Diane Fleming lives in Austin, Texas where by night, she masquerades her prose as poetry at open mikes. Recently, she entered the MFA fiction program at Southwest Texas State University where her peers asked, "Why aren't you in the poetry program?"
Her Website, lonestar.texas.net/~buddydog/dfleming, reflects pieces from her book, "Trip to Normal." An active Austin slam poet, she astonishes audiences who cannot believe the sight of a nondescript middle-aged woman reading sex poem after sex poem.
Woman on a Rope
I have one deformed thumbnail, the result of sucking my thumb. I never had a
breast to suck on. I lived on milk from a cow. The milk arrived at the back
door, early. You'd find it in a little tin box, which had an insulated lid.
There might be cottage cheese and eggs too. We had a milkman, but no
milkmaid.It was a time of high hair and high heels. Women's breasts were held high in
pointy bras.I drank milk from a cow I'd never seen. For all I knew, milk came from a guy
wearing a gray blue uniform and a cap, a guy who rose before his wife and
kids, who went to the dairy in the dead of night, who loaded his truck with
the products of udders. He drove to suburbia, which was a place still inside
the not too big city.He drove up gravel driveways, quietly. He opened his driver's side door to
birdsong. He carried a six-pack of quart bottles of milk, milk with a layer
of cream on the top, milk in glass bottles covered with waxed paper lids
crinkled like taffeta around their opened mouths. I'd watch my mother and
grandmother spoon cream off the top for coffee and berries. And I sucked my
thumb.Will they ever bottle mother's milk? Will they skim the milk of beer-fed
black women? Homogenize the milk of lesbians? Reap the raw milk of wild
women? Can I buy what I never had?It isn't her milk that I miss, it's the creamy nurturing I never got, the
nourishment, foamy and fresh.I drank Tang stirred into water, the drink of astronauts. I drank bottles of
root beer. I drank cow's milk in cartons.If I had to farm my own milk, I wouldn't keep a cow in my yard, but I might
keep a mother. I might keep a woman on a rope.I might let her graze on fresh green grass. I'd swat flies off her ass.
I might let her sleep standing up. She would have seven stomachs and she
would be mine.I would feed my cow woman. I would be nurtured.
I would force nurturing. I would be nurtured.
I would feed my cowgirl (everyone should have one). She would be contented.
She would feed me.
April Fool's Day, 1999
Last week, the week of the Littleton murders, I worried about two things:
1. Would I be fired?
2. Would my son burn down the house after killing his brother and me?
Both things had to do with serial killers. My boyfriend says there's some
cursed energy floating around. I think I believe him.It started a couple of months ago at work when Vesuvius, a tiny Indian
programmer, handed me a spec that I was supposed to write into an official
book. I didn't know this, but Vesuvius was planning on quitting the company
in two weeks. All his programming examples used a theme of Satan and serial
killers. For example, one command translated to "search the database for all
serial killers who live in the core of hell and whose phone numbers begin
with '666.'"At first, I liked the examples. I didn't think of changing them.
Finally, giving into overwhelming conservative pressure (by now Vesuvius had
left the company), I changed all "Satan" references to "Mark Twain" and all
"Core of Hell" references to the "Core of Mississippi."We released the CD for the book. Everyone was thrilled at our adherence to
deadlines until a tester noticed that a couple of commands still mentioned
murderers, killers, and Ted Bundy. My co-worker Huck fixed the problem. The
CD was cut again. Everything seemed fine.Then the hardcopy book came out. Now there were more serial killers than
before.Huck fixed the book and sent it to be reprinted. We were only two weeks
behind schedule now.One last time, we checked the CD. Satan was still there in full glory. Huck
realized that when he tried to fix the bad examples, he cut and pasted more
bad examples into the files rather than removing them.My manager sent me a chastising note. Her boss had chewed her out twice. The
managers lost their bonuses because they missed their dates (the workers
don't get bonuses) and so everyone I reported to at work was pissed off at
me.But in the middle of all this, I finally looked at my son's web page that
he's been raving about. He's written stories-beautiful, articulate
stories-about a fictitious character (a 14-year-old boy like himself) who
burns down houses, tortures and kills his parents, and lives next to Satan
in the Core of Hell. I worry about him and about me. He's a troubled kid, an
angry soul. He's inherited or learned his father's bitterness and my
hopelessness.So I faxed the stories to my son's therapist and to my therapist. My
therapist said, "You need to pay attention to this." And at work, my boss
pressures me to work more hours and to pay more attention to mentions of
serial killers and such.But I'm hoping that if I pretend this cursed energy doesn't exist around me,
the world will be void of dissatisfied bosses and bitter teenagers, and all
mentions of "Satan" will be replaced with "Mark Twain."
How I Got $600 for a Blow Job
I sat next to him at the Canyon Tavern, which overlooked what might have
been a canyon but was now only a series of strip malls in a suburban ditch.He was not an out-of-towner. He lived right here, a creep in a culture of
conservatives. I'd met him through a swinger's magazine. I advertised sexual
healing through superb oral techniques. I could cure any disease. I could
get him off tobacco, I could turn around a bad mushroom trip, and I could
get his wife to love him. His kids' grades would improve. This entire
package if he'd simply insert his throbbing member into my mouth and give me
600 bucks-cash no checks please.He was wearing white bucks and a white belt, navy blue pants. He fancied
himself a naval officer or a Fuller Brush salesman-someone with a little
honor, but he didn't have much. Honor that is.But when he saw me, done up in a big brassiere and tight short shorts
(cellulite be damned), he rose to the occasion. He said, "I'll give you my
prick for as long as it takes you to perform your miracles."We drove back to my place. After I disentangled him from his Fruit of the
Looms, I imagined he was a tobacco-y, earthy sort of man-one with soft-ish
balls and a tasty penis that came quick. I didn't want to have to work too
hard to get him hard."Once this is over," I said, "Your scabies will disappear. Your dreams of
writing a sea adventure novel will come true."
I nuzzled into my familiar workplace, though he smelled more of ammonia than
tobacco and earth. As he came, I could see the rash disappear off his arms;
I could see visions of boats on a wide-open ocean trip across his sight. He
was a real captain now.I said, "That was cheap huh? $600 for a new life?" And he said, "That's just
a drop in the bucket ha ha."I threw in a brand new spiral notebook and a Ph.D. pen for his trouble so he
wouldn't lose a single inspired literary thought. I took him back to the
bar. He sat down, opened his notebook, and began drawing pictures of tidal
waves and billowy sails on a fresh page of lined paper with his rash-free
arm."You've unblocked me," he said.
"Sperm is an interesting substance," I said. "Get it moving and a whole lot
changes."And he looked at me as if he knew it was true.