A China Doll
He might have been holding it for only a few seconds when it slipped from his grasp. Didn’t break, but the sight of all those crack lines, the look of horror on his face, watching them spread…
He was to die for she said, standing up to talk, an expression girls once used. Our eyes were on her, not him. Her blond hair cascading down her tiny frame shone like a light on us. Those lines we’d photo shopped away, felt a little more visible now.
She looked as though she’d been taken right out of the box she’d been packaged in, and put up for sale. We bought it and didn’t. The truth lies somewhere in between.
I often wished I could have boxed myself at a certain time of my life, like those dolls of memory. I recall someone once saying, youth is attractive, everyone young is… some thing like that.
It’s my special day, she says, unexpectedly running into him on her way to do early morning errands. He didn’t live in the area. Something about visiting a friend or relative of someone who does. She’s sunshine happy; he likes the way It feels, and isn’t in a hurry to leave.
Having misheard a for my special day missed where she was heading and says something about a beautiful fall like day. Unexpected in August. My birthday month she says leading him onto the right path. He catches on, wishing her asking what plans she has and, if she’d want to… like one of those summer storms, where the weather can suddenly turn without notice, no place to hide, seek shelter, she mentions her birth date: day, month, year, smiling.
Our eyes follow the trajectory of her gaze toward where the smile, like an injured bird, slowly begins to take flight, picks up speed and vanishes.
Ingrown
A quick flash through a partially opened door of a doctor’s waiting room like seeing an actor cross a stage. The door shouldn’t have been left open. Careless, I thought. A few minutes later he crossed back carrying a large can, stared straight ahead and kept walking. He could have been in a play Ionesco or Albee might have once written.
Then I remembered. Same exterminator I’d called after a bad roach infestation who kept saying, “I donno,” when I asked for the cause, same one who came twice with no change. Back again. When other tenants began to complain of roaches my landlord hired him to come monthly to every apartment, including mine. He’s local the landlord said, meant cheap. I called someone else who solved the problem. He still came every month.
The doctor didn’t say anything when I told him; didn’t respond when I explained that my big toe nail never grew back right following an injury in my teens. I’d been treated at a local clinic my mother sent me to. When I returned, my toe more swollen with a greenish tint, a cab was called for me to see another doctor. His office was in an impressive looking building far from where I lived. I was taken care of right away and sent home in a cab. No charges for anything. No explanation, either. My mother didn’t answer when I told her. She kept peeling potatoes or maybe carrots, something.
I told all this to my podiatrist who just nodded and kept working on my feet, smoothing out that nail, removing corns and calluses, thickened since my last visit.
I still occasionally see one or two roaches. I tell the exterminator. He doesn’t answer and keeps spraying, barely looking as he walks through my apartment, leaving a wet trail on the floor behind him.
several months later—
I looked up and saw him or maybe someone who resembled him in a local café where I’d been writing. I indicated I was leaving, motioned for my takeout, and went to pay my bill. When I returned, I saw him looking straight at me pointing to where the counter person was also pointing. Behind a bagged container on the table I saw a roach crawl out. No doubt about it now.
At one Urban college: language on death row
The head of the humanities department tells the dean that three faculty members are so angry at not being promoted, “they could kill you,” he says. “What?” the dean asks; he repeats what he just said, adding embellishments. The next thing he knew the dean is racing down the hall into the president’s office about his life being threatened. Word spreads fast. Memos are e mailed advising people to report suspicious activity. An emergency meeting is held, replacing him as department head. Next day the meaning and use of figurative language appeared in everyone’s mailbox
About 10 minutes before the end of one period class, a student starts putting things in his back-pack, closing his computer and getting ready to leave; the professor tells him, if he’s in such a hurry, he can jump out the window. Next day, the professor is asked to see the chairperson about a student who said that his professor told him to commit suicide. Word of what happened got to various deans. The professor spent part of the next day writing a memo explaining the meaning and use of irony.
Protocol is just another word for….
Mid-August. Work permits went up across a college’s main entranceway
for construction of a new one. People were directed to go around the building and use a small back or side door.
A month later supplies and machinery equipment were brought in, stacked to the ceiling. Tape marked off the area you weren’t supposed to cross, stopping short of one door. Possibly an oversight. Some people tried to get in from outside, couldn’t, and were forced to use those other doors, causing gridlock.
Mid-October. Nothing changed. Nobody knew when work would begin. The President repeated the provost and dean’s comment, he’d look into it.
Some students discovered you could exit from one door, but couldn’t get in through it. A few faculty members nervously looked around, saw no one guarding it, and followed.
February. A new semester begins. Enrollment is shrinking. Reports of a budget shortfall means there’s no money for tutors, new computers, or other needed supplies like paper for the computer room. People begin to bring their own. When asked why money slated for this entranceway couldn’t be used for other things, they are told, it can’t be done. Protocol. If someone still didn’t understand, Kafka is mentioned; they’d nod. Of Course.
Everyone got used to the new situation. More and more people are exiting from that one front door. No one asks when construction will begin. No one expects it to happen. Kafka. to be continued
Linda Lerner’s Taking the F Train (NYQ Books, 2021) was a finalist in the 2022 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her poems recently appeared in Maintenant, Gargoyle, Big City Lit, One Art, Shot Glass Journal, Pinyon Review, Main Street Rag, Raven’s Perch, NYC from the Inside (poetry anthology, 2022) & Great Weather of Media (anthology) Arriving at a Shoreline, Verse Daily, (featured “A Bad Weather Time” from Taking The F Train (NYQ Books); her latest collection How It Was (2020—2021) and Is a chapbook of pandemic related poems, published by Iniquity Press/vendetta Books, 2023.