TWO THINGS by JEFFREY HERMANN
I Went to Night School
and learned to love the dark. “You’re a little filament,” our teacher would intone. “You can create love from almost nothing. A Wednesday.” She came from a country with a colorful history. She had a way of making a statement with a fancy barrette. “When we’re done here,” she’d say, “I’m going home to drink the evening afloat. Please don’t with the doorbell.” Who knows. I might become an electrician when everyone least expects it. Like tonight, when the lights are working fine.
Your Witch
If you die by witches you probably have it coming. You poked your nose into someone else’s business. You’re a child with a sense of wonder and curiosity that other people can’t stand. Or you’re an adult, a man, and the witch knows what you’ve done to women. The secrets you keep from your wife. You’ll end up in the stove, a cramped gallows that smells of roast and burnt hair. You’re naked and bound. And the witch, your witch, will touch your face with the back of her green finger. She loves your heartlessness so much she would caress you at the apex of your life, the height of fear and dread, and you’ll see it in her small, crow-black eyes from behind the oven glass how she’s fallen a little in love.
Jeffrey Hermann's poetry and prose has appeared in Okay Donkey, Heavy Feather, HAD, trampset, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.