On Not Flying to Hawaii

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
hanging identically in all the booths
or the customer behind the Chronicle
who has been giving advice
about stock portfolios for forty years. I could be his mortal weariness,
his discarded sports section, his smoldering ashtray.

I could be the 70-year-old woman who has never seen Hawaii,
touching her red lipstick and sprayed hair.
I could enter the linen dress
that poofs around her body like a bridesmaid,
or become her gay son
sitting opposite her, stirring another sugar
into his coffee for lack of something true to say.
I could be the reincarnated soul of the composer
of the Muzak that plays relentlessly overhead,
or the factory worker who wove this fake Oriental carpet,
or the hushed shoes of the busboy.

But I don't want to be the life of anything in this pitstop.
I want to go to Hawaii, the wet, hot
impossible place in my heart that knows just what it desires.
I want money, I want candy.
I want sweet ukelele music and birds who drop from the sky.
I want to be the volcano who lavishes
her boiling rock soup love on everyone,
and I want to be the lover
of volcanos, who loves best what burns her as it flows.

Alison Luterman

10.1.10

Lunchbox Puppy

The other morning I got an email from one of my coworkers asking me to come see her.  As usual, i figured that I had done something wrong, forgetting to clock in or fill out the proper paper work for my recent absences. When I got to her office, she told me that there was something that she needed to show me, but that she couldn’t at the moment. Then she gave me one of those looks with a long pause in the conversation as if to say, “You know what I need to show you.” I instantly knew that she had her new teacup Chihuahua puppy with her. “Is she under your desk?” I whispered, leaning up against the door so that no one could see into the office. “No, she’s in that blue bag.” I looked over to her side table to see a small blue, foldable lunchbox. “In there?” Sure enough, very carefully, she unzipped the top of the lunchbox. And inside was the tiniest little puppy, wearing a red sweater and a jingle bell, lying there asleep. She had cut out the front of the lunch box to expose a mesh pocket in the front for her to get fresh air. She said that “Bella” didn’t make any noise and just lied there quietly. She was too small to leave at home due to how cold it has been recently. I couldn’t believe it. What is could be cuter than a tiny puppy asleep in a lunchbox beside you?

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