, Sherman, Dallas, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls. You name it. Our state boasts fine universities.

But this college journey finally put me in a position to make a pilgrimage to Snow’s BBQ, which is only open on Saturdays. Finally. When you have teenagers, the weekends don’t belong to you. Most of my BBQ jaunts (not joints) are weekday excursions. You might remember that my son and I scoured the Metroplex and points beyond during the three years we home-schooled. Barbecue Thursday ( #bbqthursday ) was our thing. And, yes, we made it to Austin and Taylor and Houston and some other far flung notable spots but like most, we fit BBQ into working. As with so many Texans, BBQ is work food, a lunch break, a quick bite and a respite from all that is. The new-ish and wonderful world of hitting the road to hit as many joints in three days as possible is a whole other category of BBQ consumption. And I love that, too. But I’ll return to that. BBQ in Texas goes back hundreds of years. Not decades. It goes back to when the meat walked to the BBQ. Since then, Texas has seen cattle drives, and railroads and interstate highways, each of which has fundamentally altered the way we all eat. BBQ is not a trend. It is just about the oldest form of cooking known to man. And, it has a footing in pre-history, and Native American History, and African American History, and European History, and South American History…and on and on. It is all about labor, migration, and innovation. It is about culture and place. It is about community. It is so American. And, it is so Texas. And it is so very much about the quilt that America and Texas were pieced into. Read history through the lens of food and you will always enjoy both history and food more.