As Needed
by Claudine Nash

Nothing gets me going more
than the stationary section of
the office supply store. All
those folders and burgundy
pens and the aroma of paper
intertwined with promise and
graphite makes my fingers
strum and my eyes roll back. It
smells like September mornings
almost every hour of the week.
(Except for Tuesdays at four
When sometimes I swear
I detect a trace of April
in the central air).
There’s a pink pocket-sized
Moleskine journal that I’ve had
my eye on for the longest
time, but I’ll hold off until a
truly desperate day like the next
time my boss reams me or I
unexpectedly kill your fish for
the third time while house-sitting
and need a quick pick me up.


Fortune Cookies for the Infatuated

Although I estimate the exact count,
I can say with absolute certainty
that it was the fixings of number
nine hundred and fifty one that did me in.

Number nine hundred and forty nine
in my lifetime lineup of cellophane
and cookie enclosed bits of wisdom
certainly intrigued me with its portend
and urging –

            “Impatience may be appropriate
             at this time."

Shrewdly insightful, nine hundred and
fifty momentarily made me pause before
dessert, but had little other lasting impact –

            “Good advice jars the ear.”

But straight from the crack of its
carbohydrate shell, number nine hundred
and fifty one came as an almond-extracted,
moderately caloric, blindsiding
sucker punch to the gut –

            “If you love something, set it free…
             if it returns, keep it and
             love it forever.”


Worse Off

I could be an introverted albino
on a South Beach street,
desperate to camouflage into clouds or
sink in hollow of whitewashed sand,

or build my house on dissolving ground
and watch the first floor plunge
through a void as the surface layer
gradually gives way.

I could come back as a claustrophobic
canary indentured to a mine or
pet shop cage, or

find myself a rabid coyote
parched before a desert pool.

I know there are worse things
in the world than wanting you
this way, but right now I feel

like a beautifully-robed
Buddhist monk with Tourette’s
who ticks and blurts “shitfuck”
all the hours of his first
silent retreat.