top of page

Notion

Bart Edelman

Mom cleared her throat,

Took a deep breath,

Then calmly spoke.

The best way to handle this situation,

Requires a blowtorch, a spear gun,

Imported cigars from Havana,

And a steady case of nerves—

Not necessarily in that order.

We were about to murder a notion,

Carried around with us since birth,

Bury it in the backyard,

Where death became a sorrow

When the time came due—

And this, certainly, was the moment.

​

My brother, Kyle, recited scripture,

Sister Kaye twiddled her fingers,

I snapped a few family photos,

And Dad, of course, played the lute,

He’d been fiddling with since Easter.

Mom held the blowtorch in her right hand,

While the left grasped the spear gun.

We all smoked some tasty Cubans,

Except Kaye, who puffed a candy stogie,

Because she was only nine years old.

As for the steady case of nerves,

We’d been through this drill before,

And knew how to handle ourselves.

Regarding the offending notion,

It was put to rest that night—

Never mentioned again.

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include: Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), and more. He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks. He lives in Pasadena, California.
bottom of page