Ginger Ale
At night, before I go to bed,
I drink a glass of ginger ale.
The fog rolls in; the windows
mist. A man somewhere is
playing a drum. It is a slow
sound and then it picks up
speed, like a method that
becomes a habit. The last
bus turns onto our street.
I see no one on the bus, not
even the driver. It’s lit from
within, like a moving diner.
I want to go there, and get
on—just to sleep. I like
to imagine myself sleeping
anywhere, especially in
the grass before the church
where an all-night billboard
lights up the words SOAP
BOX DERBY. But then
I settle into bed, with
my soda on the nightstand.
I watch a bug with no legs
crawl across the ceiling.
The drum quiets and
stops. I’m going to stop
thinking, I promise, and
tomorrow I’ll wake up
and wonder.
Serving the Poet
When I worked at the gas station,
I sold cigarettes to a famous poet.
She was in her seventies, with
a little hair above her lip. That
hair looked so soft, so benign.
She wore silver bracelets that
tinkled together. Her hair
floated around her face, frizzy,
gray. I tried to make small talk
when there wasn’t a line. So,
I said, how’s the weather?
It’s raining, she said. I didn’t
know, I said, I haven’t felt
the weather. Yes, she said,
it’s raining. I can feel it in
my hip. I sold her the cigarettes
and she smiled at me, exposing
a gap between her two front
teeth. I thought about the gap
for days, how it must feel to be
her, sitting down to write a poem
other people would call “brave.”
When she came back, she bought
a bag of gummy bears. I like
to sit them around a candle,
she said, all lit up by
the flame. It’s incredible—
how literate they seem.
Eve
I was named after Eve, so my name
was Eve. At night, with the trees
scraping the dark windows, I put
red eyeshadow on. It was dark red,
the color of a heart on a playing
card. I put it on and went to sleep.
When I slept, I dreamt I was
the first female sailor, and I was
proud, very proud, of this fact,
but I could not stand up straight.
My bones were goo, bending and
melting. I discovered I was
becoming an eel. When I woke up,
I removed the red eyeshadow and
joined my mother at the kitchen table.
You look sick, she’d say to me, why
don’t you stay home? My eyes were
still red. So I stayed in bed, reading
about the ocean. Octopi have
three hearts. Did you know that?
No, you’re happy as it is.
Star Talk
It has now been proved that the stars
talk to one another. We are sure, said
one scientist, that they have a sort of
language, advanced beyond our years.
In fact, he added, we believe they
talk in years, that their language is
time. The next day an astrologer
came to my house. Would you like
to know your fate? she said. She
carried a huge box of hammers.
Sure, I said, why not? At the time,
I thought my fate was to go to
law school, where I would say things
like: actually, it’s not so simple...
The astrologer took out a hammer
and beat my table with it. The stars
talk to one another, she said. I’m sure
you’ve heard their hammering. It is like
music, the music of the spheres,
the working stars, she said. I see you
becoming a mother, and in time,
a niece. What’s with the hammer?
I said. It makes things different,
she said, and she put it in my hand.
Jen Frantz is a college dropout from Ohio. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Drift, Fence, and Bennington Review, among others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was poetry editor of The Iowa Review.