. The students were then asked to take no more than an hour to make work that reflected or responded to what we read and looked at. Preferably, the writers would make something in response to Marshall, and the artists in response to Saunders, but this was a lightly held instruction. (Also: sometimes the writers make visual work, and sometimes the artists write.) The project was assigned before campus was shut down due to Covid-19 campus, and the work was presented online and discussed by the class via Zoom. Below are the results. [Click images to enlarge them.]
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- Emily Jacobo, on themes drawn from both Saunders and Marshall ["I feel like so often we think that reality stains us or that even the color of our skin does. In light of our skin, our personality, dreams, life situations and circumstances, successes and sins, after reading and looking at the artist's pieces and writings, I could feel all of this pouring out of it. So what if it was the same with the colors and life we were given. We aren't just one thing and we never will be, but one thing for sure is that God loves you and you are not the same as anyone else. And we can let that sift through and out our body and skin, and we can pour it out by just being who we are."]
- Anna Winters, "meant to represent the general feeling I had in response to Saunders' work, while still attempting to hold elements of his stories and writing styles in the work. I chose bright colors and simple images to represent the accessibility and almost playfulness of his writing style and separated the piece into 4 sections to mimic his tendency to switch abruptly from character points of view."
- Micah Brady, after themes found in both Saunders and Marshall
~~~
- Emily Bontrager, after Saunders's "Victory Lap"
~~~
- Hannah McLaughlin, after Saunders's use of limited narrative perspective [Full video is
here]
~~~
Cross Genre #2 - VVP due 4/7/20 // In response to Gulf Stream, by Kerry James Marshall 1:48-2:48pm 4/6/20
I think there’s something awful about seagulls. Or any birds, really. Something about their beady eyes, triangle tails, pointy beaks.
Or maybe it’s just that I don’t have those hodge-damn majestic wings that they do, flying away like that without a care in the world.
They fly high, high above. Two of them. Wings out. Grey against periwinkle blue.
There’s four of us in this boat, and we’ve long forgotten our Christian names. Now we’re Bitters-boop, Skywalker (yeah, after Star Wars), Little Fish and me, Friehel. Usually people just call me Frie.
Bitters-boop’s sitting down, legs out, manning - or womaning, I guess - the stereo. She refuses to listen to our requests, demanding and complaining how we outta know better about the kind of music’s out there, you know, knowing Bitters-boop herself, afro and all. She’s got a pout on her face and it doesn’t match the way her arms extend out, kind of like their own cotton-wrapped form of the actual wings above us. She looks almost as if she’ll take flight, but her pouting face’ll hold her down.
“Alright, Bitters-boop,” I say. “Whatever you want. Just something good.”
It’s a game we all play. Of course we know she’ll choose something good. Just like she’s something good.
I hope to ask that girl to marry me someday, and get to face that pout when I put on the toilet paper roll the wrong way.
She reaches into her netted bag for something good, and the rest of us longue about.
Little Fish ain’t so little anymore. She stands near the back of the boat, her balance unimpeded by the waves. She’s got a long white dress on, cinched at the waist with a blue scarf. I watched her dye that scarf with indigo herself, waiving it and her stained hands after Paper, our Papa, when he left for the job festival.
He got shot coming back, carrying 60 grand with him. In paper. Hah. That was Papa Paper for you.
He survived the shot. Now he wags his half-hand at us to scare us when we do something bad, but we’re all adults, now finally Little Fish, too, and well, he ain’t so scary when he’s grey and one and a half handed.
Skywalker’s sittin’ across from Bitters-boop, bobbing his head to the music. He’s got a foot on either side of Little Fish, almost guarding her from the coil of rope next to her. He’s the only one on this boat related by blood to me, and he’s the only one I feel like pitching off the side every so often.
Little brothers, huh. Gotta love them.
I’m sure he feels like pinching me off the side every so often, too. I know I would.
I pull up the collar of my coat against the wind, gazing back at the growing pile of storm clouds.
They’re heavy, pregnant with grey and beginning to block out the sun.
“Storm on the horizon, Frie.” Skywalker rolls the “o”s in his mouth, sounding like a
hodge-damn steamroller of old.
“I see her,” I say back, sounding like me. I shift the rudder and the sail, running parallel with
the coastline. The docks sit in the distance.
“Feeling cold, Little Fish?” Bitters-boop asks the girl.
“Not a slice.” Little Fish stretches out her arms. I can see the goose-flesh from where I stand on the starboard side of the ship, but I know that girl ain’t cold. That girl never gets cold.
Bitters-boop still gives Little Fish one of Skywalker’s extra coats, even buttons it up for her. Skywalker watches Little Fish’s every move. That little girl looks even more little in that string-bean’s coat. How does that even happen.
“You ain’t getting a cold on my watch,” says Bitters-boop, by way of explanation.
Yup. That girl. My wife, someday.
The little box in my pocket seems to be invisible and weightless. I can’t see it, though I know
it’s there.
*
I turn back to the waves, leading the boat out along the coast. We keep parallel, or rather, I keep parallel. Bitters-boop has gone back to messing with the stereo, and now Skywalker has asked Little Fish to cuddle with him on the port side.
I like sitting up at the bow alone, the rope for the sail in my hands. I give it a bit of an adjustment every now and then, accommodating the wind.
“Got any leftover cheese and crackers?” I hear Skywalker say.
“Yeah, it’s in your pocket.” says Bitters-boop.
“Which coat?” Little Fish giggles. I imagine she’s stuffing her hands in the pockets of his coat
and looking for them herself, pleased when she notes there in h er coat of his. They eventually find the snacks and I can’t hear anybody chewing over the crashing of the waves as it kicks up for the storm, but I imagine it sounds kind of like the waves crashing. Maybe quieter.
Someone sneezes and they all blame each other. Papa Paper will shred us to bits if any one of us gets sick with a storm like this coming in, but ah, it’s just ‘cause he worries. He ain’t so bad, after all. Just loud, every so often. Dad of the neighborhood. Mr. Rogers but less gentle.
I watch the seagulls fly above us. The sun has taken too much of me to have any energy to curse those guys, so I don’t. Instead, in my heart, I wish I was with them, too.
*
We get back into the harbor, it starts to pour. A pelican lands on the port of the boat and screeches when we get too close. He’s wet and grumpy.
Bitters-boop screeches back, in tune with the sick jams she’s bumpin’. “Ain’t no crime to park here, buckoo. Go on, scoot.”
The pelican gives in real quick. Aw, ship, I would too.
We get the boat all docked and set for port, sail folded and all. It looks a bit sad, the way it’s filling with water. If it floods and the sands carry the kelp forests in, we’ll have to fish it out of the sand dune beneath it, ‘bout four feet down, when the storm passes. I’m alright with that. Something about yanking out bundles of green and orange goo and kicking up to the surface, hauling bum, is real satisfying.
That’s not even sarcasm. That’s pure truth.
Little Fish and Skywalker head on ahead of Bitters-boop and I. I can tell Little Fish is getting tired. That girl’s dragging her feet, and not joking about it too.
“How do you feel around marriage?” I call out to Bitters-boop, who’s pulling on her yellow rain coat. She’s soaked to the bone beneath it, so I can’t see the point for the moment, until she shimmies out of her long-sleeve and jeans, dropping the sodden things on the dock and begins to pull some other clothes on out of a bag. I turn away once I realize what’s going on, so I don’t see anythin’ beneath the fact, and I’m only telling you, reader-reader, what I’m guessing she’s doin’ based on the fact she got my foot with her throw of sodden denim.
She waltzes around in front of me, jacked zipped, hood up, lookin’ like some sort of wizard, fairy creature. Or a lighthouse, against this grey painting.
Her eyes twinkle. Aw, those eyes. “That ain’t the way of asking.”
“Oh, my b. Let me try again.” I get down on one knee, feeling the water soak through immediately, and fish out the little wood box I’ve been carrying around with me.
“Bitters-boop,” I say. “Would you do Frie the grand, golden honor of becoming Mrs. Frie?” I clear my throat. “I mean, will you marry me?”
“Yeah, I’ll marry you. But the moment we step into the house, we drop these stupid names and go back to being Fred Marker and Betty Loop. Well, I suppose Betty Marker then. Deal?”
Anything she’d ask me with those eyes, I’d say deal right away. I’m fond of these names, though, and I know they won’t leave us, ever. The entire town calls us these names, and frankly, it’s been years and years since even my teachers have called me Fred. But I get what she’s saying, and I’m up for it. In our house, aw man, o ur, h ouse, we’ll be Betty and Fred.
“Deal,” I say.
I take her hand, and have to put the ring temporarily on another finger since it’s so big and her fingers are already smaller from the cold. I knew I got it too big, but I wanted to surprise her and not have to ask her.
“Alright, the future Mrs. Frie, uh, I mean Mrs. Marker. Are you up for some grub?”
“And to get out of this rain.” She links her arm through mine and I click my heels with glee. We walk off the dock, our shoes and socks soaked through. There’s gotta be at least a few inches on the ground.
“How about one of Tom’s Shepherd Pies?”
“We’ll run into some folk there,” Bitters-boop warns.
“Aw, no worries. Folk ain’t so scary anymore. We’re gettin’ married now, they’ll be off our
backs.” I turn to her, pulling us to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Nobody’s really around, except for Old Jaffa outside of the coffee shop, and he’s too busy drinking his coffee. “Can I kiss you?”
“After thirteen years, he now proposes and asks to kiss in the same day?” She cocks her head, smiling. That smile.
“I’m a slow grower,” I say.
“Like hell you are.” And she nods, pulling her sleeves over her hands. “Yeah, honey-bee, you can.”
I kiss her, quick. I’m a bit nervous and can’t quite feel my face ‘cause of the rain.
“Warm enough?” I ask her as we head in the way of Tom’s.
She’s got rainwater runnin’ down her face. “Sure am. How many pies you think you can eat
tonight?”
“Mm, twelve.”
“Twelve?”
“We didn’t have lunch today, we just snacked.”
“Snacks ain’t so bad.” She says, voice defensive, that pout coming back.
“Yeah, but snacks with Skywalker and Little Fish are. Those two eat like mouses.” Cheese and
crackers. Who eats cheese and crackers for a meal? That’s not a meal.
“Alright, alright. So you’ll eat twelve and I’ll eat eight, so we’ll order an even twenty. Deal?” “Deal.”
- Lavender Tonini, after
