The Goodnight Skirt

by Raoul Fernandes

Permission to use that snowball
you've been keeping in the freezer
since 1998. For a poem? she asks.
What else? I say. I'll trade you, she says
for that thing your mom said
at the park. What was it?
"God, that mallard's being a real douchebag"?
Yes, that one. Deal, I say. Okay, how about
the Korean boy who walks past
our house late at night, singing
"Moon River"? Oh, you can use that, I say,
I wouldn't even know what
to do with it. But there is something else.
I've been wanting to write about
the black skirt we've been using to cover
the lovebird's cage. The goodnight skirt.
In exchange, I'll let you have
our drunken mailman, the tailless tabby,
and I'll throw in the broken grandfather clock
we found in the forest. One more, she says.
Last night, I say. The whole night.
She considers for a while, then,
Okay, that's fair. But I really had something going
with that lovebird. All right, I say, write it
anyway. If it's more beautiful than mine,
it's yours.

“The Goodnight Skirt” from Transmitter and Receiver by Raoul Fernandes, Nightwood Editions, 2015, www.nightwoodeditions.com