@LANDONTJONES

Here you will find stories I've written and produced for fun during my time at the University of Missouri - some truth, some fiction.

In an intermediate nonfiction creative writing class, my final project was to create an essay in an unconventional format that would be imposible to publish in a book. This storytelling podcast was the result.

Walking the Rows was originally published in Epic Literary Journal and won a cash prize as the Leaders Board Choice Award in Nonficition.

A lyrical essay by: Landon Jones

Do you remember when you thought your skin was thirsty? When the river water beading on your bony shoulders Vanished with the touch of the high-noon sun?

It beat on you with such intensity
It changed the very pigment of your skin.
Even with closed eyelids
The flames from this celestial fire

Couldn’t be unseen.

You never bothered to wear hats,
Sit under an umbrella or apply burn cream.

At 9 years, you welcomed the warmth,
You lived in a dream.

Do you remember the tingle of your pores

As they opened and closed
Searching for a drink or a droplet?
Once they drank their fill

Your skin was left dry and smooth and soft.

Watermelon Escape

Solar radiation takes seven years

To swiftly travel 92.6 million miles

Before it reaches you as daylight.

Some things are better from a distance.

On the hottest day of the year, you were frozen.

Helios had put you under his spell.

Your fragile, pre-pubescent body was no match For the nuclear fusion of helium and hydrogen. Yet, somehow, the fire felt routine.

You were perfectly content,
In fact, pleased,
To allow your taught, sun-dried skin

To be stretched into parchment.

You toasted until you were tender.

Do you remember when your only fear

Was that the watermelon would escape?

You weren't afraid of cottonmouths in the slough

Even if your Papa scolded you every time
You waded waist-deep into lily pads
To catch turtles no bigger than the quarters

He collected so you could have one

With a tail-side design of each state.

You weren't afraid of running
Barefoot on the gravel bar
Even if pieces of glass from broken beer bottles
Could be spotted shimmering among the smooth stones– The same smooth stones Uncle Boomer
Taught you could defy logic
By bouncing on the surface of the water
Before they were deposited in the brush
On the opposite bank.

Even though it made your sister cry,
You weren't afraid of reaching your arm into the bait box.

The legs of the crappy-bait cricket,
When it wriggled and writhed against your controlling grip, Only tickled the inside of your fist
Before you inserted a hook through its thorax.

You weren’t afraid of the granddaddy-long-legs

Crawling on the soap in the outdoor shower.
You pinched the hose until the flow

Split the spiders into shards.

You weren't afraid of the current
Even if Current was the river's name.
The eddy in front of your sandbar
Would wrap you in a hug that was loud.
It would yank you under with an angry gulp

Before it returned you safely to shore.

And you weren't afraid of your daddy either.

He only threw dinner plates at walls
And insults at mom.

Usually drawn blinds shrouded the scene,
Closed doors muffled the yelling.
But this summer their shouting become a soundtrack

That continued to play on the beach, in the boat.
It was the song you heard too often.
The song you never wanted to hear again.

Do you remember when your only fear

Was that the watermelon would escape?

How could the sentinel fronds

Of waterweeds
Keep watch over your cache?

Wouldn’t the balancing bugs

Perched on the water’s meniscus

Drill through the rind
To suck the sticky juice?

And what about the unfriendly, floating gar

With his long beak?
Surely this slender sleuth
Would jab your melon,

Until he could feast on its flesh.

The strongest predator was the river itself.

You were sure the cunning current
Would convince your favorite food
To break free.

But daddy was there,

Standing tall, casting shadow.

He stood between the Sun

And his son,
Golden beams
Crowning him with light.

It seemed so silly to buy a watermelon

Only to toss it in the water.

Could the spring-fed river really

Act as a natural refrigerant?

Daddy and the river reassured you.

Today, at least,

You found it in yourself to trust.

Becuase, today, he hadn't hit you yet.

When given the task to teach incoming Mizzou students the ins and outs of campus dining, my friend Daniel and I wrote a satirical song. Then our other friend Daniel directed a music video.