Six Word Memoirs

 As a writing exercise we were asked to come up with Six Word Memoirs.

Head in Kalamazoo, heart in Marquette.

Needs to stop nailing same musician.

Reclusive writer embarks on uncertain career.

Wishes she could be a bird.

Wine, books, and romance end me.

I’ve read this one: she lives.

Sometimes you only get one good line...

I get home late one night after closing at work. She's there on my couch reading a garage sale copy of Anna Karenina. Accurate. Harsh but accurate. I'm not Vronsky, I'm the fucking train.

Dramatic Monolouge in Syllabic Verse

This one is pure fiction.

GIRL sits in a plastic chair in a hospital waiting room holding a coffee cup.

Sacred Heart

My heart beats too loud in my chest,

Ivory cage insufficient.

I rein it in as best I can,

The desire remains ever persistent.

So must I rip free my heart,

Clenched tight in hands obedient.

To ignite at fever’s pitch--spark

A fire most magnificent.

When it calms I place it back

To beat in time again intact.

Unpretentious Fruits of the Midi: An Afternoon at the Chicago Institute of Art

Ode to a Lenten Blood Orange Eaten on the Train to Chicago

On the stillest days an ordinary orange excoriated;

a stigmatic.

Tennessee Entrance Hall, 1835

Electric sunlight waltzes shadow across an empty entryway;

calculated carelessness in miniature.

Picasso's Study for “La Coiffure”

Two sketches capture the intimacies of women strangers;

The universal truth not bound by temporal constraints.

Unpretentious Fruits of the Midi

One reads the caption to Renoir's “Fruits of the Midi” and wonders

What exactly would a pretentious bowl of fruit look like?

Picasso's Fingerprints

Each grape does contain the arches and ridges of the master;

ripened tips did grace blank pages intimately as the skin of mistresses