Jeffrey Hermann
Happy Little Bluebirds
A good friend who struggles says if you can’t create the right life you should paint a picture of
the future, something with possibilities: a road that goes up a mountain, colorful houses along a
street. Use the details to hold the world in place, he says, because it’s spinning.
Then sometimes I think about Judy Garland. I tell myself: Just get out of bed, open the door,
and face the technicolor world. Kill witches with a little pink in your cheeks and everyone will
believe it was an accident. Sing when you enter a room, and sing yourself out.
I didn’t know much about the future the day I met my wife. I was wrong about what waited for
me at the top, about which house was home. Years later, I gave up trying to outrun pain. I
cuffed my pantlegs, sat on the porch, and tapped my foot to an unknowable future. It turned
out to be something between a landscape and a portrait. Here I am, crooning on a banister
bathed in gaslight. My wife’s on a trolley in a joyous hat.
Pictures of Very Expensive Lake Homes
cover the windows of this beach-town realty office, but I haven’t the heart to be in love with
my life or anyone else’s these days. I want to give up having soft lips and good breath. The lake
is endless shades of blue. I wish someone could teach me how to swim and not drown, to stand
on the sand and signal that I am in too deep. To wake and dress and reach the surface. If I could
be something else, I’d be grasses on the shore. Water and sun would come to me. I’d stop
thinking of someone I lost years ago and only wave at boats.
The Years Between My First Kiss and the Next
I spent in the wild. Inside God’s beating heart with its one burning sun and one cold moon. God
said swim a river and I swam. They said build a fire and I stood naked before the tinder and
flame and smoke. I became a noun and a verb. The backs of trout were speckled green and
brown like stones in a lake. The ferns lived low among the trees topped by fiddleheads bent like
knees. One day I came smoldering to your window tossing little rocks. My body warmed against
yours. You curled your back. There was no fear or fear at last had a taste, metallic, like a little
blood in the mouth.
Revised Recommendations
No more hugging without permission. A shoulder to cry on will be provided later, then you can really let
it all out. My advice is don’t put all your cans on one shelf; it can’t bear the weight. Surprise a friend
with something savory but calorically moderate, a one-pan meal for a two-pan man. Let’s return to the
mind-booty problem: You have a nose for death approaching. You’ve got one foot in reality and one in
the Pacific. You’ve got your finger on the microwave pause button. You can read me like a church
hymnal, only pretending, and I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my shoe.
List of Symptoms Inconsistent with a Virus
Nausea. Sore throat. Bad dreams. Coughing. Aching. Staring. Scrolling. Drafting. Deleting. Loss of
appetite. Loss of people skills. Inability to choose. Choosing incorrectly. Looking at the sky and
wondering. Looking at the sky and wishing it would rain. Wishing it would stop raining. Guilt. Regret.
Chills. Nostalgia. Nostalgia with chills. Opening apps you forgot you had to see what they do. Looking up
cemetery visiting hours. Burying your face in a dog’s neck. Irrational fear. Rational fear. Fear of fire-
based emergencies. Fear of being unhelpful in a fire-based emergency. Cemetery visits. Depression.
Erosion. Mistrust (generalized). Mistrust (specific). Always reading. Never reading. Sighing. Aching.
Staring. Closing your eyes. Lying fallow.
Jeffrey Hermann's poetry and prose has appeared in Okay Donkey, Heavy Feather, Electric Lit, trampset, HAD, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.
