Madelyn sets the crossword to the side. None of the answers are right, but she still managed to make everything fit. Making yourself right tastes better over a cup of instant coffee. Her daughter gifted her fancy beans from Colombia last Christmas. The bag sits on the counter next to the coffee pot, unopened. She likes the ink print on the front so much that she could never bring herself to open it. She settles for opening more cards with other people's names on them instead.
Writing
Walnut Street Stories, pt. 1
Madelyn finishes The Plain Dealer’s daily crossword puzzle in thirty minutes flat. She gets up from the kitchen table for a second cup of coffee and stirs in three spoonfuls of sugar. Metal on ceramic echoes through the kitchen. When she sits back down, she takes out today’s bundle of mail and removes its rubber band, bounty unfurled.
Poem #30
The first time I meet my psychiatrist, / he asks if we’ve met before. / This does not bode well.
Aqua Vitae
This room has four walls, but it is also without walls, expanding past the fragile steel of my skull. A fragment of me looks at rows and rows of glass bottles that harbor remnants of some yesterday. I am there, fingers tracing along bumpy corks and smooth, cool glass. Memories pulse beneath like a plasma bowl, striking out in purples, blues.
Poem #29
The doughnut shop isn’t up to code; / danger makes a delicious dish. / Here, hello is flash-fried catfish.
Poem #28
My grandfather's jaw is locked / into the smoothness of my chin / a mechanism that helps me chew / the fat at Christmas
Poem #27
Pen clicks mark time / in a unit where no gets / to leave.
Poem #26
As so many of you may well know, there is a lot to be said about Yelp reviews. The best thing to say about them, of course, is how useless they are; however, from time to time, they are poetic. I took a recent post and snipped it apart and sewed it back together. Please, enjoy this poem, unlike someone's sandwich.
A How-To on How-Not-To Eat a Crawfish
Until I was about eight, I thought my grandpa was a Spaniard. This may have had something to do with him looking a lot like Antonio Banderas in Zorro, but probably had more to do with the fact that I couldn’t understand a single fucking word he said. And like most kids who grow up in Florida, the only other language you are even a little bit aware of was Spanish. Meaning: that when he talked and I couldn’t understand him, I thought he was speaking Spanish.
Tending the Flame
We aren’t ready. When Sebastian holds the door, and the sky blinks into blackness, we aren’t ready. When everyone is left standing in the neon glare of street lamps, we aren’t ready. And when those lights inevitably wink out, too? Well, we aren’t ready for that either.
