{"id":3154,"date":"2014-11-14T16:08:02","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=3154"},"modified":"2015-04-09T17:45:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T17:45:00","slug":"speed-a-poem-by-steve-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/speed-a-poem-by-steve-de-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed. A Poem by Steve de France"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\nOne cloudy day in 1945,\u00a0
\nI played alone in a vacant lot\u00a0
\nacross from the Central Hotel.\u00a0
\nDigging roads for my fire
\nengine. It was small, red,\u00a0
\nand made of cast metal.\u00a0
\nSuddenly, I saw my mother\u00a0
\nstanding next to a man\u00a0
\nin uniform. She called to me.\u00a0
\n 
\n 
\nWe were living in a cheap hotel
\nin Redondo Beach.\u00a0
\nThe Central Hotel.\u00a0
\nBuilt in the twenties or so.\u00a0
\nWooden fire escapes.\u00a0
\nTransoms.\u00a0
\nBathroom down the hall.\u00a0
\nFilled with smoke,\u00a0
\nwhiskey voices,\u00a0
\ncoughing.\u00a0
\nMen and women fighting.\u00a0
\nDoors banging.\u00a0
\nPeople coming & going all hours…
\n 
\n 
\nI stood & shaded my eyes
\nfrom the sun glare. They walked across\u00a0
\nthe street to me.\u00a0
\n 
\n\u201cThis is your father.\u201d
\n 
\nHe had medals on his chest.\u00a0
\nI stared at him,\u00a0
\nnot comprehending.\u00a0
\nHe grabbed me up like a bag of potatoes.\u00a0
\nWhiskers scraped my cheek.\u00a0
\nBeer breath frightened me.\u00a0
\nHe toted me
\ninto the Central Hotel.\u00a0
\n 
\nThe war was over.\u00a0
\n 
\nI remember the smells.\u00a0
\nPeople cooking on hot plates.\u00a0
\nFish, cans of hash, eggs, stew,
\npotatoes, onions, cabbage, coffee,\u00a0
\nanything & everything cheap.\u00a0
\nAnd then, there was the
\nhotel manager patrolling the halls.\u00a0
\n 
\nLooking for overdue rents.\u00a0
\nMaybe an open door to stare in.\u00a0
\nHe smoked big cheap cigars.\u00a0
\nChewed them till they were wet
\nthen, he\u2019d hock & spit.\u00a0
\nUsually he\u2019d miss the open door
\nhitting the floor instead,\u00a0
\nthe was followed by a\u00a0
\n\u201cGod Damn\u201d or two.\u00a0
\nBut
\nmore powerful than all these odours\u00a0
\nwas the stench of the mouldering
\nhallway carpet. That grease-stained,\u00a0
\npuke-beige carpet. It\u2019s miasma
\nhung fog like in the halls.\u00a0
\nThis night
\nFor reasons I didn\u2019t understand
\nI was forced to sleep alone
\nin our hallway leading to the bathroom.\u00a0
\nHere in the shadows, car headlights
\nseeped through diaphanous curtains
\nfrom Diamond Street, and threw
\nhuge fantastic shapes of black\u00a0
\nand ghostly white on aged wallpaper.\u00a0
\n 
\nI cried.\u00a0
\nUntil he came in a flood of light;
\nand spanked me till my butt burned.\u00a0
\nAnd then for the rest of the night,\u00a0
\nI breathed the stench of dead carpet
\nand listened to each night sound
\nwalk by my hall window.\u00a0
\n 
\n 
\nI fell asleep, planning immortal revenge.\u00a0
\nNot long after this, my father,\u00a0
\nSpeed disappeared forever.
\n 
\n 
\nHis memory still hangs like a fog in my mind.\u00a0
\n 
\n 
\n<\/strong>\"little<\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nSteve De France is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in
\nAmerica and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary
\npublications in America, England, Canada, France, Ireland, Wales,
\nScotland, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been nominated for a
\nPushcart Prize in Poetry in both 2002, 2003 & 2006. Recently, his
\nwork has appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Mid-American
\nPoetry Review, Ambit, Atlantic, Clean Sheets, Poetry Bay, The Yellow
\nMedicine Review and The Sun. In England he won a Reader’s Award in Orbis
\nMagazine for his poem “Hawks.” In the United States he won the Josh
\nSamuels’ Annual Poetry Competition (2003) for his poem: “The Man Who
\nLoved Mermaids.” His play THE KILLER had it’s world premier at the
\nGARAGE THEATER in Long Beach, California (Sept-October 2006). He has
\nreceived the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chapman University for his
\nwriting. Most recently his poem “Gregor’s Wings” has been nominated
\nfor The Best of The Net by Poetic Diversity.
\n<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n <\/p>\n

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\n<\/a> editor@artvilla.com<\/strong>
\n  <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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    One cloudy day in 1945,\u00a0 I played alone in a vacant lot\u00a0 across from the Central Hotel.\u00a0 Digging roads for my fire engine. It was small, red,\u00a0 and made of cast metal.\u00a0 Suddenly, I saw my mother\u00a0 standing next to a man\u00a0 in uniform. She called to me.\u00a0     We were living … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,538],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3154"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4035,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions\/4035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}