Shifty
Meininger
by
Robert Nordstrom
It
all starts with a doodle,
always
a doodle,
triangles
with convex
or
concave supports
burdened
beneath the weight of
blackened-in
circles
whose
imperfect circumferences
grow
larger and larger
as
the hand tries to
steady
the mind until
—voila—there’s
an eye, a nose, or
even,
just now, a marble and
—voila
again—Shifty Meininger,
the
best shot on the playground,
his
skinny as a doodle ten-year-old self
leaning
back, right foot cut
inward
and inching up
to
the scratch I scratched
with
a stick in the dirt,
left
eye shut,
right
one squinting
on
my prize cat’s eye boulder,
holding
that shiny silver steely
I’ve
coveted since it spilled out
of
his bag delicately between
thumb
and finger finger,
and
I’m thinking
what
kind of fool puts up
his
prize cat’s eye boulder against
a
guy named Shifty
as
he slides his hand
forward
and back
forward
and back and
—voila—lets
it fly
true,
too true, splitting
my
cat’s eye right in half
in
an odd kind of Sunday School justice
that
makes me think of
wise
old King Solomon
and
how I should have told Shifty
as
he was eying up my cat’s eye:
Stop,
just take it, go on take it,
it’s
yours.
~ Originally published in Peninsula
Pulse
