Winter Moments

1. A woman is seated at the next table in Starbucks with a friend and her grade school son. What do you mean, you doubt God? the woman asks her friend. If there were no God, we would all be stones. Think about it.
Stones? the boy asks.
Stones, the mother answers.


2. My friend is talking to me about the economics of Youngstown. It’s a shadow of the city it once was. It’s what happen to cities, she says. It will happen to San Francisco next. All that rampant materialism out there.
San Francisco? I ask.
Yep, she nods.

3. A student has 2 poetry professors. Call them Poet A and Poet B. She admires them both and feels so lucky to be studying poetry with them. One day Poet A tells her he would love to nail Poet B’s balls to the wall. The student tells me that was her moment of awakening. Before that moment, she always thought poets had souls and minds as lovely as their lines.


4. A woman lets her daughter try on her favorite black keyhole dress. It’s a silky sleeveless dress with a hole (hence the term keyhole) in the back. The daughter tries it on, first with the keyhole in the front to show off cleavage. Then with the keyhole in the back. It’s great, the daughter says. I can wear it out dancing. And to funerals.