300/365 Adrienne

teacher
teller
listener
liar

poet who changed my
life

a slim paper chapbook
"some notes on lying"
felt too
close to truth for
comfort

seeing what's not/there
showing what can/not be

freckled wrinkles
gnarled knuckles

honoring the cultivated brain
the cared-for body, the
imagination big enough for beautiful
anger

299/365 Ron

Hopefully talking
to me since first grade
principal's nephew
secretary's son

sharp-nosed and short-haired
spectacled since birth
ferret-lipped giggles
sound worse than they were

my escort for our
graduation walk
exit from our past
entrance not quite set

timid greeting each
reunion, sacred or
secular, graveled
or carpeted, feet
shuffling with the risk

298/365 Fred M

Home-made pizza maker, frequent visitor (resident?) at the
white two-story, wide-laughingly mustached and
skinny as a runner: of course you're now
notable for your long-distance streak, 25-plus
years and counting, as many years as it's been since
the battered oven in the rented house in the college town.

297/365 Anne A

Eating at Eli's, your first weeks at the new
job, smilingly gray-sweatered and hungry,
our topic children: your two, my two,
so I assumed we're both birth
mothers: um, no. You educated me more in
that slight minute than I'd been in years of
WGST classrooms: feminist pedagogy, indeed.

296/365 Gordy

Crewcut bristled, a porcine crown for
a purple-cheeked bully with a heart of gold

or

at least when it came to the
neighborhood girls who were still

a

bit scared of you: alley boundary
not enough to convince us you

wouldn't push/pull/yank/punch
us to be your friend, audience, spectator

295/365 Greg/Beaner

Living across the street with you sister, her
husband, kids, dog after your father died: what ever
happened to your mom?

Short, spit-spikey hair, sandy
as brown sugar, matching wide-mouthed
skin, green eyes big as eggs. You died soon after high
school: don't even know how. Or why.

294/365 Greg A

Who knew those ears flung
themselves out, wide as Prince
Charles's, fun as handles or sails,
emerging after YMCA power-walks
regular as Saturn's orbit

Favorite first-grade teacher, then tech
expert, only Senor from Bismark, ND,
among Senoritas from Costa Rica,
Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Spain,
locales less far-flung than the Saloon