Poetry Friday: The Word is "ROCK"

Thanks to the ultra-sexy, talented genius of Lisa the Bored Housewife for contributing this week’s Poetry Friday WORD (aka Group Blogging Masturbation). My head simply spun with the myriad of things ‘rock’ reminded me of. Curiously, most of the images were of actual rocks, and not the music. Funny, that, as I share a deep and fervent love for Eddie Vedder with the gorgeous Lisa, and he’s nuthin’ if not RAWK.

Feel free to use this word today in your blog post, however it makes your ripples spread…poem, story, photo, spaghetti sculpture, video…. If there’s any nekkedness to be found in your contribution, please comment on it so we can ogle and drool. I have only one contribution today, because it's hella long AND because the guys at work are keeping me so busy I can't write dammit.

Have a great weekend, y’all!


Knee High by the 4th of July

Forty feet back, and 20 feet towards the barn, my daddy found a large black rock when he was checking the sweet corn crop. Daddy knew somethin’ was up when the corn had a growth spurt overnight, from dusk to dawn on the 1st of July it went from nearly knee-high to over his head. Tassled out, even. Ears started sprouting. The field smelled like peaches and rain. Daddy called his friend at the university to come check it out, and the friend couldn’t figure it out either. He chalked it up to the fertilizer Daddy was using, even though it was only manure from the horse barn, but it had turned a weird color of yellow before Daddy spread it, and maybe that’s what did it.

Some folks said the rock was slate. Some said shale. Some said it was the devil’s business. But I don’t believe in the devil. I don’t believe in god neither, not since I was five years old and The Sickness took my baby brother and my grammie.

I figured the rock was from aliens.

I was right, too.

His name was Able, he’d come to our farm one humid morning and asked my Daddy if he had any work to do. Lucky ‘cause our old farmhand, Jonas, just moved away to be with his daughter in the cool of the Kentucky hills. Able was a little older than me, maybe 18, with long long arms and legs, and a tan all over his body. He had blonde hair like a beach boy, and sometimes you could see through it to the skin on his head. He didn’t talk much, but he did smile a lot, and I caught him more than once checking out my butt when I walked away from him to pick beans or hang out the wash.

Come to think of it, Able came right before the corn grew out of control.

Momma and Daddy let me sit on the black rock to watch the fireworks on the 4th. The rock was cool and smooth, with enough room for two people to sit and watch the bottle rockets and the Indiana fireworks. Momma would set up the tubes and Daddy would light the fuses, then they’d both run to the corner of the house and cuddle as the rockets lit and zoomed off into the night. I had a thermos of lemonade and a paper sack of popcorn, and no one could hear me over the clapping and hooting of my uncles and aunts and cousins who sat in the backyard on old quilts with their beer and snotty noses.

Daddy set off a humdinger, a white chrysanthemum one that lit up the sky over the chicken coop, when a pale face came through a parting of the corn stalks. Able smiled at me and I smiled back, and scooted over to let him sit next to me.

But he didn’t sit.

He kneeled. In front of me. Like he was gonna pray. But instead of clasping, his hands touched my stretched-out legs. They felt good, really soft for a guy’s hands, large and warm. I couldn’t look anywhere else but his eyes. His hands slid under my dress, touching so softly I thought I couldn’t breathe. My panties got wet, and Able knew it ‘cause he smiled even bigger and his eyes closed. So did mine. My eyes closed and I scooted my butt closer to him, and Able reached up simple-like and pulled my panties down. I could feel the air on my privatey area, and it felt so good, I wonder why no one told me it would feel so good. Able put his head down and kissed me down there, kissed me with lips and his warm wet tongue and all the air went out of me and I felt like I was floating in the lake, floating on a bed of cattails and cotton. I moved my dress up and felt his hair, felt how his head moved around and around with his tongue right in the middle of me, his tongue moving up my belly up to my breasts, his hands pulling my bra up to taste my nipples, Able suddenly without pants and moving on top of me, my hands pushing him into me, pushing and my hips in circles and his face on my face and tasting him and me in his mouth. The fireworks went off around us, the explosions covered the sounds coming out of me, the feel of the smooth rock under me, the steam coming off Able’s body, the tingle in my middle, the wet the wet oh god now I believe in god if he made this feel so good, and Able’s own explosion into me and how my body shook and trembled and how I cried happy and how I didn’t want to stop.

I woke up a while later, when I heard Daddy open the barn door to put the fireworks tubes inside. My underwear was on, my dress was pulled down, and Able was no where to be found.

The rock was gone.

I was laying on the ground, in a circle of bare dirt where the rock should have been. My nethers were still tingly, and my fingers touched the spot through my dress, and I found that rubbing it felt really good, and made the tingle feel like Able was inside me. I stumbled sweaty to the house and snuck up to bed, not knowing if I dreamed the whole thing or what, sleeping and trying to dream it again but all I dreamed was corn moving under me and lifting me to the sky.

Daddy said Able didn’t even leave a note of good-bye, and didn’t ask for his wage neither. He was all gone. The few clothes he had, the strange case he carried with him, the flashlight he couldn’t be without, they were all gone.

Daddy didn’t know what to make of the rock disappearing. Or that all the sweet corn that summer tasted salty.

But I knew. I knew every time I reached down and rubbed my button, I knew when my breathe flew out of my lungs, I knew when I walked to the spot where the rock was. I knew it was Able. I can’t wait for him to come back.