Hilary Biehl

At the Optical Shop

Bull in a china shop, I think
but do not say. You are all horns,
swinging your sword, insisting swords
are meant for swinging. Well, you’re bored,
and I’m the mother who thought bringing
a weapon here would be okay.
 
I wrestle it away, and now
you’re angry, too. Your horns are lowered.
We can’t fight here, with all this glass.
(It’s smashed, already, in my head.)
Almost my height, you look at me.
I look at you. “It’s mine,” you say.
 
The lenses look at us, clear-sighted,
tense with possibility.
I hold the toy behind my back.
Display stands quiver. Little boy,
just tall enough to peer across
the threshold into manhood – stay.


Losing My Job to Automation

Now that work is optional,
I’m off to join the fairy folk
who dance all day on the green hill.
And it won’t matter that I’m broke;
 
I’ll do just fine with fairy food.
I’ll patch my clothes with spider silk
gathered from brambles in the wood.
Student of runes, I’ll learn to skulk
 
around, to be invisible.
It seems a decent way to live.
And since working is optional,
what other options do I have?
 
I don’t suppose my family
will want to come along. But I’ll
have supernatural company;
though it may be impossible
 
to tell what they intend for me,
at least I’ll get to eat my fill.
I’ll sleep under the hawthorn tree
there in the middle of the hill,
 
resting my head on that white rock.
The fairies, I imagine, will
be understanding. All that talk
of their bad temper can’t be real –
 
I’m sure it isn’t. Anyway
there’s no alternative at all.
I’ll take whatever comes my way,
since work, and pay, are optional.

Hilary Biehl’s poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, THINK, New Verse Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Giants Crossing, is available from Kelsay Books. She lives in New Mexico.