MFA Ave.

(Flash Fiction)

(Appears in Meetinghouse Magazine. Volume 5. 2025.)

I took my poem to the mechanic today. Was gonna get an oil change. Simple, I thought—a minor monthly adjustment. Standing in the drafty lobby, I looked out the window onto the busy street (MFA Avenue). At the other poems parked at different angles alongside the building, awaiting attention. Student poets sat in the grass sunning themselves, lounging, looking contemplative. Me? I reclined in the air-conditioned lobby, reading Bukowski.

After a while, a woman wearing a wig and thick glasses approached with a clipboard in her hand. Across my page was a rubric of runny smears and blotchy black sharpie stains. Amendments, adjustments, alterations in orange and squiggles in pencil. Her diagnosis of my problem, they covered the page, obscuring what I’d written. She shrugged and looked at me like she just hated giving bad news. I just hate giving bad news, she said. But you’re lucky you came in today. Because I don’t see you driving this poem much longer. Apparently, I need a new meter, and my iambs, are loose, and my spondees are spongey. My trochees are tripping over themselves, my diction’s disastrous, my meter’s monotonous. Nearing the end of the list, she added, your similes are falling apart like an old house. Also, she said, you should refrain from refrains. Your poems try too hard to be absurd, she said, and then she pointed to an example: A polar bear on roller skates regrets mistakes he forgets to make. Too self-conscious, she said, shaking her head—like song lyrics or something. That’s not poetry, she said. You need something simple and clean, something pristine. Like William Carlos Williams. I smiled and asked, “Like ‘Uses of Poetry?”

“Of course not. Something more like ‘Pastoral’ or ‘This is Just to Say.’ Leave that complicated stuff to those guys in the grass,” she said, pointing outside.

I nodded, looking at the floor, embarrassed, feeling like I was ten again. Then she gave me a wave (was it a valediction?), and then she wandered back to her office. I sat back down in that lobby. I thought, if this poem’s not gonna get me home, I’d better call somebody…