Orts #839

At the Station                         by Anya Krugovoy Silver

When the girl got off the train at the college town,
she leapt up and wrapped her legs around the waist
of the boy she’d come to visit, and they spun
around, embracing and shrieking with joy.
Their love set off a piccolo’s vibration.
Those years are gone for us—I see you every day,
we eat meals together from decades-old plates.
But when we lie in bed at night, you take my hand,
and I feel the orb that’s formed around us tighten,
while you and I, like knitting needles in a ball
of yarn, lie beside each other, fingers touching.



The Couple                           by Louis Jenkins

They no longer sleep quite as well as they did
when they were younger. He lies awake thinking
of things that happened years ago, turning
uncomfortably from time to time, pulling on the
blankets. She worries about money. First one
and then the other is awake during the night,
in shifts as if keeping watch, though they can’t
see very much in the dark and it’s quiet. They
are sentries at some outpost, an abandoned fort
somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains
where only the wind is a regular visitor. Each
stands guard in the wilderness of an imagined
life in which the other sleeps untroubled.


two limericks by Garrison Keillor, from O, What a Luxury (2013)

A vegan with nothing to do
Picked up a sandwich to chew
    And took a big bite
    And cried out in fright,
“OMG! WTF! BBQ!”

A Republican lady of Knoxville
Bought her brassieres by the boxful
   Which she stuffed with corn kernels
   And old Wall Street Journals
To keep the fronts of her frocks full.