Goddess of Space and Time Negotiations

I write because Bill Spetch traded dad a horse for a sack of potatoes, because Mrs. Mitchell asked how mother was expecting to make jelly roll with cold eggs, because Cousin Phyllis rode in the back of the pickup ready to jump if Henry went in the ditch, because Randy Travis bought my brother breakfast in South Dakota, because Cousin Carol gave me a grocery bag of old bras when I was twelve, because the summer all my school friends went by train to the World's Fair in Montreal I was dusting shelves at Hardacre's Grocery.

PS - the moose and I are older now.

"Goddess" won an honourable mention in the Ontario Poetry Society's "Ultra Best Short Verse Contest" and was published in The Ultra Best Short Verse: A Canadian Anthology of Poetry compiled by George Swede and published by Beret Days Press in March 2013.

Goddess of Space and Time Negotiations

Please, Madame, do you trade?
A bit of this, for some of that?
Perhaps a year of Law and Order re-runs
for two hours in 1970? The North Van
Country Club. His head thrown back, laughing.
A twist of cigarillo smoke drifting
towards the disco ball.
And me, in the yellow dress.