Last Name

My ancestors journeyed over an ocean,

to what they saw as a new world,

but I think they became new,

like new pronunciation,

new religion,

a new neighborhood,

a new language,

A new identity.

___________

My mother and her sisters

wouldn't have known that their distant

cousins wore stars of David

on their sleeves,

a few years before my mother's birth,

or that fifth-cousins-three times-removed

wanted a neighborhood of their own,

without imposing walls or armored tanks on the other side.

__________

She wouldn't have known that her relatives wanted their own national identity.

_________

She wouldn't have known,

if someone had not said:

"You're Jacob's,

Are you Jewish?"

Forget Me Nots

I just came home from the doctor. Walking through the door, I set down my pamphlets about memory loss. My doctor told me it's important, so hopefully I'll remember. As I reached the door, I pulled out my keys and tried to remember which one would unlock my house. Here's a prescription, take it twice a day. The last verse of a song cut off as I turned off the engine. Remember, take it with a full glass of water. Pulling into the driveway, I recalled the pharmacist.

"Current address?"

Staring at her forehead, as if the answer would be written there between the lines, I shook my head.

"Ma'am?"

"Mm?"

"May I verify your address?"

Five--no four, three blind mice. "433 Blue Orchid Street"

I entered the pharmacy, piece of paper in hand. Thank goodness for little papers. Before I began to forget to buy them, I'd keep a pack of sticky notes with me at all times. Before then, sometimes I'd forget to even right things down before I forgot them. Walking out of the doctor's office, I swore to myself I wouldn't forget the instructions, my doctor had said they were important.

Dropping my keys on my desk, I remembered that I had forgotten, whatever it was.

K

K

K reigns as the king of letters,

though it shares its ending proclamations with C,

and it allows Q to start the queens,

and P to get its princes and princesses started.

Sometimes K demands to be

known, and knighted,

but seldom asks to be pronounced out loud

Child's Play

“I opened my eyes and looked up at the rain

And it dripped into my head,

And flowed into my brain.”

Shel Silverstein

Every step sounds like a waterfall.

Every stop a crashing shoreline.

I feel like I need a towel

every time I nod,

and a bucket every time I shake my head.

So, don’t ask me another yes or no question,

or end this twenty question game.

Truth or Dare, then?

I’ll tell you the truth,

I’ll never look up at the rain again.

The Last of the Fairy God-Mothers

She walked up to her pumpkin-shaped carriage and nearly sat inside before she noticed something off about it. The carriage didn't quite sparkle like it used to (she wouldn't have seen the carriage were it not for the street lamps.) In fact, if she looked closely enough, she noticed a slightly orange tint to the finish and a rotten smell.

Adjusting her wings and digging in her pockets for dust, she charged up to the driver to give him a piece of her mind. How dare he let her beloved carriage,  the chariot she had spent so much time and energy and magic on, go to waste! The words nearly flew out of her mouth--and then her throat swallowed them when she saw his face. Sticking out of the side of his nose were whiskers. As the driver stared at her with beady eyes, his nose twitched. And before, she had made him so handsome, she would have married him if she didn't know he had been a mouse before she came along.

Hair began to stand up on her once hairless arms. Swallowing, she narrowed her eyes and tested out her wand. Nothing. She tried winking one eye or twitching her nose. Rolling her eyes, she even clicked her heels together and stared wide-eyed at the shriveling carriage as she heard shattering glass around her feet. In desperation she flung out the last of her dust.

For some reason, lately her supply had dwindled, even in the light of a full moon. She always had faith that her dust would return in full measure every month, like it always had so she didn't think much of it when she slowly had to conserve more and more for each pet project. Why should she? All the other fairy god mothers had wonderful glass slippers, flying abilities, sparkling carriages, and athletic drivers. A nagging voice told her that the others created for others,  to begin with, but she ignored it.

She half expected a tiny mouse to appear once the dust landed on the ground, even a dove. Instead, to the increasing sweat droplets traveling down her backbone, she found a small, folded note. Swallowing, she picked it up and opened it.

The note had nothing scrawled on it, nothing, blank. She pinched her eyes shut, as if it would drown out the soft voice that read the unwritten words out loud.

If you are reading this note, then you already have a suspicion that the last of your magic has run out. We regret to inform you that you are correct. Like every fairy god mother before you who has lost the last of her magic, you from this point on will suffer the consequences of your actions. We gave you your first dust and taught you how to use it in hopes that you would use it for the good of others, and at one time, we assumed you did. To our dismay, as we watched you this past year, we noticed a lack of proper distribution of your gifts. Today we shall take your magic back to where it belongs.

Though you may be the last of our kind, we've decided to proceed with this painful procedure in hopes of finding a worthy candidate one day. Once this note is finished in its reading, your skin will wrinkle, your hair will crinkle and lose its color, your sparkling eyes will turn dull, and your bones will stick out in odd places, and any attempt to fix these perfectly natural problems will not work. Enjoy the remainder of your life, for it will be short.

Signed, the Authorities.

She opened her eyes in time to find not a note in her hands, but a small pile of ash. At her feet sat a rotten pumpkin. Faintly she could hear a small pack of mice scurrying into the bushes.

Right Out of the Oven

She couldn’t have come sooner,

in better condition,

brand new,

mint even.

Like cotton, the nurses wash her once

to see if she shrinks.

We’ll try her on,

to see if she fits.

What I Would Do

If my best friend died,

I would run to the other end of town

and back, until the soles of my shoes

became my feet and my shirt melted into my skin.

I would burn every calorie of every piece of

chocolate I ever ate while discussing

PMS with him.

 

I would go to Gov Cup and order a chai tea

and try every flavor in single shots in different cups.

I would flirt with the barista as if to

cheat on our relationship that never happened because

we would end up killing each other.

 

I would write a poem where every line was an inside joke,

and all the words would be five syllables long

and only be found in the OED.

I would shout utterly vulgar phrases from the bus stop,

(but only in Greek, Spanish, and Russian.)

 

I would stay up late with his other best friend and say

absolutely nothing.

Because my ashen clothing,

my decreasing chocolate supply,

my counter-top full of espresso shots,

my affair with the barista,

my tirade at the bus stop,

even my inside joke of a poem

would fail him.

Starlight

Two friends lied on a grass hill, gazing up at the night sky. The stars gazed back, blinking occasionally. While the stars remained silent, except for the occasional breeze, the two friends allowed the wind to carry their conversation.

"What do you think that one is?" The first, a thirteen-year-old boy, asked the girl next to him.

"It kind of looks like you." She replied, blowing a stray hair off her nose.

"What?"

"See?" She pointed. "It has your nose, with that weird bump and everything."

"It does not."

"Does too."

"Yeah?" He shot back, pointing at a constellation next to it. "I think that one looks like your mom."

"Does not!"

He laughed. Finally, he turned, glancing at her head's profile, with the smooth nose, curved lips and a single eye. "You know what?" The boy whispered.

"What?" She continued to stare up at the sky.

"I've never seen the stars like this before."

Finally, she looked at him, blinking curiously. "Really?"

The boy nodded, with each brush of his head shoving aside more blades of grass. "Back in the city, there's all this smog and city lights that never get turned off. You can't see anything at night."

"Huh." She glanced back up at the sky, as if the stars had the answers to her problems.

"And you know what else?"

"Yeah?" She sighed softly, glancing at him for just one instance.

He smiled just slightly. "The girls in city look at me like I'm crazy when I talk about leaving."

Mrs. Peterson

Paintings overflowed

Onto her skirts with each stroke of her voice.

Her eyes were graphite,

Her curls swirling, like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Each of her encouragements,

Staccato like a stipple dot,

Small, but remarkably different from its neighbor.

With each step, her shadow

Drifted with Vermeer’s subtle shading,

Leaving us to wonder

If one of Raphael’s angels

Had flown into our classroom.

Point of View

A man with his head in the clouds (at least 3 feet closer than most) seeks a woman not afraid of heights. He's not afraid to break world records for the sake of her love, and he enjoys installing light-bulbs, hanging curtains, and viewing life from a distance. Man works as a part time farmer, and isn't afraid to admit needing support as he walks high above common ground.

We wish him luck.