“Those aren’t bulls, they’re steers”
she corrected from the passenger seat.

Now a waitress at the country club.
“I bet you get some pretty far-out passes.”

“More than that!” She giggled.

Here she was living with a man
in a hotel in town. He was a Mohawk

who raised horses and died
two days after landing a paying job.

“I guess I’ll never go back”
– to the farm, to the city –
it didn’t matter.

~*~

Sometimes it’s the Baptist upbringing.

~*~

She couldn’t understand why her parents
were still together. Thought her mother

once had a lover. She’d hear kissing
after being sent to bed, after her father’s

best friend had come over. Now
he couldn’t stand him.

There was a big waterfall on their farm
which they had to sell.

And she told me
she had laryngitis the previous week,

making me wonder
if I should have kissed her good-night

so much.

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Copyright 2015

“Jim’s one of our young flashes,”
a production chief told his wife
when all three paths crossed in the grocery.

To which, you might add, “in the pan.”

~*~

“I wish I could have gone to college.
I wanted to be an engineer.”
said the unshaved man in a Salvation Army pullover.

There are a lot of older people in college classes,
his nephew tried coaxing.

“I have no money,” came closing in like a curtain.

~*~

An elderly mother and middle-aged daughter
argument escalated in the sedan
in the doughnut shop parking lot.

They’d no doubt discussed this before.
At last, opening her door, the daughter repeated:
“Let’s go in and drop the subject.”

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Copyright 2015