Linda Lowe

Volcano

While we ate pizza in our children’s restaurant, a new mountain arose, and when it erupted, lava rushed our way, but flowed around us, as if it wouldn’t dare mess with kids and their pepperoni. So we drank our Guinness, and cheered the mysterious ways of the world. Tipsy, we stumbled out the back door while the lava ran alongside us, scorching everything in its path, like a jealous lover getting even. We stood at the edge of the canyon, where years before we’d discarded half-baked ideas, and where hawks circling, knew devastation when they saw it, and flew away.

O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A!

I was in no mood for a carnival to materialize in my back yard. “Come one, come all,” the announcer shouted. What could I do with a carousel of nine painted horses? A teetering Ferris wheel? “Hop on,” he said. “See if your luck’s holding out.” Long gone, since Dad left, and stepped inside—to nothing but golden, waving wheat. Like it was Oklahoma harvest time in the cul-de-sac. We stood around wondering when the combines would come. We’re Californians, so all we could do was sing. About how sweet it smelled, when the wind comes right behind the rain.

Earthquake

Everyone gathered in the cul-de-sac to compare damage and wonder, was anyone’s cell working? No, until Myra piped up that she’d reached China somehow. A restaurant, and someone saying, “May I take your order?” How so, from China? But it was 5 a.m. in our part of the world and we were freezing, so why not? We ordered hot and sour soup and hoped for the best. Soon the sun popped up like nothing’d happened, and we could smell the delicious hot and sour soup right before the delivery guy sped around the corner on his bicycle, flashing his passport.  

 

Linda Lowe's poems and stories have appeared in Eunoia Review, BOMBFIRE, Star 82 Review, Defenestration Magazine, and others.