Tomorrow
We have no plans, no commitments, nowhere to go, and it’s supposed to rain. We decide we will do a – no electronics day – no TV, no cellphones, no laptop.
No Donald, Israel, Hamas, no protests, genocide, no slaughter in Ukraine. No poetry, emails from friends, texts, calls from the kids. This, we decide, will be a lot of nos.
We’ll play gin, nothing like the fanning of the two halves, and the forming of a new array. Bicycles are our favorite, we have a new deck, with the naked angel riding the bike, and lady liberty on the ace of spades.
The face cards hear us, begin conspiring, how to use their underlings to keep this feudal order. The Jacks begin reconnoitering, informing the Kings and Queens, that tomorrow there will be a shakeup.
Tomorrow is here, coffee, but no Morning Joe, I get the box of cards out of the drawer, rip off the cellophane, break the seal, I can feel the tension as I shuffle, fan, shuffle, and ask my soul mate do you want to cut?
Strategy
I very strategically put the ticket in my wallet, like most plans lately – it’s not there. I got my shirts, anyway, and started musing strategies.
Most of mine, once written down or committed to, are forgotten, never acted upon, like my New Years resolutions.
Fortunately, no one asked me to help Washington at Yorktown, but I may have been part of the plan with Napoleon at Waterloo.
I‘ve had some good business plans, but I feel sure I would have suggested opening Chick-fil-A on Sundays.
I don’t think I would have thought it a good idea to jump with Butch and Sundance, and we can all be glad I wasn’t near the moon shot.
My short-term strategy with this new ticket, was to keep it taped to my forehead, but I have a dinner date on Friday night.
Now I’m thinking get Carol, a cutie, who seems to own the laundry to tape it to the back of the register.
When I pick up, I’ll just pull it off ask for her last name and number, and if she’s available this Saturday.
Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Chiron Review, Coneflower Café, Ginosko, Hamilton Stone Review, Loud Coffee, Medusa’s Kitchen, Neologism, Poetry Super Highway, Punk Monk, Quail Bell, Scab, Skinny, Scars, Sybil, The Argyle, Unlikely Stories, Arlington Literary, Glacial Hills Review, Writers Resist, Rushing thru the Dark, Sparks of Calliope, Stereo Stories, Abstract, and The Main Street Rag.