Fabled Truths

Lurlynn Franklin

Description

With themes wrapped around tabooed comedy routines, Fabled Truths, Volume Three is the third of three collections containing easy, but uncomfortable, self-portraits and poetic essays addressing social situations through parodies of American iconography, uncompromised profiling and mindless stereotyping. The book presents skewed modern snapshots of what a long history of bias has left on the shared consciousness of Americans, guiding the viewer's outside and deeper inside the skins of what their own surface assessments of cultures, social practices and gender identities might be, with a challenge to cross the battle-lines between the fables and the truths of those assessments. Fabled Truths is not just about race and sex, the poor or the rich. It is about differences, minute and profound, the fragile separations between individuals, and how those thin lines deem every human being subject to becoming somebody's punch-line, somebody's joke, the center of a one-liner. Crossing paths in content, these 16 self-portraits and 20 poetic essays do not entirely define each other, very much like "those people" who live in the other part of town. Those "others" who we have to drive past to get to our part of town. Those "others" who, based on "a casual two second encounter. . . lead to our complete/one minute summation/of the "others" entire existence. . ."

Informations

• Publié par: Book Venture Publishing LLC
• Date de parution: 09 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781640694453
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2018 by Lurlynn Franklin.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
BookVenture Publishing LLC
1000 Country Lane Ste 300
Ishpeming MI 49849
www.bookventure.com
Hotline: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN-13: Softcover 978-1-64348-443-3
Pdf 978-1-64348-444-0
ePub 978-1-64348-445-7
Kindle 978-1-64348-446-4
Rev. date: 08/29/2018


This book is dedicated to JOE, LURLINE and THE ANCESTORS.








FABLED TRUTHS


fabled truths
An Artist Statement
a fable – a parable, allegory, mythical fiction
a truth – a fact, reality, plain … gospel
25 years ago, I sat in a north dakota comedy club listening to racial jokes:
joke one: “the american dream? “a black swimming to africa with an Indian under each arm.”
joke two: “the most confusing day in the ghetto? “father’s day.”
many more like it followed/ as the two young friends who I accompanied nearly fell out of their seats laughing … until the comedian started telling fat white women jokes: “north dakota women?
“corn fed snow pigs.”
both friends were caucasian females under 5’5” and over 150 lbs. . .
what makes us laugh with/ or shut down on ignorance and prejudice?/ always striving to balance a stereotyped display between/ either a split second decision to take it as personal/ or how to respond to/or dish out/ what can only be characterized as insensitivity/ wrapped and floured in a tasty funny.
fabled truths are easy/ but uncomfortable/ self-portraits of social guises and situations/ skin- stretched facial treatments forcing me to explore american icons in a mirror turned on myself/the skin-thin boundaries of what separates a “me” from “them”/
the joke one selectively tells to some and avoids telling to “others”/
the “others” we break bread with on the sabbath. . ./ the “others” next door/who we briefly acknowledge/ with warm mechanical waves of our morning papers/swiped up fresh from our dew-drenched lawns/ the casual two second encounter that leads to our complete/one minute summation/of the “others” entire existence. . .
fabled truths are often offensive
chuckle but always question. . .
“if the other doesn’t hear it/
like that unfortunate tree in the forest/
does it really matter who falls and gets hurt?”






cutting through bull from the fabled truth collection – lurlynn franklin







FABLED TRUTHS


a guess at who`s coming to dinner
“white families sit together for every meal/and they always eat steaks
and baked potatoes for supper/with a salad on the side
served before the main course
full glasses of milk poured for all the white children
with white wine on the side for the parents”
I never questioned what my mother had told me about the eating habits
of white people
she had worked for some as a housekeeper and from what I gathered/
after school from 3 to 6/a’nt bee, opie, andy and barnie on sundays
june, ward, wally, the beaver/played by jerry nathers
the brady bunch/breakfast lunch and dinner
all gathered together for meals
I usta pondered the dilemma of maybe inviting white people to dinner
but with my parents’ schedules being so out of whack
we could never keep track
of each other
daddy worked days/momma worked nights
to make the little bread/to buy the little bread/
we could never get together to break
my parents didn’t have the time to march during the sixties/
answering that late 80’s question/raised by the mainstream media
why aren’t blacks more politically aware?
answer: it’s hard pondering over
potential wars with russia
when the real battle
is filling the freezer







it was more about survival
than a political arrival

more about the revolution/instead of today’s devolution
into the fears and the jeers you face from the mere mentioning
of race …
sip your forty/pass the chex mix
the game has been fixed/don’t lay those cards on the table
agree with his fable
or get tagged and labeled
a racist
and as his smacky yellow smiley face orders you to
Have A Nice Day
forcing you to feast/to breath in the stink
of what he tells you to think/of that tall cold glass of water
he ladled from his sewer/of the big steaming bowl of manure
no seeds ever grew in
there is a a guess at who is coming to dinner
if I had to make a tough decision
between two bad conditions
“nigga” from a man
head to toe in white linen
would be invited to dinner
over a hip white boss
with black
jelly bean stains
on his tie







FABLED TRUTHS


sometimes its best to try
to isolate the true lie …
as some conditions
can’t be avoided
like a storm door
off it’s hinges
there isn’t the choice
to simply close it
sometimes you have little option
but to go through it/
with or without invitation/
welcomed or not
to sit down at the table
to savor and swallow
the slow subtle abuse
of maine lobster
dipped
in government
butter








jail bait from the fabled truth collection – lurlynn franklin