ShuffleBy Debbie Fox
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Having lost her only child
Hope
she was bereft.
Nothing to do but mope.
Her boyfriend, a dope
dealer kept her
rolling in dough.
She chose to knead it
bake a few cookies
and mope.
Nope, he admonished.
It’s not what happens
It’s how you react.
She stabbed him with a
blade of grass.
He rolled his eyes.
She wasn’t very sharp.
Forget hope! Forget strife!
Shuffle the deck!
Rearrange your life!
Rearranging
his love letters
around the stove’s burner
she turned the heat
past Maximum to
Hotter Than Sex.
All reduced to ashes.
Hope is gone! he screamed
on the way out.
So is John! she shrieked.
You’re toast in the bon
fire.
Alone
with her hardscrabble life
playing thought-Scrabble
as his relentless words
ricocheted
around her skull.
Shuffling the letters on
the imaginary board
that held the wearisome word
m o p e,
she watched it miraculously mutate
into the erudite
p o e m
like a tadpole growing legs.
Nevertheless she scored no extra points.
The valuable letters were all missing.
She had no Q
She had no Z
And she had
clearly
misplaced
her
ex-
Hope
she was bereft.
Nothing to do but mope.
Her boyfriend, a dope
dealer kept her
rolling in dough.
She chose to knead it
bake a few cookies
and mope.
Nope, he admonished.
It’s not what happens
It’s how you react.
She stabbed him with a
blade of grass.
He rolled his eyes.
She wasn’t very sharp.
Forget hope! Forget strife!
Shuffle the deck!
Rearrange your life!
Rearranging
his love letters
around the stove’s burner
she turned the heat
past Maximum to
Hotter Than Sex.
All reduced to ashes.
Hope is gone! he screamed
on the way out.
So is John! she shrieked.
You’re toast in the bon
fire.
Alone
with her hardscrabble life
playing thought-Scrabble
as his relentless words
ricocheted
around her skull.
Shuffling the letters on
the imaginary board
that held the wearisome word
m o p e,
she watched it miraculously mutate
into the erudite
p o e m
like a tadpole growing legs.
Nevertheless she scored no extra points.
The valuable letters were all missing.
She had no Q
She had no Z
And she had
clearly
misplaced
her
ex-
Debbie Fox's first novel, The Jazz Funeral, is being pitched to publishers by her literary agent, and she is extremely gifted at procrastinating while writing her second novel. Her poem, She Fell Hard, was published in the Winter 2018 issue by October Hill magazine, and she was runner up in 3 poetry contests. Her creative non-fiction piece, Shoes, was published by Existere Journal of Arts & Literature. Over the course of her advertising career, she has filmed and recorded Justin Trudeau, Catherine O’Hara, Grace Jones, Howie Mandel, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy and Olympic ice dancer Tessa Virtue. She lives in Toronto on a horse farm and she is addicted to dance – five classes a week of ballet, ballroom and Latin!