Prose Poem: Generous Robin Givhan

 

I don't know about you

but I think of reporters

when I think of them at all

as self-absorbed and predatory.

 

In the past I've been rooked

pretty bad by 'em.

Like when I got fired over

that homonyms thing.

 

They called me up and got

sound bytes and quotes --

and then made me look

like a ring-tailed lemur!

 

But Robin Givhan, now --

she's different.

She's generous; she's kind.

She's the jewel of the Washington Post.

 

She's never interviewed me.

But I know if she did

she would be understanding.

She would quote me verbatim.

 

Her writing is dripping with

the cream of human kindness.

He prose shines like brass tacks.

She is a good egg.

 

I sent her a letter once,

asking to be interviewed.

About anything she wanted

to ask me.

 

She replied promptly.

Sending her regrets

that there was nothing

notable about me or my life.

 

It was very nice of her to respond

so quickly.

And to top it off she enclosed

a discount coupon for Red Lobster.

 

That's classy.

Putin Poems

 

Peewee Putin's on the prowl

till Ukraines run him afoul.

Go ahead and rob and rape;

you'll regret it, stupid ape.

Judgement waits, and can't be scared;

you'll be caught quite unprepared.

When you talk of puny Putin

it is often cuz he's scootin'

far away from all his sorrows

while he's killing the tomorrows

of the people he's oppressing --

and I bet he likes cross dressing!

Paltry Putin thinks that he

is the top of history.

But the apparatchiks know

he is melting like the snow.

When he's gone I hope Ukraine

will once again have hope that's sane.

haiku

the windowsill dust

floats up in the morning sun,

 

disturbed by a sneeze.

 

 

 

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 . . .