Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school district. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include The Book Of, A Bright Patch of Sunlight, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.
Summer 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 2
Poetry Fiction Translations Reviews
Holly Day
my father is learning golf because that’s what his
father did when he retired. the last time he rode
his bicycle, he fell and shattered his ankle,
and now, he’s learning golf because he’s too afraid
of death. I never did grow to be as tall as
he did, or even as tall as my mother, so
he’s never really gotten any smaller with time
or perspective. I practice what I’ll say
at his funeral, some day too close to today.
I practice what I’ll tell my children about him.
he hunkers down over the tiny golf tee, broad
shoulders squaring for the swing, I still remember
how smart he used to make my sister and I feel
so strong when he let us beat him at wrestling, or
racing down the street to the park. We must have felt
like puppies or kittens crawling around on his
back. He was so patient with us. I can’t be here.
nobody can screw with me because I’m old and
fat now and I can walk down the street, late at night
and nobody will stop me. I can talk to strangers
to any nutcase on the street and ask for the
time, a cigarette and they won’t say anything
about my ass or my tits and there’s no danger
in holding late-night conversations with any
one of them. I’m never invited to private
mystery islands to party with rich strangers
may not stop traffic with my beautiful hair but
I can go to the worst part of town any time
I want without worrying about the danger.
Someday, paleontologists will unearth our remains
Gawk at our tiny brainpans, our fragile bone structure
Wonder at our clever tool-making abilities
Create absurd mythologies about our forgotten culture.
These paleontologists will most likely be
Gigantic insects, the descendants of housecats
Some highly-intelligent water-bound cephalopod
Or something that came here from outer space.
They’ll grip our unfamiliar bones in their
Suction-cupped tentacles or claw-tipped pads
Stroke the insides of our skulls with feathery antennae
Spin tales of how we once flew across the skies
Flapped along the sand, or lived underground.
my ex-boyfriend moved to the house down the street and
it’s all I can do to keep from fucking him I
have everything I need at home with my husband
and my family but I keep remembering
dreams of the past, weaponless, I see him, every
day, close enough that I could walk home with him and
be back before the baby wakes up
© Holly Day
