Prose Poem: Paul Farhi and the Magic Bag

 

One day while walking home from work

at the Washington Post

Paul Farhi (who reports on style)

found an old carpet bag.

It had an antique rose dusky pattern.

He was enchanted by it.

And since it was just lying by 

a street lamp

apparently abandoned

he picked it up to bring home.

At home a wonderful scent

drifted up from the bag

when he opened it.

It reminded him of warm misty nights

on the dock of a lake

and the sound of children

gently breathing in their sleep.

There was nothing inside the bag

as far as he could tell.

But after the bag was open

all sorts of blessings came to him.

His editor praised his work

and gave him a raise.

Cottage cheese tasted like Camembert.

As long as Paul kept the bag open

his life was redolent with good things.

But when he shut the bag the toilet 

backed up

and the tires on his car went bald.

So he tried to open the bag again.

But he couldn't get it to unclasp.

When he jimmied it open

with a screwdriver

there was a fearful wail

before red foxes began dancing.

Dancing around his living room.

With cruel grins and sarcastic

barks.

They are still at it in Paul's 

living room.

But he has moved out;

 into the

Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

 

*************************************8

Mr. Farhi's emailed response to the above:

"Thanks. There’s a lesson in this for all of us. I’m just not sure what it is." 

Prose Poem: The Cultured Dan Bilefsky.

 

If there's one guy I know who has culture,

it's Dan Bilefsky.

Never have met the guy.

But I read his stuff in the newspapers.

His articles make me ashamed of wearing

brown shoes.

Of sopping up gravy on my plate with a 

piece of bread.

After finishing his last article,

all my clip-on neckties were

tossed away.

It's getting expensive to be like

Dan Bilefsky.

He ain't elegant, exactly.

It's more like he's just so

well-traveled and knowledgeable.

I might do like the old joke

says:

 I got so tired of reading his cultured articles that I gave up reading.

But in the meantime

his articles give me hope

that we can win the 

culture wars.

Or, at least, take back

Alsace-Lorraine. 

Prose Poem: Jennifer Brooks drinks lemonade.

 

"I think you're pretty great" said Jennifer Brooks to me.

She was interviewing me

for the StarTribune newspaper.

 

She looked pretty great herself.

With a long string of Chiclets

around her neck.

 

"Why did you steal quarters 

out of your mother's purse?"

she suddenly asked.

 

How did she know that?

It happened sixty years ago.

I had wanted a candy bar.

 

"We reporters know everything"

she said, as if reading my mind.

I decided to brazen it out.

 

"Your information is incorrect"

was my reply.

"My mother's purse had a hole in it."

 

She didn't miss a beat.

"Then why didn't you buy

her a new one?"

 

This was not the way

I wanted our interview

to go.

 

Luckily a shotglass

magically appeared

in my hand.

 

"Lemonade?" was my arch question.

"With gingersnaps?" she asked shyly.

"But of course!" I replied gallantly.

 

Afterwards we played

Minnesota Monopoly.

I let her win.

Prose Poem: I owe my career to Sydney Ember

 

I owe my career to reporter Sydney Ember

and will be forever grateful to her.

It happened this way:

I was stuck at a small market radio station

in Northwest Iowa.

One of those places where the Dutch

Reformed Church has taken root

like dandelions in a graveyard lawn.

I read the news and was supposed to

dig up local stuff to read on the air.

But those Dutch Reformed bozos were

a hard nut to crack. News-wise.

They would talk to me about sports.

About church picnics.

About the next tulip festival.

But they were tight-lipped when it 

came to hard news.

Traffic accidents.

Brawls and assaults.

Robbery and theft.

Niets.

The sheriff; the cops; the state patrol.

They were all in cahoots. Members in

good standing and not likely to spill

the beans to a buitenstaander like me.  

Then Sydney came to town.

Reporting on state caucuses.

For the New York Times.

She was a live wire. Let me tell you!

She dropped by the radio station to

pick up a free rain poncho.

And we got to talking.

I told her of my problems with

the local yokels.

And she said: 

"Kid, when the authorities won't talk

you just say they are reserving comment

until the families are notified."
 

I nodded my head. Not really understanding.

Then she turned the key for me:

"Local families will go nuts wondering if

one of their kids or cousins died or was arrested.

They won't give City Hall any rest." 

She winked at me and gave a nod

as she rose up the chimney --

"You'll have the cop shop spilling their

guts to you after that!" I heard her exclaim

ere she drove out of sight.

Now the sheriff's deputies bring me homemade bread pudding at least once a week.

Prose Poem: Sarah Nassauer Sells Me Crampons.

 

so i went into walmart

just to look around.

sometimes i get lonely

and like to drift along. 

like a Chinese spy balloon.

it was there i ran into

Sarah Nassauer. the reporter.

she was behind a counter,

selling things.

there was a gleam in her

eye 

that boded no good to anyone

who wanted to keep their money

that day.

"Hi, Sarah" I said to her.

"I'm not buying anything today."

"Just looking."

she didn't speak. not a word.

she just looked at me.

and suddenly i wanted to buy things.

lots of things. 

she's got that hypnotic knack.

she picked it up while in

Paris.

Paris, Texas.

where they make the soup.

so i bought a pair of crampons

from her.

which will come in handy

this winter.

the doctor tells me i'm

losing too much calcium.

my bones will get hollow 

and brittle.

if i fall down i'll shatter like

a pane of glass.

i am terrified of going out

on snowy days. 

but i asked Sarah Nassauer

if she would like to take a walk.

she answered "Oui."

so i guess i'm stuck.

Prose Poem: How Christopher Mele Saved My Life.

 

I'll never forget how Christopher Mele 

saved my life.

We were hiking in the Poconos.

My son and I. We got lost in a thick fog.

So thick that it felt like bacon

on the back of your hand.

Just as Willy and I were about

to give up hope.

About to sit down under a tree

to slip away into the final dream;

Mele came striding along, 

whistling Nessun dorma from

Turnadot.

He gently took our hands.

Which by now were pale and palsied

and smelled of bacon.

He lifted us up.

And with a journalistic flourish

he guided us to the Promised Land.

A land of ink and honey.

Where the Hudson Valley River Steamer

still delivered stacks of 

the New York Times

to indigent farmers and mechanics.

For only a nickel.

Mr. Mele set my son up as

a copy boy in the cavernous

basement. Washing linotype.

He ought to get an award.

Mr. Mele, I mean. For saving us.

And for his extraordinary attention

to detail in tight time constraints.

 *********************************

The journalist himself emailed me back:

Thank you! I saw this on Twitter and I don't know what to say! To what do I owe this honor?
Been a while since I've had a byline (doing mostly editing these days), so I wondered what inspired this?
Good to hear from you. Hope you are well. And love the photo on your site!

 

Prose Poem: Heather Haddon. by Tim Torkildson

 

Heather Hadon called me on my cell today.

"Will you do something for me?" she asked.

"Sure, why not?" I replied.

"It's really, really important" she said.

 "Just name it" I said. I like Heather.

She and I go back a long way.

I knew her when we were students together

at Oberlin College. She studied anthropology.

I studied farrier technology.

Which I flunked out of.

And then we both got reporter jobs at

the Bergen Record.

 "I need you to buy a subscription to the

Wall Street Journal. The print edition.

Not the online edition" she told me.

"Can do" I replied. "Any particular

reason why?" 

"The paper is losing readers. It's hemorrhaging money fast" she said tearfully.

"Really?" I said, amazed. "That's so sad. What happened?"

"I dunno. People don't want to get ink on their hands, I guess" she said. "So each reporter has to sell ten subscriptions per week or get fired."

"Land o' Goshen!" was my only response.

After I hung up I immediately went down to the news stand on Fifth and Center. I told Barney, the guy who runs it, to sign me up for the Wall Street Journal.

"No can do, chum" he told me.

"Why?" I demanded.

"They only take on readers with college degrees" he said. "And I happen to know you washed out of the farrier program at Oberlin. You told me so yourself."

"Well, then, can I at least buy a copy of it?" I asked in exasperation.

"I guess so" he grumbled, handing me a copy. "But don't tell anyone where you got it. I might lose my license."

Sad to say Heather lost her job at the Journal.

She couldn't meet her sales quota.

Which is a real shame, since she writes so well

about supermarkets and restaurants. 

She gets awards from the National Press Club 

all the time.

I hear she went back to work for the

New York Post.

A step down, sure.

But better than going back to Oberlin for a 

masters in anthropology.

You can't do anything with that nowadays.

 

Prose Poem: Ariel Cheung. by Tim Torkildson.

 

 

 

Ariel Cheung, a food columnist at the Chicago Tribune, did not find my faux profile of her funny. This is her huffy response to it: "Hey there, I’m uncomfortable with that google doc you just shared. I don’t appreciate my name being incorporated in a work of fiction without my consent."

If you missed it, here is the profile I wrote and emailed to her --

 

A new year demands a new profile. So I have provided one for you. At no charge. I hope you enjoy it.

You always know a journalist by the size of their feet.

That’s because they get larger the longer they’ve been schlepping about, hunting down sources and interviewing world-shakers and salt shakers.

You try wandering around all day searching for lukewarm coffee you can sip and make faces about, just to prove you’re a dyed-in-the-wool reporter, and see how big and flat your feet get!

But that’s not the case with journalist Ariel Chung. Despite many long years on the beat for newspapers such as The News-Register, The Dayton Daily News, USA Today, The Sun Times, and The Chicago Tribune, her feet remain petite.

That’s because she has been trying to get out of journalism ever since she first got into it. She actually wanted to be a saucier in some small Parisien bistro in Montmartre. Whipping up a pale bechamel or golden veloute for heure du dejeuner customers.

But her reporting skills have been so spot-on that editors resort to powerful blandishments such as gargantuan hiring bonuses and a lifetime supply of Bic pens to keep her coming back to the Fourth Estate.

An Avalanche of Accolades

Every time she writes a story it automatically wins some kind of prize. The Prix de Guerre, a Pulitzer, the Order of the Garter, or Victoria Cross. She’s had to rent a garage out in Kankakee just to store ‘em all in.

As a third grader she went undercover in the teacher’s lounge to discover that the impoverished educators were siphoning off rubber bands to sell on the black market just to make ends meet. Her story, published in the Chalkboard Chatterer, blew the lid off of the dirty politics of the local school board that kept teacher salaries below the level of sharecroppers. Six members of the board subsequently committed seppuku.

But Her Heart Connected Only With Cordon Bleu

A life of fame and fortune was hers to grasp. She needed merely to obtain a notepad and a pencil, and then begin to write. Newspaper publishers salivated at the mention of her name. But Ariel had other plans. She saw herself wielding a spatula, not a quill. Deftly turning out crepes suzette, not exposes. But a second cousin once removed suffers from a rare genetic disorder – Aquagenic Urticaria. Treatment is a long drawn out and expensive process, so Ariel agreed to pay the medical bills. Her dreams of a Michelin five-star place of her own were put on hold, and she now aggressively goes after malefactors of crummy cuisine for The Chicago Tribune.

The Scourge of Criminal Cuisine

Chefs who cut corners in the Chicagoland area tremble at the mention of her moniker.

Do they adulterate their saffron with turmeric? She’s on to their little game.

Perhaps they don’t scruple to substitute oleo margarine for Irish butter in a Dutch Baby. She falls on them like a ton of Swedes.

Her keen nose and discerning palate roots out canned soup casseroles masquerading as haute cuisine. No snob she, at church basement suppers she digs into a bowl of beanie weinie with all the gusto of a longshoreman. Her passion for deep dish pizza knows no bounds. She travels to the ends of the earth (or at least as far as Waukeegan) searching for the perfect farmhouse chicken and dumplings. Cruel in her denunciation of slipshod stewing, she is equally generous in her praise of simple straightforward American cooking.

In Her Spare Time . . .

She raises heritage reindeer lichen in an old rathskeller she is currently remodeling.

And . . . she’s always dreaming of that day when she can slip away from all the sturm und drang of journalistic renown to retire to that little white cottage in Maine. Where she’ll serve gluten-free apple fritters to wandering gypsies . . .

waking up as a child

As a child I woke up to sunshine. Even when the weather was rainy and overcast. I woke up to sunshine inside myself. That is part of the magic of childhood. Of my childhood. I woke up with an attitude of boundless possibilities. Of bright prospects. Except the one summer in grade school, when, for some deranged reason, I took a summer school class. How to make wooden puppets. It was taught by the one truly witch-like teacher at Tuttle. Her name is gone from my mind. But the memory of her visage still makes me uneasy. The poor woman was homely and impatient with children. She should not have become an elementary school teacher. She was fitted for a life as a matron at a women's prison. But somewhere along the line someone she trusted must have told her she should be a teacher. So she spent a lifetime intimidating children instead of keeping felons in check. The first morning I woke up that summer, the summer I was supposed to take her class, I experienced a keen sense of dread and dismay. These were foreign emotions to me up until then. Up until then I had gone about doing as I pleased, whether good or bad, and never worrying about the consequences. Good things meant pleasant rewards, or, at least, being left alone. Bad things brought a tongue lashing from my mother, which I accepted as the normal course of events that just had to be waited out like a thunder shower. So that first morning I simply stayed in bed. I had to pee, but I stayed in bed with my eyes squeezed shut. Pretending to be asleep. And mom came up to wake me up. But I wouldn't respond. It lay in bed, stiff as a board. She knew I was faking it. But she wisely decided not to make an issue of it. As a result, I was allowed to oversleep and to miss breakfast. And to miss the puppet making class. And miss the witch teacher. That poor old woman. She was in charge of the Patrol at Tuttle. The kids who got to wear a bright orange vest and wave a bright red flag had the awesome power to stop speeding cars on Como Avenue so kids could cross the street to and from school. Because sixty years ago that job was given to kids – adults had nothing to do with stopping traffic. Kids were allowed to take care of many things by themselves back then. Or maybe just ignored. Adults didn’t think of kids as a valuable resource so much as a nuisance that had to be kept busy so they wouldn’t intrude themselves too much. So dress ‘em up in a vest and give ‘em a flag to wave at traffic. As far as i know no kid was ever mowed down by a Chevy. The witch in winter made us Patrol members hot chocolate. But it was disheartening stuff. Thin and unsweet, with a mucous membrane forming on top of the cup. We accepted the mugs she gave us, then waited for her back to be turned to dump it out in the sink. Strange to say, every classroom at Tuttle had its own sink back then. Why? I guess to wash our hands. And kids used to throw up a lot more at school than they do now. If a kid turned green and raised his or her hand, the teacher gave a nod and the kid ran to the sink and hurled. I did it myself several times that i remember. Afterwards we sat back down at our desk like nothing happened. We weren’t sent to the school nurse or sent home. Kids were always vomiting. Teachers accepted it as part of the job. My mom didn’t worry when i came home from school to tell her i had thrown up. Unless i had stained my shirt. Like i said, kids were expected to share in the hardness and pain of life much sooner back in those wild and wooly days. Or that was my impression. My memory. And memory is always suspect. Don’t forget that. You never remember the truth. You remember a feeling or an emotion. Only inconsequential remembered details are the absolute rock bottom truth. And will be verified when we can “see as we are seen” after the resurrection. When I woke up as a kid I would stare at my bedroom ceiling. At the crack in the ceiling. It looked like the coast of an island. To me. I took myself to that island, that sunny island. Where there were palm trees and coconuts on the shore. Monkeys loping about with their charlie chaplin walk. I floated in the warm salt water until I finally drifted away from land. Then had to run to the bathroom. In the winter i awoke to the insistent clanking of the furnace in the basement. As soon as the thermostat was raised from the overnight 65 degrees to the daytime 72 degrees that behemoth down below shook itself from its torpor. Roaring to life with blazing fuel oil so that all the air vents expanded with the noise of a tray of cheap dinnerware falling on a concrete floor. I listened to that clanking while lying in bed with the covers up to my chin. I wore a pair of my dad’s capacious white socks to bed in winter to keep my feet warm. As the furnace clanked i put myself on a train. Swaying and clanking. Then stopping with a jolt as i got off with a suitcase full of R.C. cola and bags of Old Dutch Onion & Garlic potato chips. Then i’d be hungry enough to come downstairs for breakfast. In summer it was corn flakes. In winter it was cream of wheat. On sundays mom always made waffles. If i couldn’t fill each little hollow square of my waffle with syrup, if mom said ‘that’s enough!’ before each square was full, i refused to eat my waffle. Complaining it was too dry. Sometime i got more syrup. Sometimes i didn’t. But i always drank two big glasses of milk at breakfast. Then it was heave-ho, outside you go! Either to school or to frolic with my friends during summer vacation at Van Cleve Park. So waking up as a kid always meant sunshine to me. Nowadays i wake up twice each night to use the bathroom. Then have to read myself back to sleep. And when i can no longer keep my eyes closed i remember i have six pills to take. Supposed to be on an empty stomach. And don’t forget the vitamin d so your bones don’t get all brittle and start to break when you sneeze. That’s what the doctor said – ‘you’re losing too much calcium.’ he didn’t say my bones would break if i sneezed but he said i should take care not to fall down. He said take vitamin d. Lots of it. Amy buys me gummy vitamin d. Fruit flavored. So i guess i still wake up to sunshine. Because i wake up to her.

The Old Funeral Home. Chapter 6. Part One.

 

The Old Funeral Home  Chapter 6 Part One

We have taken a hiatus from the writing of this novel slash memoir. We started in the giddy springtime. (of our first year being remarried) then at the end of a full ripe summer we stopped. (ran out of ideas and triggers) Amy’s ears were getting worse. (it seemed like to him because he was tired of having to enunciate every word) My voice and imagination were growing ragged.

Now it is the new year. The first day of the new year. 2023. And we start again. 

But where do we start? I have to speak much louder and be more articulate for Amy to take my dictation. It wears me out rather quickly. (sorry, my hearing is as it has been since getting back together with Tim, I just make sure I hear and ask questions if I don’t. So to avoid the questions and the tedious conversations about what I thought I heard he tries to speak more clearly and slowly. And so it makes sense that he gets worn out.) I am tempted to just spout a series of haiku, and let the reader tear away the veil of obscurity. But that would be cheating. ( hahaha. Our memories are vague enough that it seems like cheating to write what we do since to rely on memory for what used to be or what happened is a work in obscurity already!!)

**********************************************************************************

One reason I loved that place is because it was crammed with books. The old funeral home in Tioga, ND, had books in the sewing room, in the back bedroom (library – bedroom) and the basement seemed to be walled with paperbacks (it wasn’t because we had flooding every year in the basement so all the books had been brought upstairs to the library that was the spare bedroom when one was needed. There were five bedrooms in the basement that used to be rooms for prepared bodies to rest while fitting them to their casket. Mom had done a remodel of the basement and put up covered sheetrock to make the rooms more appealing to the kids who slept there. It was pretty creepy to think about the kind of business that had to happen in that place. Especially if you were a teenager with a vivid imagination anyway!)

********************************************************************************

I never asked Amy when we were courting why there were so many books around; where they all came from. But I’m asking her now. So “Amy, what’s the deal with all those books?”

“Well, Tim, those books are a representation of my mother’s love of reading. Her passionate unrequited love for learning in a formal institution. Her desire to instill in her children the value of reading and to fulfill her insatiable appetite for reading. She had several collections of great works. Earl Stanley Gardner’s 70 books. Louis L'aMour's 120 books. Zane Grey’s 40 books. National Geographic magazines from 1955 forward, same with Readers Digest magazines and Church magazines from 1966. We kept macaroni boxes, the three pound size, to store the magazines on the shelves. It was effective though not the prettiest look. 

Moving to a new home didn't happen often because we had lots of kids and stuff ( clothes and a few things for each person) but lots of books too. When we moved from Williston to the bar in Ross, ND in 1964, I don’t recall the unpacking of so many books but I remember several bookcases that my dad had made. They got ruined in the basement of the old funeral home because of the flooding. Mom had purchased a metal DIY bookshelf kit to line the walls of the bar first. Then the trailer house of the farm in 1972 because the tiny two bedroom house on the site would not hold our 11 children family. The day we moved into the old funeral home July 31,1977, child number 12 came to reside with us. We began our library in the basement until we discovered the flooding was annual, in the spring. I helped move the library upstairs when I came home from college one summer. When I graduated and came back to Tioga to teach I moved to the “Mother-in-law’s house” out behind the house. It was a three room place with a nook for a bathroom that I don’t count as a room. Moving to that place made sense because the spare bedroom had become a Teenager’s room as the little girls were growing and needing their own space. The metal bookcase was moved upstairs to the library in TOFH until one day it tipped and Dad –  being retired – put up fitted wooden bookshelves to hold the books and photo albums. The sewing room held the video collection of old video cassette tapes. There were some audio cassettes as well. Mom was big on recording everything. She had one of the first home movie cameras on “super 8” film. She graduated to a camera that filmed directly to a cassette tape as soon as that was available. My little sister has transferred much of that to DVD’s and we have a 5 disc set of all the footage.”

***********************************************************************

Now I may be wrong. And if I am, Amy will be sure to correct the record. But I remember stealing my first kiss from her against one of the bookcases in the basement in the old funeral home in Tioga.

I have always considered the physical contact of the lips to be the most sensual and exciting moments in a physical relationship. I just tested this out now, by getting out of my recliner, and bending over Amy's in her recliner. And kissing her long and passionately. I feel sorry for those who have no one they can kiss. I know what it is like to kiss, to be kissed, and not to have anyone to kiss. I would prefer to kiss Amy on the lips to an anchovy Pizza or even my name on the New York Times Best Seller List. (now that’s saying something!!!)

I have finished for now. (every sentence but one in the previous paragraph has begun with the word “I”. Knowing that it is a writing red flag for professional writing, I work at varying each initial word. Tim doesn’t really care. That’s ok with me. And I get a sense of comfort knowing that he can decide to be who he is and not care what someone else thinks. Of course, when we work with the AI tools and must meet certain standards, I have the work of changing the things he has written if the beginning of sentences are more than two that start the same.)

 

I forgot to mention how involved my dad was in the collections of books. Mom and Dad used to read to each other before the days of TV. Dad liked to read for a while before he went to sleep, when he was retired. Mom joined a book of the month club early in their marriage. She’d get a deal if she ordered a series. I think she got three books at a time. They liked the Perry Mason mysteries and the jokes in the Reader’s Digest. The westerns of Zane Grey and Louis L’aMour. I forgot to mention Edgar Rice Burroughs. And the three sets of Encyclopedias.I didn’t ever read any of those books until I was in bed for months, pregnant and bleeding. Convalescing at my parent’s home in Tioga. In a room with no TV, with children and nothing to do but watch someone else care for them.)