The Third Age

What do magic, mythical gods, and   the streets of New York City have in common?  You’ll find it all in          The Third Age, a webseries which is being launched today by Blip.TV.

.

Written, directed and shot by           Patrick Meaney and Jordan Rennert and produced by Amber Yoder (my daughter), The Third Age has been billed as a “psychedelic remix of classic mythology, telling the story of ordinary people caught up in an eternal war between gods waged on the streets of New York City.”

.

I love classic mythology, so I was instantly intrigued and happy to have a chance to preview the first seven episodes.  A war between gods and realistic scenes of gritty, city streets is definitely a modern twist on an epic story.  But the way the story is told is exciting and unique.  A god gets kidnapped.  A drug dealer finds himself simultaneously hiding from the cops and getting involved in the middle of a struggle between science and magic.  Fantasy meets asphalt.  I can’t wait to see more.

.

The Third Age begins with scenes from a laboratory and has an X-Files feel to it, which is excellent.  Then we are introduced to the main characters. Christopher Zinone is not your typical drug dealer on the corner—his clients are young and wealthy.  But Christopher is depressed and wants to change his ways.  Determined that he has made the last drug deal of his life, he heads home one night and meets a beautiful woman who is crying on the street.  Her name is Morning.  She is far from ordinary.

.

The laboratory scenes weave into the story well, and this background builds much suspense.  We meet a scientist named Jerrod Woolf who had a vision thirty years ago.  He dreamed of creating a drug that would one day save the world.  Jerrod Woolf’s world of science, the “real” world of Christopher Zinone and the magical world of Morning collide to make for a story that is keeping me on the edge of my seat.

.

As a person who spends her life writing stories, I am impressed by the richness of the storyline in The Third Age.  It is complex, not in a way that is hard to understand, but in a way that makes a fiction writer nod her head and appreciate the sophistication of what these filmmakers are doing.  Don’t get hung up on the word “psychedelic.”  There’s a very real story here.

.

The writers of this series respect my intelligence as a viewer and do not bombard me with obvious explanations, as some series do.  The characterization of Christopher Zinone is fantastic.  He unfolds with details that create a rich blend of character that is much more than meets the eye.

.

Obviously, I dig well developed characterization and an interesting story.  If you’re somebody who reads this site every week, you probably do, too.  I also know that many of you enjoy fantasy writing.  Of course, there are more elements that make the series excellent.  But I’d rather let you check it out.  The first season consists of thirteen seven minute episodes, and it will be released weekly, starting today.  A second season will follow with thirteen additional episodes.

.

The series has already been previewed at screening events in New York, including Big Screen, Little Screen and Industry Power Play.  It is produced by Respect Films, an independent production company that creates innovative content for the web and traditional media.

.

You can read about the making of The Third Age by checking out the website HERE.  The behind the scenes work is fun to read.  You think you have challenges as a poet or a fiction writer?  Imagine having to find real locations and good actors for your characters.  Then lug around equipment and film them in a way that is professional and true to your vision.  Oh, yeah.  And do it on a budget.  I know the genres aren’t the same, but the physical aspects of film make me really respect what they do.

.

The Third Age has already received great reviews.  Check out one by Tubefilter News HERE.   It also tells about Respect Film’s current work with ESPN.

.

Please take a few minutes to check out episode one of The Third Age HERE and bookmark the page.

.

I rarely turn on the stupid box (aka the television).  But I’ll be clicking on          The Third Age every week.  The story is a fantastic ride.

.

Read Full Post »

Pry Those Clams From His Cold, Dead Hands

.

Mr. Orrie’s Clamming License

.

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

.

A man with a badge

pulls up in a boat

next to Mr. Orrie’s

bent back shack:

.

Have you got

a license

to clam here?

.

Mr. Orrie’s got

a Cherokee mama

and a great grandpa

buried three knots

beyond the beacon.

.

He’s got a brogue

thick as marsh mud

.

curly white eyebrows

and a blue birthmark

shaped like a crab claw

on his brown-red jaw.

.

He’s got his daddy’s rake,

boots, nets, hip waders

and a criss-cross of scars

on his long, thick arms.

.

Mr. Orrie’s got a sweet

round woman with a gun

and a kettle of home brew

on his saggy back porch.

.

He’s got salt in his marrow

and a leg that still aches

ever since that time in ’58

when a stingray got him.

.

He’s got a faded gray

pickup truck that runs

and a yellow lab dog

with an ear chewed off

by a fat black bear.

.

He’s got a rope

for every squall.

A hurricane lantern

that’s seen them all.

.

He’s got a hand carved boat

that’s fifty years older

than the man with the badge.

.

He does not have

a politician’s piece

of pretty legalese.

.

But son, you’d bloody well

better hurry up and believe

.

Mr. Orrie’s got a license

to clam anywhere

he damn well pleases.

.

.

Read Full Post »

Slow Down: Conjure Woman Ahead

Photo by Lindsay Niles

.

Conjure Woman

.

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

She gathers magic

beside the highway.

Just the right things

will be ingredients

.

for potions and poultices

incantations and chants.

.

The deep pockets of

her blue sack dress

hold insects, rocks,

.

sun dry bones that laid

in the shape of a cross.

.

Green pieces of glass.

Hard chewed up gum.

A crushed turtle shell.

.

Red tipped feathers

that fell with a whisper

next to hot asphalt.

.

She had a stroke

five years ago.

Her left arm sways

like meat on a hook.

.

Still she looks,

busily sniffing

through weeds

beside road trees

because she knows

.

a dead snake

pointing east

cures heartache.

.

A wad of red hair

fends off enemies.

A fallen baby bird

prevents stillbirth.

.

Pink lipstick on the rim

of a plastic cup

curses a cheating lover.

.

The conjure woman was here

when the road was blue clay,

she was here before it all

quickly rose above her head

.

in embankments, overpasses,

exits on the way to vacations.

.

She does not see concrete

or hear the hiss of tires.

.

She does not know

they put her picture

in a brochure

or that they call her

the Vulture Lady.

.

She just keeps walking,

searching for bits

of meaning

.

in smoke blown woods,

the gentle blood

of crossing hooves

.

and human remnants

tossed from windows

without a thought.

.

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

.

I will be offline later this week.  My loved ones are coming to see me, and I’m

very excited. I’ll try to hang around for a couple of days to chat with

everyone.  After that, I’ll see you in about a week.  Feel free to turn

up the music while I’m gone.🙂

.

This is one of my “Miss Eula” inspired poems.  The title will probably change.

But I was getting tired of calling them all Miss Eula.  Miss Eula is a

combination of a few different women I have known in my life.  Yes, conjure

women are real.  The ones I met were fascinating and beautiful.

.

Thanks so much for reading!   I hope you all have a good week.

Read Full Post »

Hanging On

Miss Fish Refuses To Evacuate

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

.

…..Miss Fish sits on the roof.  She is seventy-five-years old and hanging onto

shingles.  The water is now above her windows.  It is hot, and the sun

threatens to shine.  She wears a red bandana as a kerchief.  It flaps in the stiff

afternoon breeze.  Her black boots are muddy.  She cut her leg and tore her

favorite jeans climbing through the bedroom window and up the old trellis.

She dropped her canteen of water.  It took too long to get up here.  Now all

she wants is to be left alone.

.

…..She didn’t ask anybody to rescue her.  She won’t go.  It’s her house.  Her

land.  If she ends up drowning in flood waters, well then.  That’s her business.

At least she’ll die with North Carolina salt water up her nose.

.

…..After the last hurricane, she never saw Almeeta again.  Almeeta is her best

friend.   Now she’s gone.   Almeeta’s kids talked her into moving to Chapel Hill

with them.  Just for a little while until we can clean up, they said.   Ha!  They

sold so fast it made everybody’s head spin.  Now Almeeta’s laying in a nursing

home, dying with the hard hands of strangers flipping her over twice a day.

.

…..Miss Fish is right where she intends to draw her last thin, blue breath.  She

was born with a silver bucket in her hand and has worked at McCumber’s

Shrimp House since she was old enough to carry it.  This creaky yellow house

next door to McCumber’s is her home.  She grew up here.   She falls asleep

every night watching the lights of shrimp boats slide across her bedroom

walls.  She loves the deep gurgle of engines, the shush of shovels in the ice

room.  She loves the way the fishermen cuss.   She loves the smell of marsh

mud, the mockingbirds in the trees.   Every cypress root and thick patch of

moss on this beautiful black ground sings her name.

.

…..McCumber’s is on the verge of closing down, but Miss Fish refuses to

move.  When the developers came in and made their big offer, she wouldn’t

sell.   And now, she won’t move off this roof until the waters go down.  Then

she will clean it all up, stick by stick.

.

…..Miss Fish hears a helicopter again and looks up.  It’s the people from the

six o’clock ActionNews! team.  They will show her on the television tonight.

She gives them the finger.  She might be an old woman, but she knows what

the finger means.

.

…..Let people call her a fool.  What people say never worried Miss Fish.  She

gave birth to Cully back when having a baby out of wedlock was unheard of.

She refused to quietly leave town.  She refused to give him up for adoption.

Miss Fish held her head high.  She marched to the front row of Oak Shore

Baptist Church every Sunday with no husband and little Cully boy in her

arms.   She made them love Cully.  And they did.  All the men in the

community became his daddy.  He had cousins galore.  They patted his curly,

black head and swung him high in the air.  They built him a flat bottom skiff.

He spent his childhood in that boat with crab pots and nets.  He was a fine,

strong boy.

.

…..Cully paid them all back by moving upstate.  Mr. Big Shot computer

programmer.  He lives in a fancy mansion in some subdivision that smells like

lettuce.  He just turned forty, and he looks like an old man.  Always talking

about how stressed out he is.  His prissy little wife acts like she smells dog

crap when they visit once a year.  And the kids!  Two sad, fat boys who don’t

even act like boys at all.  They sit on the couch all day staring at gadgets in

their hands.  Whoever heard of an eight-year-old with a cell phone?   Kids

should be out in boats or playing in the woods.

.

…..She wonders what happened, where she went wrong.  Miss Fish was the

first and only woman in the county to become a captain.   She knows

currents, wind, and tide like the back of her two big hands.  She ought to

be taking those kids out on the water and showing them a thing or two.  If she

hadn’t let Cully sell the boat, she would be on it right now.

.

…..Miss Fish was so proud of Cully when he went to college.  He was the first

one in the family to go.  Then he came back and announced that he didn’t

want to be a fisherman.   Well, that’s his choice.   But he could have at least

helped her on some of the campaigns.   For years now, she has fought on

behalf of the small commercial fisherman.   She has protested, written letters,

joined groups, gone to meetings.  She even goes to the capitol to speak for

them.  “You just can’t fight it, Mama,” Cully says.   “There are too many

government regulations.   The price of fuel is too high.  Too many of the

waters are closed.  Real estate is the only way to make any money around

here anymore.  You could sell this place, get a nice condo in town, and never

have to worry about finances for the rest of your life.”

.

…..A condo!   They may as well put her in jail.  She won’t do it, not even

for Cully.  Miss Fish hears an engine in the distance.  It might be the Coast

Guard.  They’ll climb on the roof and carry her off.  The muscles in the backs

of her legs are knotting up in cramps.  She scoots her backside a little to see if

she can move.  That doesn’t work too well, so she lays down on her stomach

and slides toward the chimney.  Shingles come loose under her as she

moves.   She pants.  The skin on her arms is on fire.

.

…..She makes it to the chimney and catches her breath.  The sun has come

out now in full force.   It is so hot.   She wishes she had her canteen.   Her

tongue has never felt so dry.  She wonders how much time has passed.  It may

have only been minutes, but it feels like hours.   Mosquitos swirl around her

eyes.   Her leg below the knee is bleeding.   She takes off her bandana and ties

it tight around her leg.

.

…..It used to be that the wishes of elders were respected.  When Cap’n Orrie

wanted to die on his boat, people let him.  Nobody rushed him to the hospital

to be hooked up with tubes and machines.  His time came, and he left the way

he wanted to go.  Rocking gently in his boat on a soft pile of old nets.

.

…..Miss Fish sits up and leans against the chimney.  She’ll rest for a minute

and get over this dizzy spell.  If she can get a good toe hold on the chimney,

she’ll climb inside.  They’ll never reach her in there.   If they try, she’ll jab

their hands with her little pocket knife.

.

…..The helicopter circles above her head again.  How they would love to see

an old fool drown!  She sees the boat coming closer.  Heat shimmers on the

roof.  She feels like she might throw up.  She looks down at her backyard.

Clothes are hanging in the tree limbs.   The red and blue patchwork quilt

Grandma made looks like a jellyfish flapping in the water.  Little white squares

float all over the yard.   She hopes it’s not the box of pictures she tried to

shove up in the rafters.  She sees a patch of green cloth float by.  Maybe that’s

Cully’s boyscout uniform.

.

…..Her little Cully.  He was such a sweet boy.  He used to peek around the

corner of her bedroom to see if she was awake every morning.  Then he’d grin

with those two front teeth missing.  He couldn’t wait to get to the fish house.

When he grew up, he couldn’t wait to get away.

.

…..It is so hot.  So hot.  Little white spots dance in front of her eyes.  The

water has leveled off now.  If they would just leave her alone, she could make

it.   The men on the boat are coming too fast.  She can see them now.  Their

faces are young and round.  She hears the beeping of crazy computers inside

their boat.  A boy talks on a radio and looks bored.  Miss Fish gets on her

knees and puts her arms around the chimney.  She hangs onto the chimney.

She stands up.

.

…..She never said Cully had to be a fisherman.  Even after he came back from

college, she didn’t pressure him to go out on the boat with her.  He sat in the

back room for days at a time.  He liked to build computers.   He could take an

engine apart and put it back together when he was in the tenth grade.  It

seemed logical that he’d want to work with some kind of machine.  She

cooked his supper every night and left it covered on a little table by his

closed door.  She tried to leave him alone.

.

…..But Cully could have helped his people with the computers.   He could

have spread the word.  All she wanted him to do was help her make a flyer.

She made flyers with an old typewriter.  His machines could make fancy

colored letters and spit out twenty of them at a time.  “This dump is not worth

saving!” he screamed.  He crumpled up her handmade flyer and moved out

that night.

.

…..Miss Fish feels faint.  Her legs buckle.   She tries to hold onto the chimney,

but her hands slip.  She falls on her side and begins rolling.  Sky, roof, sky,

roof.   It feels like she is rolling into space.  Any second now, she will feel the

drop.  The warm water will clap around her body.

.

…..She stops rolling.   She is on her stomach again, still on the roof.  Her body

is perpendicular to the gutter.  Her face hangs over the edge.  Miss Fish

stretches her arms sideways and feels shingles.  She digs her fingers

underneath the shingles as hard as she can.  She should have kept going.   If

she rocks her body back and forth, she can roll into the water.  It will only

hurt for a little while.

.

…..Miss Fish pants.   The sun slaps like a demon against her body.   A wild

horse floats by, struggling to swim.  It is a pretty one, dark brown with a

blond mane.   It holds its head above the water as far as it can.  Its eyes are

rolled back and white.  Slowly, the head goes under.   It comes up again.  Then

it goes down.  The eyes disappear.

.

…..There’s a pile of muddy nets wrapped around the trunk of the live oak

tree.  The net is full of trash and beer cans.  There’s the gold lace tablecloth

Almeeta gave her.  There’s  a crab pot buoy.  She sees more things from her

house float by.  But she can’t imagine what they are anymore.  Colors appear

beneath the surface and turn into a thick, gray line.  Everything looks the

same.

.

…..The men climb up on the roof.  In no time, she hears boots thudding

toward her.  Hard hands grab Miss Fish around the waist.  They flip her over

on her back.   They cut her shirt and favorite jeans from her body.  The hands

wrap her in a scratchy, wet sheet.  Quickly, they carry her down.  She refuses

to cry.

.

Read Full Post »

The Color Of A Soul

This poem published in Shoots & Vines.

.

Buster Peacock & The House of Many Colors

.

.Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

When the city of Freeville

widened the highway,

they didn’t plow down

a single shingle in

.

Foxcroft

White Pointe

Golf Crossing.

.

Instead, they took

Buster Peacock’s land.

A blind old black man

in a felt blue hat

with a sagging shack

on twenty acres of

scrub pine and sand.

.

That house was old

even in Jim Crow’s day

when Buster carried

his sweet Veleetha

over the threshhold,

felt the angles of her face

the curve of her hips,

a perfect place for babies:

.

Buster Jr.

Scoochie

Little Toot.

.

Buster Peacock could feel the color

of four rooms with his fingers, the tips

of his toes–the brown creak and sigh

from tired floorboards at night.

The way the feather bed felt

like cool water blue when

the breeze blew gauze curtains

over Veleetha’s sleeping face.

.

That little red place in the doorway

where Scoochie bumped his head

when he got so tall, the gold notches

where Buster Jr. carved his name,

the yellow dip in the hallway where

Toot liked to slide in socks.

.

The silver click of the cuckoo clock

exactly eight steps from a gray hum

from the refrigerator, the green smell

of the breadbox on a hot June day.

.

The city could not understand

why Buster cried so hard

over a broke down shack.

They gave fair market value.

.

But they didn’t care that

you can’t place market value

on a breadbox or children

grown or a wife passed on.

.

The day they moved him

to a retirement home,

the dozer crushed

through his front door.

Buster could feel color

all over again.

.

.

Read Full Post »