Ian Willey

Loanword

When you say goodbye to someone you’ll never see again it always starts to rain. It doesn’t come down in buckets. That only happens in movies. What you get is a few drops on the windshield, enough to make you almost turn on the wipers. But that would only leave streaks. Before you know it the rain stops though the clouds remain heavy. One cloud sinks to earth where it settles on the ground like an enormous cocoon. There’s a word for that kind of cloud, borrowed from another language. I always forget it. It has a long oh sound.



A Professor Retires

The professor emerged from his bathysphere to find the world submerged in darkness. Inside his bathysphere had been dark too, to be sure, but at least the console with its buttons and sundry monitors had provided illumination and diversion. Here there were only people walking about carrying kitchen knives to illuminate the way. Everyone kept their distance from everyone else. And the light reflected by the knives came from—where exactly? A research question began to take shape, pressing down on his dread like the weight of the sea. Might as well, he thought. There was no going back.



Power Lines

The people woke up to discover they’d been pruned. Some were missing digits, some whole limbs. The official explanation was that it was for their own good. Their branches were growing awry, getting too close to the power lines. For a while they had to get used to their limitations. Those who knew what it was like, who could’ve said something sharp, reached out to help them. The people saw themselves in a new light. They also looked up and for the first time noticed the power lines. What a mess, they thought, as their pain grew into something new.



Botched Order

My mission to correct a centuries-old problem took me to the heart of Emerald City and an interview with the Wizard himself. Great Oz, I said, a hamburger contains no ham; the ham and the burg were not meant to be divided since it derives from a place name: Hamburg. Thus, burger should mean people from a town rather than a generic reference to any food product between buns. The Wizard replied, for here or to go? I had to choose. To go, I said. When I got back I saw my burger had mayonnaise. Then I knew I’d failed.



Higher Education

The professor, thin as the wind, leans against the lectern and mumbles a string of arcane words in a dead language. He doesn’t want to be there. The students, slumped in their chairs, gaze into their palms to check the progress of their lifelines. Some smile; some frown. They don’t want to be there. Vincent Van Gogh doesn’t want to be there either, which is fine, because he isn’t. He’s busily trying to paint a cloud with his favorite color, yellow ochre—the color of a sunflower; the color of a wheat field. He has forever to get it right.

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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