PRIVATES
There are only two things I remember about New York
in the Seventies: Haagen Daaz and Capezio’s.
I always ate ice cream while looking at ballet slippers.
I never wore them, though. I didn’t want ice cream
on my ballet slippers. The sun would peak through
the buildings nice and warm and I would smell like
melted chocolate that wasn’t to be from Belgium.
I would cross the street, tip my hat, and it was
the Eighties. My hands would tremble and laugh.
The sky would fill with seagulls.
BECAUSE WE’VE ALREADY MET
I can think of a hundred reasons not to meet the person I want to meet but the reason I like best is
that the music is too loud. But there is no music, you say. Exactly, I say, and I am only reading your
lips and you, mine.
SUPERSTITION
My friend the painter discovered that people love to buy paintings the day after Christmas. Here’s what happens: everyone opens their presents and laughs and has a merry time and drinks eggnog which is tasty. Sometimes they kiss under the mistletoe, which is poisonous. They scatter the wrapping paper everywhere and they eat chocolates which are yummy. The children leave and the grandchildren leave and everyone goes home and falls asleep and the house becomes empty, and they notice that they have no paintings on the walls. They call up my friend the painter and ask “Hey! Do you have any paintings for sale?” and he says “Indeed I do” and he sells them an exquisite work called SUPERSTITION and they place it on an empty wall. It’s late at night and my friend the painter returns to his dinner table where he eats a cantaloupe ring with fresh fruit and cottage cheese that he bought with the money that he made last year on the day after Christmas. On that day he said “Indeed I do” as well and sold a painting called SUPERSTITION and returned to his dinner table to eat a sliced liverwurst & pepper hash sandwich that he purchased from money he made the year previous to this one, then cantaloupe then liverwurst and so on and so on, until you go back many years when my friend the painter first saw a paint brush in a store and he cried so much that his mommy had to apologize to almost everyone in the world and leave the store and walk out onto the sidewalk where it was pouring rain and sunshine and the mother wondered what they would eat for dinner tonight and the best way to keep going, which was, she decided, this way.
© Ricky Garni