Issue/Publication: Gander Press Review

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           When Ayako awoke that morning next to her husband, Finn, in their cramped Hollywood apartment and saw the red splatter on his t-shirt, she was reminded of the spaghetti sauce she'd thrown against him and the wall the previous evening.  He'd asked would she mind if he went alone to a movie?  This was after he explained that he'd accepted a job as a video editor in Fargo, North Dakota.  At the stove, she dipped a scoop and flung it.

            She looked at Finn's form in bed.  He looked like a tuna roll.  Rather than wake him, she moved to the window.  The sun was just rising, and she wanted to create a poem in her head. 

                        The satellite dish

                        Blocks the rising silent sun

                        And stares into the void.

            Poems relaxed her.  So did thinking of herself as a poet--better than seeing herself as a waitress.  She had trained in Toyko to teach poetry, and now this.  But wasn't this a hell of a lot better than with her first husband, who had abandoned Kelly and her in Kentucky?  Ayako and Kelly had then moved farther west to Los Angeles, where there were more Japanese people, and Ayako found a waitressing job at a Japanese restaurant, Asahi Ramen, where she'd met Finn--as different as anyone she'd known.  He was who she'd wanted.  But North Dakota? 

            She was pulling on her bra when she heard, "You're beautiful."  Finn was grinning.  "All your swimming looks good on you."

(Click on the link to see the rest of this very short story in the Gander Press Review: http://www.ganderpress.com/fall2008/names/Meeks.pdf)

The Gander Press Review is also sold in bookstores.  "The Natant Poet" is in the Fall edition.