APPLIANCES

 

The electric fan has ingrained dust

On its blades. It sometimes wakes itself 

On a cold winter day and whirrs officiously.

Older even than the broiler I took to school

It has outlived so many appliances

Even the Grundig radio that, on clear nights,

Brought Canada and Wheeling, West Virginia

To suburban New York. If the old fan thinks

I need cooling when it's 14 degrees

Who on earth am I to say it's not right?

CLOTHO WILL NOT BE PLEASED

 

Lawrence Silver <ashurbanipal@gmail.com>	Sun, Jan 25, 2:53 PM (3 days ago)
to Jane, bcc: me

In the middle of a very heavy

Snowstorm there is a knock on the

Door. A god -- a small one --

Stands there, brushing off snow, and

Says "A few of us, for no good

Reason -- we gods need none

For what we do -- have been

Slowly changing your fate. You've heard

That even gods can't alter fate?

We say this because it's hard and

We're most of us lazy. Still, we have

Built you something interesting which

Begins as soon as you leave your

House with me. C'mon! I've shoveled

Your walk and hotwired your car."

CRULLER

 

Because He doesn't always bother to distinguish

Levels of reality, when God is awake at 3 AM

He is likely to tun up in a reproduction of

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks demanding

Some coffee and a cruller. It does no good

For the counterman to protest that he

Is merely a copy of a figure in a painting

So he shrugs and, for the first time, turns the tap

On the coffee urn behind him and shouts to where

He hopes there is a kitchen and a cook

To see if there are any more crullers.

EMPLOYMENT

In those hard times God,
Not having two nickels
To rub together, took a job
With my Grandfather Max.
He did good work but
Nothing extraordinary, saving
Miracles for His off hours.
When things got better
He quit and resumed
Being God full-time.

ANGELS

 

The angels changing shifts use ladders

To go between Earth and Heaven. You'd think

They'd fly or at least use escalators but no;

They climb up and down ladders. Worse,

There are no ladders just for going up and

None for just going down so they must

Push past each other. When an angel going off-shift

Has news for his replacement, everyone on their ladder

Waits, commending themselves on how patiently they're waiting.

A PICTURE

 

After the execution of the beautiful Yang Guifei

The emperor's men, riding slowly, return to the palace.

One courtier pulls a wooden flute from his sleeve

And then puts it back. Silence is the music

Sent to accompany her on her way.

*

Frances Pray graduated in 1921
Nothing more is known of her
In fact, even this is not known of her
But was invented just now because
Her name appears in the text and
The editor likes footnotes. Really,
What sort of person likes footnotes?
The sort who pays research assistants
Scandalously little.