p e n c h a n t

That is the answer.

I’ve been without a scanner for a while now, and can post no images. (Unless of course, I rip one off from someone else, a common practice.) So, words it is. Hmm, what to say, what to say …

Guess I’ll have to pull something out of a hat, the one on my head, my writer’s hat, which is tall and dark and covered with golden punctuation symbols.

I reach in …

What’s this? A slip of paper that says, 7¾. Ah! Must be cryptic. A clue to solving a mystery. I’ve never solved a mystery, much less written one. Seven … seven … what is known for its number seven? Wait! It was an eight! Had to have been. Because seven and three quarters indicates it once was a whole number, which would have been eight. So the problem actually is, where’s the missing quarter?

I reach into the hat again … run my finger inside the band and, bash my brim! Here is the missing quarter!

The one that will complete my coin collection of all fifty states.

Now, what was the question?

-

How many dyslexics does it change to take a light bulb?

and a crimson of cardinals burdens the birdfeeder, five crows—one with a hiccup
that follows its every caw—come harassing, the cat who wanted out wants in again,
both wood stoves, upstairs and down, are coughing and choking, and the ink in my
pen’s gone cold.

artwork is charcoal—the real stuff, right from the hearth—on charcoal paper

Too cold the air, the earth, the walk, the glass the ledge the stonework the cat on the stoop.

The starry sky.

The sparrow’s breath.

The homeless figure in the cardboard box. The man on the subway bench.

C-old. The word says it, onomatopoeically.

Cold feet.
Cold fish.
Cold sweat.

Cold sore.
Cold virus. Common cold.

Cold pack.
Cold cream.
Cold soup.
Cold bath.

Cold storage.

Cold fact.

Cold shoulder. Cold glance.
Cold-hearted. Cold heart.

Cold turkey.

Cold blue steel.
Cold fire.

Out cold.

Out in the cold.
Left out in the cold.

Come in from the cold.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
Cold War.

Cold-blooded.
In Cold Blood.

“The love of many shall wax cold.”

Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

*

Too cold is this
To warm with Sun—
Too stiff to bended be,
To joint this Agate were a work—
Outstaring Masonry—

How went the Agile Kernel out
Contusion of the Husk
Nor Rip, nor wrinkle indicate
But just an Asterisk.

Emily Dickinson