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The Hoosier Poems

Harpo's report

by Michael L. Smith

Not wasting a moment of daylight,
from across that open stretch of sheets,
he is awakened from his solid night and finds her at his wife's breast,
shocked to make out once again that that autonomous form has
come to occupy his space and time.
Dislodged, he, for a second, feels disoriented, not knowing with certainty
how she has plopped down precisely at that spot
(as he is often
startled to find a woman at his side in the morning).
For a moment, he contemplates the scant seven kilos, weighs the
possibilities in a calculating sweep,
and then it all comes
back to him like a slapstick's whack.
He knows that more than coincidence binds them.

And she,
that awkward missionary,
grins mischeivously back at her
father, knowing the full extent of the cosmic prank she has
pulled on the old man.