by Lara Dolphin

TRADER JOE’S CRUNCHY SALTED PEANUT BUTTER WITH FLAX AND CHIA SEEDS MANIFESTO

Start with creamy, unfutzed-around-with peanut butter.

Then, add a dash of sea salt.

Next, send to Saskatchewan for flax seeds,

so your peanut butter has the Omega-3

content of wild Alaskan salmon. Be sure to visit Ecuador

to collect chia seeds because nothing says “yum”

like black flecks in your peanut butter. Finally, toss in

chopped up raw peanuts to make the product impossible

to spread without ripping a hole in your bread.

Now step back–you’ve turned a naturally delicious product

into some crazy epicurean experiment. The moral of the story:

keep things simple like good old-fashioned peanut butter.

 

THE DISCOMMODED TENANT

Jeff, a lapsed Catholic

and husband to your niece,

talked her into going to Cabo

instead of renewing your lease.

So they made your plot a double decker

digging you another four feet deep.

Then they stuck some bastard above you

for his eternal sleep.

No one remembers the trick where you wrote

English and Chinese with a pen in each hand

or that you collected gardening catalogs and souvenir spoons

or once fronted a rock and roll band.

Your Q score has plunged;

My the time how it’s flown.

Death’s not a team building sport.

You’re in it alone.

************

Lara Dolphin enjoys writing poetry and fiction and occasionally does something reckless like participate in NaNoWriMo. With the help of her husband and four children, she operates a Little Free Library on the front lawn of their rural Pennsylvania home in an effort to encourage a love of reading and foster a sense of community. A recovering attorney, she divides her time between looking for lost Legos and breaking up pool noodle related combat. Her work appears online and in print. She currently serves on the staff of Every Day Fiction.