the big nail
everywhere i turn these days it’s announcers & mashed potatoes!
mashed potatoes! it makes me want to change my socks my way
of looking at the world suddenly i want to cover my body w/pine
tar & wear long silky gloves & sulk in the attic like a snowstorm
i want a sextant & a swivel chair & a magnet swiped off a sherpa
hell there’s no place left to hide! i pick up a snow globe & shake
it until a miniature version of myself faintly materializes through
the whiteout waving a broken pickle jar & a copy of the koran - i
can’t really feel the cold but i know right where i’m leaking & if
that skywriter won’t do it then call me one of those wildcat cabs
because i’ve got a cordless mixer & nothing to lose. when i run
down to the storm cellar & root through the cabinets all i can find
are the fixins for hard tack & an article about striptease genomics
that won’t help me a bit w/my tights, there’s something boneless
& flashing epileptic in the darkness i lurch a stride closer keeping
the staircase in sight but the evidence against a memory is much.
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Beards in White Boxes
In the pie factory they stopped making pies. “Too formulaic,” went the complaint, “too predictable.” The next day, when pies of all stripes should have been rolling down the long rubber conveyors, beautiful beards instead topped the belts.
“Now our pies can be sold in the finest of markets, where expectation doesn’t wag the want.”
Everybody loved the beards, especially the children, so much so that their pronunciation suffered, what with their mouths forever stuffed with hair.
Mothers in unison began chiding their children “Stop speaking with your mouths forever stuffed with hair!”
Public relations-wise, it was a disaster, and the pies were soon pulled from the markets.
The children, though, would never forget, would wistfully recall, years later, the beards wrapped in white boxes that flew from the shelves in the finest of markets.
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Jeffrey Little is the author of "The Hotel Sterno" as well as the soon to be released "The Book of Arcana," both published by Spout Press (Mpls, MN) and available at Amazon.com. He is also a 2001 Delaware Division of the Arts Poetry Fellow (eew-wee!) & for the past decade has been publishing work in journals such as Columbia Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Kiosk, Mudlark, Shattered Wig & Swerve. He is currently eating a fig, disappointed, wondering what all the fuss was about.
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meredith poppy little |
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