Critique: Notes on a Kitchen Table

     What I like most about "Notes on a Kitchen Table" is how it utilizes forms in ways that both define and alter the relationship between the two characters, Danny and Ally. Through notes and flowcharts it becomes apparent that Danny has come home drunk again, which has caused Ally to stay up all night creating a flow chart that Danny just has to fill out rather than feeling stifled by Ally's inquiries about where he's been.
      What stems from the flowchart is the predictability of Danny, and his apparent alcoholism. The end of the flowchart is a heart-felt vignette which describes a recurring moment between the lives of Danny and Ally, and the very final bubble asks "where do we go from here?"
        What's impressive is that Ally's voice comes through in a profound way through the flow-chart. This can either be attributed to Ally's note in the beginning, or to the snarky subtext of a flowchart that accurately describes a person's day. Every day. Still more telling is that the red lines that Danny fills in, answering each question and going down the trail, has a voice unto itself. I would attribute that again to Danny's short sweet note in the beginning, but also to the fact that he actually took the time to fill it out.
        The story's ending is written in the unfilled lines at the end of the flowchart. Of course this leaves the story on an ambiguous note. It brings us back to Danny's letter being the final action of the piece, while Ally's is the first. As such, we read Danny's letter differently, and less optimistically upon completing the flowchart. He's probably out drinking again, and he is not answering the only question Ally cares about.
        I really enjoyed this. It is strong, concise, properly utilizes form, and develops two distinct characters. It's hard even to identify what you could do to change the piece. You could always fine-tune the flowchart. The more specific, the more humour the reader will find. Things like "did you put your shirt on inside out?" or "did you choose matching socks" would be the sort of intimate details that dig deeper into the relationship. The less generic, the better. The scotch, is it a particular brand. What type of cigarettes does he smoke? I would definitely consider turning this into part of something larger, but it is excellent on its own.

Critique: Application for Employment

Ashley Curtis's application for employment plays with the format of an application to be a barista. The applicant, Pendleton Roberts, is a 16 year-old girl from Minnesota who has taken a break from High school and wants to work. The reason she is not in school is because the pressure was too much for her and she ended up slitting her wrists with a box cutter.

While the voice of the main character comes through in the piece, there are some technical points that ought to be addressed. An application for a position like this would likely be hand-written, and I think that doing so would highlight the intentions of this piece. At the same time, this character would be required by law to attend school, even if only some form of alternative school. If she has been placed on a prolonged suspension for her behavior, I wonder what she is supposed to be doing with her time, and what her family thinks.

I'd like to know more about her references. Is it, in fact, okay to contact them? Is the physician a family physician, someone she is seeing for psychological reasons? As far as Lewis Rogers is concerned, I think a male nurse is just called a nurse.

It might be interesting for her to fill out several applications over a prolonged period of time. The frequent rejection could finally lead her to this last-ditch effort. She seems like a stressed person, but ultimately determined based on all of her extra-curriculars. There is definitely room to explore here. Go nuts.

Critique: "I should have taken an ambien"

Shelby Thomas's "i should have taken an ambien" experiments with a stream-of-conscious narrative in the form of a journal  or diary entry. The narrative has several movements, suggesting a structure of ideas. And while there is no punctuation or capitalization, line-breaks seem to suggest shifts in ideas and sentences.

While I like that there is an attempt at coherency within the piece, I think it is necessary for something like this to jar the reader. For instance, I liked the ambiguity in "of course they werent exactly the same clothes he had navy blue button ups and pairs of army green pants but only one or two belts and pair of boots since you dont have to wash those people think I'm being ridiculous when i tell them this but i know its true because he told me[.]" In the words "have to wash those people" the two sentences run together to make a subtle joke. Things like that will work better if you let the whole piece run unbroken. You could separate ideas by writing several entries.

Overall, I think it is a good idea with moments and sections that shine. Now the task is to find out what works about those moments and try to extrapolate them for the whole.

Blanco

I want to stay with Papa but I can’t tonight because there is an emergency. Tonight I am going to stay at Freddy’s. We are driving in his blue truck on the freeway. We are going seventy-five miles an hour.

Papa lets me drive the big white truck. I’m not supposed to be able to drive the big white truck but he lets me anyway. He taught me how to drive. He said, “Junior, Mijo, take it easy. Check your mirrors. Put the key in the ignition. Give it a little gas. Take the car out of neutral. Go easy on the gas peddle. Drive it straight and steady. That a boy. Go slow so I don’t spill my beer.” I always go slow because I don’t want to spill his beer. The spanish word for white is blanco.

His favorite beer is Tecate. It’s the kind that I pick up from Sanchez at the store exactly a mile and two thirds of a mile down the dirt road. He likes them when they come in a pack of twenty-four. The colors on the cans are red and gold and there is a black eagle with a letter T on it too. The spanish words for red and gold are rojo and oro. Papa drinks Tecate when we are at the corral and when we are at home. He lets me check the fences. I check the fences by putting on grey gloves that I keep in the big white truck. The spanish word for grey is gris. They are mine and I put them on and then I follow the barbed wire from one fencepost to the next fencepost. There are sixty-four fenceposts and three rows of barbed wire. The spanish word of barbed wire is alambrada. When Papa calls me into the corral because something is going wrong, he says “Muchacho, Vengas aqui.” And I am in so much of a hurry to get to him that sometimes I run into the barbed wire and it cuts my arms and I cry. So most times when he calls he says “Muchacho, Vengas aqui, bajo la alambrada.”

He called me on a Tuesday at two thirty-five in the afternoon. There were two clouds in the sky. I don’t know the word for cloud in Spanish but I would like to. He called me over and I went under the barbed wire because that’s what bajo la alambrada means. Papa was in the middle of the corral and he held Cheyenne’s hoof between his legs. He said to me “Go get the nails from the truck. And the hammer. Bring them back.” I asked if I could drive the big white truck because it’s my favorite thing to do next to riding Cheyenne but Papa just said “Go!” and I know when he says go that I should do it because I am learning how to be like him because I want to be like him.

The spanish word for nail is clavo.

I remember Papa was hammering the nail into Cheyenne’s hoof because that is how you keep a horseshoe on. Cheyenne’s hooves are sensitive because he used to run at the race track. He was a famous horse at the race track but he broke his ankle. The reason he broke his ankle Papa says is because some asshole couldn’t find his dick with both hands and let the track go all to shit. That’s what Papa says. 

Cheyenne can’t see very good because one eye is swollen and the color part of the eye looks like it is swimming in the white part of the eye. Papa calls it a detached retina. Cheyenne’s eye is like that because he was taken from the race track and they hit him in the head with a hammer so that they could process him. Papa won’t tell me what processing is because he says I am too young to know. I asked him what they call a horse that is going to be processed and he said desafortunado which kind of means unlucky.

I like to drive me and Papa home to Mama. Mama spends six hours on the couch everyday watching two different channels on the television. She says she enjoys both channels. When Papa and I come home she says to me “Hola, Mijo. Como Estas?” That means hello son, how are you. I understand everything she says in Spanish, but she does not say a lot. She yells at Papa and Papa yells back. They tell me to sit outside on the porch

Our house is up on cinder blocks. Papa calls it a modular home. He made a deck in the back out of ten leftover cinder blocks and two sheets of plywood that are each six feet long and four feet wide. The house looks like a shoe box. The walls of the house are grooved and there is a large satellite dish on top. A satellite dish is what lets Mama watch her two channels. 

When we came home from the corral today Papa was tired because we had to cover all of the alfalfa before the monsoon came. A monsoon is a rainstorm but it’s a rainstorm that has a lot more lightning and thunder. In spanish it is called a Monzon. Papa drank three Tecates on the drive home and he was singing with the radio. The radio station was tuned to 98.3 FM. The song was by The Marshall Tucker Band and it was called Can’t you See and it was recorded in 1973. 

Mama was on the porch and she was drinking vodka. She doesn’t drink Tecate. She drinks vodka. she says her favorite vodka is cheap.

We had not got out of the car when Mama threw the bottle at the windshield. Papa burped once and then he said, “Wait in the car, Muchacho.”

They went inside but I could hear them because my window was down and the walls of a modular home are thin.

Papa said, “What the fuck are you doing you’re going to break the window. That’s your son in that car.”

Mama said, “Where’s our money, Herman.”

Papa said, “What money what money. What’s going on?”

Mama said, “You spent it all didn’t you.”

Papa said, “It’s my money.”

Mama said, “You said you’d stop. You said you weren’t doing it any more.”

They were talking about how sometimes Papa goes out at night. Papa goes out after he thinks Mama is asleep, which is ten thirty. Papa gets in the car and he drives down the street and he comes back and he smells bad and he bumps into the walls and the furniture.

When he is gone Mama goes to the bathroom. She stays in the bathroom for a long time. Sometimes she falls asleep in the bathroom. I wake her up because I don’t want her to be uncomfortable. She says she likes to relax in the bathroom. Papa says he likes to relax down the street. they both tell me that I shouldn’t ask so many questions. I don’t want to upset them so I don’t ask any questions

Papa keeps his favorite gun on the top of the TV. The spanish word for pistol is pistola. I am not allowed to touch the gun. Papa sometimes says “I am going to kill that bitch.” Papa also says “I love you.” When he says “I love you” Mama says “I love you too.” When he says “I am going to kill that bitch!” Mama starts to cry. I don’t think Papa is going to kill that bitch.

Papa loves Mama and me and Cheyenne. Mama tells Papa “I can’t handle being alone with that boy.” Papa says “I can’t take care of him all the time.” Mama never watches me alone. She always calls Freddy up on the number 555-219-2225. That is Freddy’s number that he answers when we call. Right now I am in Freddy’s car.

Freddy has a blanket wrapped around me and I am staring ahead. I like the way the sun falls down behind the mountains. Freddy isn’t saying anything. This is strange because Freddy is really funny and likes to talk. I like to talk too so it is strange that I’m not saying much either. Freddy and Uncle Joe came to Papa’s house at the same time. They came after I told Mama what I saw because she was scared and didn’t want to look for herself. 

Papa didn’t look at me in the truck when he came out on the front porch and then walked to the back of the house. I heard Mama screaming from inside, “You piece of shit!” Papa always said he was tired. He liked to say “Estoy Consado porque yo trabajo mucho.” He sat on the porch and I could not see him. I could not see him. I heard the loud noise that cracked my ears and I saw a red splash fly onto the dirt. The dirt is yellow. Yellow in Spanish is Amarillo. Red is rojo.

I got out of the truck and walked to Papa. His head was back against the house and he didn’t look okay. The gun was in his hand. His hand was by his side. Papa didn’t move when I sat on his lap. I tried to make him move by hugging him. Mama was yelling loud inside the house but I don’t think she was saying anything. I staid on Papa’s lap and I kept my eyes open. I hugged him tight but I couldn’t feel him breathe. I hugged him until Freddy came and took me away from Papa. Freddy put me in his blue truck. The Spanish word for blue is azul. 

Freddy says that everything is going to be okay. he says that Papa was very sad but that he loved me. Freddy says he loves me. Mama hasn’t called. I haven’t heard Mama in thirteen days. I miss Mama but I miss mending fences with Papa. I ask Freddy who is taking care of Cheyenne. He said we would all help take care of Cheyenne. I tell him what is wrong with Cheyenne’s eye. Papa says it is a detached retina. I wonder if Freddy will let me ride in the big white truck. The Spanish word for white is blanco.