Idea
William Aarnes


“We might as well kiss,”
his one high-school date offered,
“but don’t get any dumb ideas.”

The woman he called “Mom”
raised him on her own:
“The rat seemed eager as me--
assembled the crib,
painted your room—
but within a year sniffed out
a more attractive idea
and ran with her.”

“You were your father’s idea,”
his birth mother wrote in the email
explaining she’d rather not meet;
“pregnancy changed his mind.”

“Any correlation between marriage
and your idea of marriage,”
his wife of nineteen years
told him in counseling,
“is purely coincidental.”

Now he worries
about his daughter’s fiancé,
who has the habit of exuding,
“You have no idea!”



Inkling
An inkling
has little standing
in court

but in church
when the congregation rises
to stumble its way
through an unfamiliar hymn
an inkling can cause
the woman three pews in front of you
to raise her fingers
to her earlobe
and then turn
to meet your stare.

You’re new to this worship

but have some hope
that if she looks back again
neither the man to her left
nor the girls to her right
will have an inkling
whether you’ve blinked
or winked.

Seated again,
you witness and wait.

The woman leans to whisper
to her taller daughter.
During the prayer
the girl glances back,
an inkling of worry
in her merry eyes.

About the author:
William Aarnes has work forthcoming in FIELD, Weave, and Squalorly.