Forty-Fifth Paradox Writing

We waited for the phone to ring.

They waited him to fly down,

then out, then up, then upside down.

I could say his hair caught my eye,

you could say I needed a distraction.

Across a few walls, my mom fought to breathe

Across a few latitudes, he fought gravity.

He won a gold medal in a few minutes

Mom opened her eyes in a few days.

Within a week of asking her out,

He spoke to me twice as much.

Then he sent a note with chocolate,

Saying he’s fallen for another girl.

I’ll write back, with a bottle of vanilla extract,

And say:

I am not your back up,

Your trump card,

Or Your booby prize.

Best of luck to your relationship,

You’ll be needing luck when she dumps you

for the next one.

The sky is falling!

Or actually, the sky fell.

Yesterday it fell through my ceiling,

Landing square on my slug bug.

Ice from an airplane experts said.

I say the sky’s playing games with me,

And he never said no tag-backs.

I would drive as far as my gas tank would take me,

and then I would run the rest of the way,

until I reached the shores of Victoria.

I would gather each plant, each flower,

each piece of the Old World,

each rock, each government building,

each lamp, each iron-wrought lamp,

each cup of tea, each cube of sugar,

each drop of cream, each foreign accent,

each wink, each photo, each sigh,

every bewildered stare,

and gather them up in a bag,

just to see her smile again.

The gun cocked as he raised it toward her. “Give me your money.” His eyes stared at her own eyes firmly, holding an empty sack in his hands.

The room stood empty, everyone else had fled the moment the gun came out. Unfortunately, the barista had to earn her wages, and so she stayed. “No.” She drummed one set of fingers on the counter, while she hid the other set from view.

“Don’t make me shoot.” His eyes narrowed, as sweat began to trickle down his left temple.

“Don’t make me.” Her hidden hand pulled out her own gun, which she used to mirror his actions.

His gun thudded to the floor as his feet swept through the door as fast as they could take him.

She set down the gun and picked up the phone, dialing the police. With a unshaken voice she told the dispatcher the details of her latest adventure. “You might want to arrest this guy before I have to use my Christmas present on him. I’d hate to have to waste this ammo.”

She has a photo album enshrining

her conquests over the past four seasons.

Each photo captures

brass players, drummers, pit people,

even woodwind players

she’s had on her arm.

In total,

they count for half the people in the ensemble.

In the front cover rests a picture she’s torn in half,

one side, unmarked, has her in her pristine uniform,

the other, with devil horns and a pitch fork inscribed in sharpie,

All worn by the drum major she despises,

the one who spread a rumor about her

and the boy in the color guard,

who’s orientation everyone questions.

Inspired by Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, also titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas”

Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the flat,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the cat.

The stockings were hung by the heater with care,

Lighting the filthy fireplace we wouldn’t dare.

The parents were snuggled and warm in their beds

While visions of school-buses drove in their heads.

My mother in her pjs and dad in his shirt

Had just dozed off, to sleep off dessert.

When out on the street there rose such a racket,

I sprang from my desk and threw on my jacket.

Away to the window I zipped like the Flash,

Looking outside, expecting a car crash.

I saw street lights reflected on fresh-fallen rain,

Damp moss, slick roads, and rusted road drains.

And what, to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a hovering motor home and eight hybrid reindeer.

With a weighty old driver, yet so lively and slick,

I knew in a moment he thought himself Saint Nick.

More wild than bikers on their cycles he came,

And his sleeves held more tricks than a cheating card game!

“Oh darn it, oh darn it. I think it’s broken.”

He swore. “the shop’ll be closed in the mornin’.”

He glanced at the house, at the door, and the top of the wall,

and spotted the tools for an overhaul.

As burglars check for cameras before they break in,

“Santa” checked the perimeter with a flick of his chin.

So up to the front door quietly he sneaked,

Except for when the floorboards creaked.

And then in the rustling I heard at the door,

The scratching and grinding of jams and bores.

As I grabbed Dad’s gun, and was turning around,

Through the front door Santa came in a bound.

He was dressed in dark red,  from his head to his boot,

And his clothes were all trashed with grease and soot.

A bag of plunder he slung on his back,

And he looked just like a beggar, just opening his sack.

His eyes, they darkened, his wrinkles were sinister.

His cheeks were like canyons, his nose like a mountain.

His thin lips were creased like paper,

And the beard of his chin was ashen like slush.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

Smoke poked my throat like thorns in a wreath.

He had a small face and a bouncing round belly,

That shook when he laughed, and he made the room smelly.

He was chubby and fat, a right creepy old fart,

And I hacked when I saw him, and it gave him a start.

A wink of his eyes, and a twist of his head,

Soon told me to know I had everything to dread.

He said not a word, and set to his work,

and ate the milk and cookies, the old jerk!

Stepping too close to the sensors beside his nose,

He set the alarms blaring, in mid-bite he froze!

He sprang out the door, wrapped tool box in hand,

and tried the engine to get out of this land.

But I heard the sirens, and smirked as he stood in plain sight,

and watched them arrest him on that cold winter night.

Like a surrealist painting;

She’s nothing,

but she looks so pretty.

Clocks melt when she walks by,

and male brains turn into apples.

But when she’s gone,

they revert to normal,

like the room lacking a man with a newspaper.

We marched for Cambyses;

We marched to the oracle;

We marched to take her down;

We marched to cast her into the sand;

We marched to bury her body  in the sand,

to the place we would all return.

_________________

We marched for Cambyses;

We marched for the son of Cyrus;

We marched for the King of Persia;

We marched to make him and his advisors proud;

We marched to be remembered above all Persian armies;

We marched to be remembered beyond the sand,

the place we would soon return.

______________

We marched to be lost;

We marched to be found;

We marched to leave arrowheads and silver bracelets;

We marched to leave a thousand skulls grinning at the sky;

We marched into the sand;

We marched into the sand,

and to sand we returned.

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?”