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Unstuck in Time with Kurt Vonnegut, Vol

Knoxville Knonsequiturs

Transfixed by the Drive to Work

A Safe, Well-Lighted Place

Short Takes

The Question

I-Sore on I-40

Knoxvillian Thoughts

Laurel Avenue

by Jeff Callahan

In the weekend-crowded mediocre chain store/restaurant,
the airport motif clocks lurch toward millennium in seven languages.

Two booths down, beneath a clutter of ferns and beveled glass,
a sunburned, harried, frankly corpulent mother of three

holds a cellular phone to her ear, utters monosyllables of assent
just often enough to suggest interest—though it's clearly feigned;

she yawns, stifles a yawn, stares glumly at her plate of shrimp
as her youngest, about four, with a perfect inverted bowl

of strawberry blond hair, tries desperately to get her attention.
He keeps tugging at her arm and moaning until, roused from the spell

of digital commerce, she finally has enough, leans for balance
against her daughter, and swats him once, sharply, atop the head.

Humiliated, the boy slumps against the booth's black leatherette,
wilts visibly as if plunged intro tropical swelter, sighs, self-exhausted,

gnaws his drummies in a funk, until mom blurts "What" loudly
into the receiver—though she's looking straight at him—and again,

adamantly, "What?", as a wave of regression sweeps his face
and he, paralyzed, torn, helpless, bows his head and begins to cry...

(Jeff Callahan teaches English and creative writing in Knoxville, where he lives with his wife and children. His poems have appeared in such publications as the Asheville Poetry Review, The Denver Quarterly, and New Millennium Writings, as well as the anthologies Homeworks: A Book of Tennessee Writers and All Around Us: Poems From the Valley.)