Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash
after Julio Cortazar
Begin by tossing your senile mom’s prescription drugs down the toilet, then run through the house humming a tune until it hits you that they will all dissolve and end up in the city water system, or the ocean, worse, and pull your hair at your stupidity! When you hear her alarm go off, run to get the dog and whisper ‘We have to get the hell outta here!’ Dash to the car and sit still together while the engine warms. If you hear a whippoorwill, and feel the pink streaked sky cloud your mind, and the overhead light melts and drips into your coffee mug, then you are ready to be dragged through the woods by a fifteen-pound terrier who refuses to learn to fly (Don’t boss him, don’t cross him, he’s wild in his anger) – No, wait, that was just the smell of stars crashing to the earth and the taste of your palms exploding in a joy you cannot explain for the beauty of this day. Don’t worry, the rabbit can lead you home.
Nicole Farmer is a reading tutor living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in The Closed Eye Open, Peregrine, Poetry South, The Amistad, Quillkeepers Press, Haunted Waters Press, Adelaide Magazine, Sheepshead Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, Great Smokies Review, Kakalak Review, 86 Logic, Inlandia Review and others. Nicole was awarded First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review in 2020. Her chapbook entitled 'Wet Underbelly Wind' was published in 2022. Her book ‘Honest Sonnets: memories from an unorthodox upbringing in verse’ will be published by Kelsay Books in 2023. Way back in the 90's she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama.