Oracy Month: Here's How
Michael Sedano
Two Tuesdays past, La Bloga-Tuesday declared our plan to join this year's observance of 100,000 Poets For Change by means of anyone who has the ganas to record yourself reading two minutes of something you wrote.
Who better to give voice to your arte than the one who labored long and intensely to get the right words in the right place to tell the story just as it came out?
Here is an example of a "my best two minutes video" I recorded after three rehearsals all the way through, cutting the text as I went to fit the time while adjusting each reading to fit better how the words feel in my mouth.
Press Record, breathe, begin. Record the title later. Don't worry about flubs, but go ahead and make an edit, or do it all over again.
Add titles and original music if that fits your best two minutes.
This reading has 300 words; two minutes with a separately recorded title. The video uses the simple title and transitions tools iMovie provides. Windows has similar free software.
Read along with the video. This is what this story is supposed to sound like. How would you read it?
Metiche
Michael sedano
Lemuel Sepulveda raises his right wrist above his eyes. 3:44. Time to rise and shine, take a leak.
Leave a leak, Lemuel jokes for the thousandth time, as he turns to sit on the toilet seat. His nalgas cover the stink of two days pee don’t, poo do. Drought time.
The faintest glow now limns the ridgeline behind the mountains. He makes out leaves against the sky. Morning has broken. Pushing against the window, Lemuel smiles at the gentle breeze infiltrating his aerie. Light creates its own weather, he thinks. It’s going to be a wonderful, beautiful day, totally relaxing.
Somewhere in the night a couple fight.
She screeches in pain. He growls miserably. Words, hers. Shouts, his. She screams in alarm. muffled hard sounds, a weight thuds to the ground. Lemuel is at his front door Lemuel is outside on his sidewalk. The man tells the woman this is her fault, she made him so fucking mad. There’s anger in her voice, “It’s my fault and it’s my apartment.” Lemuel sees them now in a pool of light.
A bulky figure splays on a pile of bedclothes, a sheet hangs from the window above them. Only twenty feet away, Lemuel announces himself as he closes the distance toward the now silent man and sputtering woman repeating “get out get the fuck out of my house”.
“Hey you guys. This is really awful” is all Lemuel Sepulveda can say.
Lemuel wakes sometime later. He can’t say when, exactly, his Fitbit and iPhone are no longer on him. He staggers to his feet and walks painfully up the street to his front door where he vomits on it. It gets worse. When Lemuel Sepulveda goes to wash his bleeding nose, his lips and eyebrows in the mirror wear bright pink lipstick.
We invite Jim to choose 2 minutes worth of this text and send us a video as his "Best 2 Minutes". A major challenge for anyone reading this is ethos, the character of the reader real, or assumed. The story offers a range of attitudes and responses that create ethos. The oral reader instills their own ethos into what's already in the writing. Finding congruency between your oral ethos and the story's enhances a reading. "The Voice" will never capture the ethos of a piece of writing nor a poem. The art already has a voice. Locate it, share it.
Lament For The Death of A Kmart
Jim Marquez
When I was a child my mother used to take me shopping with her every week to the local Kmart on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, off Goodrich, in the “Commerce Shopping Center”. Mom loved that place, Kmart. You could buy so much for so little. It was the poor Mexican mother’s Rodeo Drive.
My dad worked a steady, factory job, and with what little he made, Mom, with the aid of magic and education from Roosevelt High, managed to buy a house, two cars, pay for most of my brother’s university, my university, and buy me whichever toy I wanted for Christmas. Well, not every single one but damn near close. And books. Yes, lots and lots of books. God bless them. God bless Mom. She knew something was up, because, when, at 4 years old, I entered kindergarten, and was reading three levels higher than anybody else. So, the books.
Usually at Kmart. Great damn selection there. They had coloring books! Monster books! Nature books! Dinosaur books! Map books! “Activity” books! Story books! Disney books! Young adult fiction books! Sports books! Comic books! An entire aisle of books! Oh my god it was like a candy store to me. And I am beginning to tear up writing about it, remembering it (at the moment, December 18, 2019, I am in Paris, in the Marais Quartier, at the desk in my hotel room, listening to the soundtrack of “Amélie”; so melancholic because no matter how wanting Amélie is of love, that look she gives the camera at the end tells you she will leave him soon enough, because they all do) and crying because I wish to God I can be there again in Kmart and live it all over.
Get more life. Not a do-over, per se, just do that part because it was so much fun. Happy. So happy with my books, and Mom saying, “Go ahead, pick your book for the week. Take your time.”
Mom had a ritual. The night before, Mom would look over the advertising papers inserted into the L.A. Times or the Herald Examiner. Mom would say, “Let’s see what the specials are,” and she’d study the damn thing for almost an hour, circling items she wanted with a pencil then writing them down on a shopping list. Just to make sure.
Sitting there at her side I had no inkling she would die. No clue what a horror show it would be when she got old and sick and took three weeks to die in a despicable excuse for a doctor’s hospital in East LA. That time by her side seemed to last forever. It just never crossed my mind what would happen. How could it?
You could see Mom’s eyes light up when she turned the pages. “Oh, look at this!” or “Your father would like this!” or “Do you think your brother would want one of these?” or “See? They have socks on sale. You need new socks!”
The next day while dad was at work we’d take her beat up 1948 Dodge Plymouth for the two-mile trek. Later, after selling the car we’d take the “Commerce Bus” or “the Whittier Bus”, we rode the RTD. Nothing stopped her from Kmart.
Once we got to the parking lot of the shopping center occupied with Kmart, small no-personality shops, numerous faceless food places, “Two Guys,” then later a “Target”, and a movie theatre, Mom slowly patrolled, looking for a parking space close to Kmart’s entrance. Around and around, looking, waiting, cursing under her breath, Mom was in no hurry.
After finding the perfect spot, a spot she had made two or three passes on already, she’d say, “We got everything?” and check the doors several times to make sure they were locked. Paranoid? Maybe. But years later, doing this weekly trip, on her own, some jackass stole the tags off her plate. Couldn’t believe that. Neither could she. And she started going less and less. Then, driving less altogether. Until the day she could drive no more.
Upon entering Kmart you smelled the popcorn. You couldn’t miss Kmart’s huge deli-counter with fresh popcorn, ICEE slushes (cherry, my favorite; coffee, mom’s) with that creepy polar bear on the cup. An old-fashion meat slicer ran for sandwiches from fresh, greasy hams or dry turkey breasts.
Armed with popcorn and ICEE, you entered Kmart to spend the next two hours.
I looked up at mom pick through the ladies clothes, the soap dishes, the towels, the bags of clothespins, Aquanet for her, Vitalis for dad and the Jurgens hand cream, the Vick’s Vapo Rub despite the fact we already have two jars sitting in the white, metal cabinet on the back porch, St. Joseph Aspirin (orange flavor) for me, that god-awful liquid Sudafed for me (childhood hay fever), Rolaids for dad, his Pepto-Bismol, tin cannisters of Sucrets, Juicy Fruit gum, (7 sticks for $.25 for long lasting flavor, and in single stand-alone packs, thank you), Mother’s Root Beer in a jug (was it a jug?), dishwasher liquid, Lysol for the shitter, a thick, plastic pouch of tiny green, wax army men (100 count!) for me, a can of Wilson tennis balls for my brother, maybe if I was lucky a Hot Wheels car as a second toy, Eveready Batteries, size ‘D’, for the hundreds of flash lights we have scattered all over the house because “you never know”, Anacin in the green bottle for mom’s headaches. And then she picked up the things she wanted on her list.
I can’t forget “Blue Light Specials”. Good God. The selling of crap left over from last season, of overstock, or something broken, bundled, and tossed into a shopping cart somewhere in the store.
Find the “blue light”, like the one you’d see flashing atop a police car in Paris, but here attached to a six-foot tall aluminum pole sticking out of a wooden box on steel wheels. The “blue light” was rolled to where the flash-sale would be. There would be an announcement in English and Spanish. A Kmart employee in a god-awful aquamarine blue smock would be there to flip a switch on the box. A mad dash ensues. All over the store shopping carts turned on a dime and came crashing through the aisles, knocking over sales racks, rolling over women’s feet in terry-cloth house slippers, dragging and sometimes running over confused, frightened, and crying toddlers.
Women pulled and scratched and tore the items out of other women’s hands. They bumped shopping carts. They cursed at each other in English & Spanish & Spanglish. Mom included.
And what was the “blue light special” this time? Light bulbs. G.E. 34 watt and 52-watt bulbs. “But, Mom, we only use 40-watt and 60-watt bulbs. Who uses these?” “You never know,” she’d say. Four boxes she’d buy. Regular $.75 for four bulbs. “Blue Light Special” price? $.64 a box. Save $.09
Then it was onto the book aisle where I’d slowly walk up and down the aisle. Touch the books. Pull them off the shelf. Put the book to my nose and flip the pages so I could smell the ink. The paper. Inhale. Breathe out. Mmmmm. What a great smell.
I’d grab a book on movie monsters: Godzilla, King Kong, The Werewolf. Or a Scooby Doo adventure book. Full color was like watching the cartoon itself! “Peanuts” paperbacks, sadly, always in black & white. Maybe a map book on the cities of Europe. Puzzle “activity” books. The material sounds a little corny, I know, but I was 5 years old. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
After a choice was made it was off to the dark cafeteria at the back of Kmart. Nobody was ever there where heap, yellow plastic paneling separated diners from shoppers.
Only a little something to nibble on. Mom still had dinner to make at home. So it was a kid-size fried burrito for her and a plain hot dog for me. Always plain. No fries, those were too expensive. Just the hot dog. The seating area was unnerving, shadowy, hushed, echoey, but I didn’t care. It was sitting there, chilling with mom, at two in the afternoon, new book in hand, belly full, school and the neighborhood far, far away, my short, stubby legs dangling over the edge of the chair as we sat at our table and ate in silence. My brother was in high school and wouldn’t get out til later. Dad at work. It was Magic.
And suddenly I was no longer going to Kmart with Mom. I had entered middle school then high school. That was ok for Mom, though she would never say anything, because she knew about the inevitability of time, and let it go. Besides, she liked going on her own. I think. Or maybe not. I never asked. I should have asked. Or, she’d go with her sister, or, on rare occasions, with Dad.
You know those high school years. They’re insulated and histrionic and you forget you were a child because you’re so goddamn much in a hurry to become an adult. And then once you’re the adult you’re fucked.
One day, about three years after Mom’s passing, I saw a poster stapled to a telephone pole near a bus stop on Whittier Boulevard: KMART GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE!! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!
I had to pull over. What?! True, I hadn’t been there in forever, but at that point I was still caught up in years-long depression of losing Mom. It hit me hard. Closed. Everything must go. Goddamn. No more Kmart.
I practically grew up there. Week after week. With Mom. Always with Mom. Always an adventure. Mom bought me my first baseball mitt there. First basketball. First tennis racket. Halloween costumes. Later, I bought my first pool cue there. Bowling ball. Fishing tackle. And now she’s gone. This is gone.
I stared into space and thought of it all, there, parked on a side street, engine still running. “See, Mom? They couldn’t survive without you” I said, aloud.
I made it a point to go that weekend and visit one last time. Maybe pick something up. Take a photo. This Saturday for sure. Maybe Sunday. But the weekend came and went, and I didn’t go. Monday then. After work. Not then either. Ok, ok, then this weekend. Get up early Saturday morning and see what’s-what. But no, not then. KMART AND ITS FAMILY SAYS THANK YOU EAST LA! GOODBYE!
There’s a Ross Dress for Less in the spot where our Kmart used to be. Overheated. Suspicious security guards. Clothes packed onto the sales racks so tight you can’t pull one shirt out unless a half a dozen others fall to the ground with it. Thousands of people in mile-long lines being suffocated by narrow lanes of last-minute buys for way too many water tumblers, canisters, plastic reusables, crumbled cookies, and stale candy.
“We’re going to Kmart tomorrow. Let me get the papers.” And I would say, quite simply, naively, not a clue in the world, “Ok, Mom. Cool.”
Books: www.lulu.com/spotlight/jimmarquez
Instagram:@thebeastlywriter
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