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  • Misspeech, and: No Ego, and: A Modern Story
  • Kelly Cherry (bio)

Misspeech

She means one word but says another. “Tree,” she says, meaning “spoon.” There is a tree in my cup. “Sun” when she means to say “moon.”

It’s nice to see the moon today, she says after days of rain. There is a tree in my cup.Let’s paint the room pain. [End Page 20]

The color of pain is red. The cow jumped over the sun. The cat ran away with the tree. It was fun,

but the cow scorched her udder and the cat climbed the tree and couldn’t get down until a quarter to three.

No Ego

A brutal fate befalls us all: the sense of self that succours us betrays our love, leaves us alone in tender night, tantalizing stars beyond our reach, ripening fruit causing our mouths to cry with longing. There is no food that feeds our hunger. The darksome trees dilate to blackness.

How shall we salve our sore egos? But time will solve this trick riddle. There’s no ego in nature’s grave light,no shining self to stir the selfto rise again to guilt and failure. [End Page 21]

A Modern Story

The trees whisper to one another, telling a tale of long ago when willows wept and fir trees shivered in falling snow.

They remember the youngest prince, who had the farthest to go to win the hand of the maid captive in the Land of Woe.

The prince found her reading in the tower studio. Her eyes were red with tears. Or eyestrain? It was hard to know.

On the back of his white horse he carried her away, to a house with shelves for books and a computer wrapped with a wide blue bow.

Yes, yes, the trees say now to one another, their love lasted. The first to go left the prince a book she wrote, the pages made of melting snow. [End Page 22]

Kelly Cherry

Kelly Cherry is the author of nineteen books and eight chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She has also translated two classical tragedies. Her recent titles include Girl in a Library: On Women Writers and the Writing Life (BkMk) and The Retreats of Thought: Poems.

“According to statistics, I am not a Baby Boomer, but as I have always been five years behind where I should be (nasty first marriage!), I feel like one. I have certainly been surrounded by Baby Boomers for much of my life. I sometimes write about them. I’m even married to one. And I’m keeping him.”

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