Forty-Fifth Paradox Writing

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.

There’s the two guys whose fists collided over a girl,

and there’s those students who squabbled for a week on

end over a story.

I don’t think my professor quite realized

the ramifications of signing me up for this class,

let alone taking me on this field trip.

I wish I could be remembered for a Trojan war

even if it left the cities in my hair in ruins.

I wish I could live on as the essay the professor

shows off every year.

Instead, I am the girl

who will be immortalized in laughing stories,

as the one who dropped the gum out of her mouth,

down on the pristine floor of a Willamette chapel,

during a poetry reading.

Dear Camelback High School Librarian,

Enclosed in this package is two long overdue books. Hopefully those poor bird-watchers didn’t miss them. It’s too bad that I packed them away before I could use them for my report. To this day, I’m still not sure if my teacher noticed or not when I gave my presentation in class.

I’m pretty sure though, if she’s still around, that Ms. Whatever-Her-Name-Was has an exact count of how many days of my two cents that I owe. Hopefully this check covers it all (knowing her, the rates may have changed.) May that likely retired librarian sleep peacefully at night from now on. If she hasn’t retired, allow me to apologize to any students under her jurisdiction.

Yours Truly,

A student from the class of ’58

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?”

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.

I would like to start off thanking all of those who got me where I am today. My adoptive parents, who raised me these six years. They’re quite an agreeable bunch, raising me from the day they found me in a ditch on the side of the road. All these weeks they’ve encouraged me to pursue my education, and tutored me on my online exams. I owe them a great deal.

If it weren’t for my moral support, I would have never earned this diploma. I especially thank my special dry food diet, for feeding my brain as well as my body. A shout out to my toys, even the catnip flavored ones, who helped me keep my sanity. Most of all, I’d like to thank my bed, for taking up space and making me feel like queen of the household, even if I’m by far, the shortest one around.

It’s truly an honor to be the first cat to earn a high school diploma, even if it’s from a diploma mill.

Mary had a little lamb, and don’t you dare forget it. They say it had wool as white as snow, but I know better. Really, this lamb was a fiend, a most despicable creature. Poor, dear, Mary had spoiled it to breaking. Of course, she couldn’t be told that, for she’d just shrug it off with a cute, lamb-like smile and a swish of her earthy curls.

This lamb, you see, would never do what it was told. On the contrary, this lamb would always be following Mary to school when it should have stayed home. Every school knows a playground is no place for a lamb, but Mary’s lamb didn’t seem to care much for tradition.

In fact….one day the lamb ran off completely, and Mary looked everywhere for the little lamb, but could not find it. Apparently the lamb had joined a terrorist organization, and was plotting something dangerous, but Mary missed her lamb terribly. Thankfully for the rest of us, the lamb was caught, tried, and proven guilty. Poor Mary was considered by the Judge to be an accessory to the plot, and they locked her up too.

Mary spends her days with her precious lamb in a high security prison, and she still has a little lamb…or a sheep, and don’t you forget it.

My paper falls lifeless on my desk,

Splattered in green blood.

It’s then I noticed

The “kill” in your last name.

I turn the paper over

Before anyone sees, including me.

I don’t need to see on my paper

What I already beheld in your eyes.

Your steel blue eyes speak premonitions

Of concrete floors catching tears

Of two caps and gowns on stage

Instead of three.

Your eyes matched the color in hers

As she pulled me aside

After commencement practice,

More apologetic than angry,

And told me it was a mistake:

I hadn’t earned it after all.

It wasn’t fair. Today just happened to be the perfect day for a test. He glanced down at the paper in frustration, watching the letters numbers and symbols blurring into a pleasant, therefore annoying shade of gray. His eyes drifted over to his neighbor, his hands crinkling the freshly printed test sheet. That girl had a calculator so technologically advanced it was practically sentient! 

He had a calculator. In fact, the calculator was almost as good as the artificially intelligent one sitting right next to him. Unfortunately for him, and his grade, said calculator happened to be left somewhere…possibly dropped by the snowman he had passed in a hurry on his way to class today.

Drumming his fingers, he tried to not think about stealing that calculator and smashing it in loving memory of his device missing in action. He attempted to distract  himself from the reek of freshly devoured pickles, and the urge to reach for said device of grade saving doom. It seemed to pull at his hand like a magnet. Sweat dripping down his brow, he watched his hand tremble toward the desk, just inches away from his own.

And then lightning struck, throwing out the power, abruptly ending the test. His hand traveled innocently back to the desk, pushing his paper further up the desk.