Better Than Starbucks!

Daily Dose

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Inspiration comes in many forms

I take mine as a regular pill

It really depends on how your doctor feels about it.

I told mine that I had a chronic case of mundanity

and that was that

10 milligrams a day.

Most other doctors would expect a bit more than that.

They might make you take a test

on a scale from utterly boring to mildly uncreative.

They’ll ask you open ended questions and give you example answers

and if you use those answers as yours

well then, I’m sorry but

you might have to go in for some serious surgery

like Jennifer Krawetz from Accounting just last Thursday.

But most people, they get a prescription.

The doctors these days hand them out like lollipops.

You can take it as a gel pill like I do

Or a silicone implant in your knee

Or a gummy shaped like Vincent Van Gogh’s ear

The one he lost of course—

When I forget to take yesterday’s pill and make it up for today

I sometimes imagine he walked around looking for that ear

And after searching for hours,

He found it stuck firmly on his head

Just in a different place than usual.

You can take those hard pills, too.

But I don’t like those ones, they’re too bitter

But some people really enjoy the bitter

Truth is, I can’t imagine getting inspired that way.

Maybe if I just thought a bit more about it

Or went to the doctor.

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Diane Huang is a high school senior in Minnesota. We are pleased to be her first publication, though she will surely be published many times in the future.

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Relearning the Elements

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My favorite is Beryllium or surprise. 
I admire the noble gases 
even though the formulas seem 
a can-can with subservient 
numbers peeking beneath frilly skirts. 
Euclid's elements march in rows. 

So circles are said to touch 
one another which meet one another 
but do not cut one another. 
My circles end in shouting matches 
and broken plates. 

Strunk had style too much for me. I sulk 
in subjective moods. Like today 
while reading about the elements 
in the Drosophila genome. A fly 
buzzes between the lines. I transposed 
its shape between pages 407 and 408.

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Falling for the Invisible Woman

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The obvious is what’s missing, cues, 
shaved legs, make-up, the secret smile. 
Her voice turns heads, like rosaries 

across chapped lips. No, that’s not it. 
But sometimes at night I think 
I see her while I sleep. 

Her friends, all men with special 
powers, shun the one who can’t 
do anything beyond a few 

card tricks. Even their alter-egos – 
rich playboys, business tycoons, 
brilliant scientists – shadow me. 

When I ask her to slow dance, 
Plastic Man stretches an arm 
between us; the Human Torch 

fires nasty looks. In bed 
between tangled sheets, she strokes 
my scars and wants a story. 

How many lies are new lovers allowed? 
Come morning, I whisper 
her name in every room.

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Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, a bookstore, as a security guard, a teacher for Deaf children, a toy designer for Fisher Price, and currently a children's librarian. Published widely, his publications include a chapbook - The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) - a poetry collection - What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.