Just a poem today folks. Go figure, this one started out being titled, "I Can't Write."
Enjoy!
THE LAST GOOD PRETZEL
I remember the last time I had a good pretzel,
it was at a hockey game. I’d brought Great Expectations
in my purse and I was reading the part about
Pip in the cemetery staring down through the fog
at the grave of his parents
when he’s suddenly snatched up by an escaped convict
and somebody scored the first goal and the horn blaring
scared me so bad I had hiccups the rest of the game.
The guy next to me kept shouting
send ‘im to the sin bin! send ‘im, send ‘im!
and it sounded like a church song the way he sang out send ‘im!
like he was waiting for God to come down out of the domed ceiling
dressed in striped white and black
saying, My Good Son, Ye Must Go To The Sin Bin
and what was really sad was that I didn’t know at first
what the “sin bin” was, and I had to ask, and the shouting guy
had already been looking at me funny for reading
and you can imagine how he looked at me then,
but I learned “sin bin” is, of course, another name for the penalty box.
I bought myself and that man a five dollar pretzel and
a five dollar bottle of water
and for all it’s worth ten dollars worth
of hockey food isn’t enough to cure hiccups at all
but the shouting guy liked me a lot more after that
and a good pretzel is a good pretzel and this pretzel was like eating
salt from heaven over a yellow tablecloth it was that good.
Enjoy!
THE LAST GOOD PRETZEL
I remember the last time I had a good pretzel,
it was at a hockey game. I’d brought Great Expectations
in my purse and I was reading the part about
Pip in the cemetery staring down through the fog
at the grave of his parents
when he’s suddenly snatched up by an escaped convict
and somebody scored the first goal and the horn blaring
scared me so bad I had hiccups the rest of the game.
The guy next to me kept shouting
send ‘im to the sin bin! send ‘im, send ‘im!
and it sounded like a church song the way he sang out send ‘im!
like he was waiting for God to come down out of the domed ceiling
dressed in striped white and black
saying, My Good Son, Ye Must Go To The Sin Bin
and what was really sad was that I didn’t know at first
what the “sin bin” was, and I had to ask, and the shouting guy
had already been looking at me funny for reading
and you can imagine how he looked at me then,
but I learned “sin bin” is, of course, another name for the penalty box.
I bought myself and that man a five dollar pretzel and
a five dollar bottle of water
and for all it’s worth ten dollars worth
of hockey food isn’t enough to cure hiccups at all
but the shouting guy liked me a lot more after that
and a good pretzel is a good pretzel and this pretzel was like eating
salt from heaven over a yellow tablecloth it was that good.
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