Swanging
An experiment in rhythmic prose
by Lamar Stonecypher

They were swanging.  Swanging when I drove by.

Who, who exactly was this couple swanging at the office of the trailer park?

I thought about it on the trip to the liquor store, where a friendly, familiar Indian store clerk told me about cognac.  Cognac and La Belle cream. It tastes like candy,  he claimed.

They were still going at it when I got back. He was swanging. They were swanging. They were on Alfreda's porch swanging. I couldn't help myself. I had to go talk to couple on the porch.

A white boy, I found, and an Indian woman. The boy fifteen,  the woman fifty.

"Hiya," says I. "I saw you talking."

The Indian woman nods; she knows who I am.  After a moment,  I recognize her, too. Her name's Nomie.

"Late night," Nomie says.

"Ah-rum," says I. It's not all they hold sacred. My eyes, I know, accuse, but why? Ah-rum.

"This's Brian," Nomie says.

Brian, tongue-tied,  mortified, touching his toes to the ground,  was beyond hope. He was in thrall to the Indian woman. She, beautiful, in Indian fashion.   Both of them on Alfreda's porch, swanging.

Alfreda is eighty-one, and she likes me.  We talk trash around each other when I pay my rent. I like Alfreda. I like her a lot.

The white boy looks to space. Embarrassed. He really is fifteen.

I'd fancied Freda myself.

The white boy has been invaded, he knows.

I like him almost instantly. He's flotsam, and I've been flotsam. I've been there, and I identify.

I love Brian like an unknown brother. He'd known an older woman, and he would never be the same.

Alfreda was mine, and I'll never be the same.

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