Ian Willey
Unsolicited Advice
Cycling along the river I came upon a guy who kept hauling in trout and releasing them. Man was he killing it. The trout were as long as my forearm with marshmallow bellies. But his rod had some rusted barbed wire and dangling hooks stuck to it and he kept pricking himself as he reeled them in. The guy will get lockjaw, I thought, so I reached up and managed to remove the barbed wire and hooks before he cast out again. There, I said. The rod seemed lighter in his hands and he cast out his line nice and easy, but this time the bobber stayed still on the water. As time spun out and nothing happened he started giving me sideways glances. My bicycle rode off in search of a new master.
Time to Go
Near the end of his life he said to me, Hank, if I could live this life again, I’d spend all my time happy. Every moment, even the divorces and pink slips and biopsy reports. I figure I’ve spent ninety percent of my life either unhappy or waiting at a traffic light. Which is to say, I said, that you were unhappy ninety percent of your life, since no one’s happy waiting at a red light. As soon as I’d said that I wished I hadn’t, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t hear me anyway. The light had already changed.
Rewilding
There is a stretch of prairie where the cars drive free. Their license plates have long since fallen away and they’ve all become beige. What’s more, their engines have gone solar-powered so they’re quieter and less offensive to the prairie dogs. In the morning the cars idle on the plain, tending their young, but around noon when the sun is high they put the pedal to the medal and drive their carburetors out, scattering scorpions and sending up histories of dust. Some people come to watch them with dreams of driving one home. Day by day their numbers are growing.
The Test
While our children took a test to determine their place in the universe, we parents, having nothing to do, wandered down the hill. We pretended to be unaware of each other though we all went in the same direction. We came to an open field where a concert was in progress which we pretended to appreciate though the music was awful. A man was playing a Nine Inch Nails song on a saxophone with a stone stuck in it. Why doesn’t he just remove the stone? a woman asked and that was all it took. She was our new leader.
The Week of Broken Things
The week of broken things is hard to explain. It started with a cracked decanter followed by the lid to the frying pan and the handle on my mug. After that the vacuum cleaner started sounding strange and then suddenly died and the automatic soap dispenser wouldn’t stop dispensing soap until it was empty and changing the batteries didn’t help. Then things got painful when a tooth was broken followed by a promise and then the week ended with a broken dream. The following week we had to get a lot of new stuff though some of it was irreplaceable.
Ian Willey is an American currently living in Japan. His poems can be found in numerous online journals including Unbroken, Uppagus, and Moon Park Review. His work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Unsolicited Advice
Cycling along the river I came upon a guy who kept hauling in trout and releasing them. Man was he killing it. The trout were as long as my forearm with marshmallow bellies. But his rod had some rusted barbed wire and dangling hooks stuck to it and he kept pricking himself as he reeled them in. The guy will get lockjaw, I thought, so I reached up and managed to remove the barbed wire and hooks before he cast out again. There, I said. The rod seemed lighter in his hands and he cast out his line nice and easy, but this time the bobber stayed still on the water. As time spun out and nothing happened he started giving me sideways glances. My bicycle rode off in search of a new master.
Time to Go
Near the end of his life he said to me, Hank, if I could live this life again, I’d spend all my time happy. Every moment, even the divorces and pink slips and biopsy reports. I figure I’ve spent ninety percent of my life either unhappy or waiting at a traffic light. Which is to say, I said, that you were unhappy ninety percent of your life, since no one’s happy waiting at a red light. As soon as I’d said that I wished I hadn’t, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t hear me anyway. The light had already changed.
Rewilding
There is a stretch of prairie where the cars drive free. Their license plates have long since fallen away and they’ve all become beige. What’s more, their engines have gone solar-powered so they’re quieter and less offensive to the prairie dogs. In the morning the cars idle on the plain, tending their young, but around noon when the sun is high they put the pedal to the medal and drive their carburetors out, scattering scorpions and sending up histories of dust. Some people come to watch them with dreams of driving one home. Day by day their numbers are growing.
The Test
While our children took a test to determine their place in the universe, we parents, having nothing to do, wandered down the hill. We pretended to be unaware of each other though we all went in the same direction. We came to an open field where a concert was in progress which we pretended to appreciate though the music was awful. A man was playing a Nine Inch Nails song on a saxophone with a stone stuck in it. Why doesn’t he just remove the stone? a woman asked and that was all it took. She was our new leader.
The Week of Broken Things
The week of broken things is hard to explain. It started with a cracked decanter followed by the lid to the frying pan and the handle on my mug. After that the vacuum cleaner started sounding strange and then suddenly died and the automatic soap dispenser wouldn’t stop dispensing soap until it was empty and changing the batteries didn’t help. Then things got painful when a tooth was broken followed by a promise and then the week ended with a broken dream. The following week we had to get a lot of new stuff though some of it was irreplaceable.
Ian Willey is an American currently living in Japan. His poems can be found in numerous online journals including Unbroken, Uppagus, and Moon Park Review. His work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
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posted by mark young at 2:29 PM
1 Comments:
Wonderful writing. I only wanted more.
-Patrick Sweeney
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