Sudden Surprise

My heart leaped when I saw my beloved Jack this morning. He looked so much better than last night, his face clear, his eyes bright. He wasn't even breathing oxygen. So when he told me that the doctor would be here in an hour or so to discuss what next, I assumed he meant what further steps the doctor would take to make Jack well. Whatever the doctor had done so far certainly seemed to work.

At the appointed time, four doctors piled in, big guys and tall. They filled the room. They spoke carefully about Jack's options, not at all what I thought. "Hospice care" seemed to be the key word; they used it over and over. I only dimly knew what they meant, but eventually I understood: a place where Jack could live until he died, up to six months or so, they thought. A place where medical people would work to make him comfortable, not well. His body could no longer "do" well.

I'm a person who rarely cries, and certainly not in public, but when I finally understood, I couldn't contain my well of tears nor could I cry inconspicuously.  My shoulders shook with sobs. 

The sudden silence in the room didn't last long. A doctor in a black suit handed me the red box of white tissues, and I took one. The discussion continued, and I calmed myself, but I still shook inside when I left to go home.

from: a JoLt of CoFFeY 

 An Intermittent Newsletter

by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net

Want me to take you off this mailing list? 

Reply and write REMOVE in the subject line.

Tuna Special

Tuna Special

I'm pretty good at imagining forms of death for myself--homicidal, suicidal, natural--but today I read about an actual passing that had never occurred to me: being cooked to death in a commercial oven with six tons of tuna. 

Can you imagine what that would be like, surrounded by all that smelly tuna flesh, packed tight, in utter darkness, and the heat rising? 

Oh, let's not even go there.

All Must Have Prizes

Folks, I ain't never seen nothing like this. Forty, that is four oh, people responded to my request for "A Little Help" with a title for my poem (see below).

And what titles! Long ones, short ones, literal ones, casual ones, dozens of them. What a treat, being offered so many options!  

As the Dodo said, "EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes."

So here are the winners.

For the LONGEST TITLE:

Deirdre Evans with 21 words:  "If You Can't Be with the One You Love, Wait Until She's Out of Sight to Love the One You're With"

LONGEST TITLE RUNNER-UP: 

David Loyd with 16 words: "She told Jack how lucky he was to know you and Jack said, Indeed I am!"

SHORTEST TITLE: A four-way tie: 

Mindy Phillips Lawrence "Betrayal"  

Lenore Garside  "Surprise"  

Ralph Stephenson "Path" 

Shirley Roe "Goodbye"

MOST TITLES:

Ralph Stephenson with nine:  "Pink Noise" or "Hearing Aid" or "Hearing Loss" or "Hearing Pink" or "Sashay in Black" or "Pink 'n Black" or "Crossed Line" or "Pink Diversion" or "Path"

MOST TITLES RUNNER UP:

David Loyd WITH 6: "She asked about you" or "She wondered if you were a daughter visiting" or "She liked your hat" or "She liked your dress" or "She asked what gym you went to because you seemed so vibrant" or "She told Jack how lucky he was to know you and Jack said, Indeed I am!"

NOTABLE TITLES:

Jack Loscutoff, "Come In, Rangoon"

Linda Metcalf "The OTher WOman" 

Steven Evans "Fickle Pickle"

Therese M. Guy "Scoundrel Lover"

MUSICAL TITLE:

Sue Loyd, the Rolling Stones: "Mixed Emotions"

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loNey3n6uuE

TITLES USING PINK, a five-way tie:

Michael Mead  "Pink Trumps Black"

Barbara Lanning "Pink Pussy Wins"

Mark Loscutoff "Pink Shorts"

Ruth Firestone "Beware Pink Shorts"

Ralph Stephenson with 4:  "Pink Noise" or "Hearing Pink" or  "Pink 'n Black" or  "Pink Diversion"

TITLES USING "WOMAN" OR "WOMEN", a four-way tie:

Glenda K Miller Fralin "That Other Woman"

LaNelma Johnson  "Another Woman" 

Lynne Shrum "Other Women" & omit last 3 words and replace with "her"

Michael Skau "This Woman"

TITLES USING "KISS":

Karen Kessler  "The Good-bye Kiss"

LaNelma Johnson "The Last Kiss"

Mark Sanders "Goodbye Kiss"

Sally Deskins "Good-bye Kiss"

TITLES USING "LOOK BACK"

Robert Roth "Never Look Back"

Sharon Ahrens "Don't Look Back"

Denise Cassino "Never Look Back"

BEST PIECE OF ADVICE:

Lynda Schor: Remove caps in "That Other Woman." Too obvious.

ALSO SAVORY:

Al Kammerer "Picture This"

Carolyn R Scheidies "Second Glance" 

Charlotte Endorf "A Bittersweet Farewell"

Connie Crow "Too Good Ears"

Dennis Timothy "A Dead Romance"

Heidi Prairiesong Hermanson I want to along the lines of "A Surprise" except the ending IS a surprise and you don't want to let that out. 

Laura Cooper "In Public View"

Leela Bruner "Out of SIght, Out of Mind, Out of Control"

Margaret Fieland "Over my Shoulder"

TITLE SHY (EMAILS BUT NO TITLES):

Barbara Whitelock

Brenda Moravek

Carole Rosenthal

Connie Spittler

George Martin

Greg Kosmicki

Miriam Ben-Yaacov

Here's my unnamed poem again, 

if you wish to reconsider it.

Our good-bye kiss: passionate, though public

(Near a statuesque woman in pink shorts).

I sashayed down the long walk to my car,

felt his eyes caress my splendid black hat,

my long swaying dress, my vibrant body.

Behind me, he spoke.

I pivoted to reply, only to catch his

conversation with That Other Woman.

A Little Help

Help! I need a title for this poem. What do you think?

Our good-bye kiss: passionate, though public
(Near a statuesque woman in pink shorts).
I sashayed down the long walk to my car,
felt his eyes caress my splendid black hat,
my long swaying dress, my vibrant body.
Behind me, he spoke.
I pivoted to reply, only to catch his
conversation with that other woman.

New Poem

Together we sat on a bench outside Crown Pointe 

surrounded by evening's warmth 

by chattering reps of our generation, 

and his arm, nonchalant around my shoulders, 

misted my eyes.

Fwd: Thieves, Rascals & Sore Losers

Share: ​ ​

Unexpected Educator

James Walmsley didn't look like a teacher when he came my house to interview me for Omaha Magazine.  He looked young and intense, his dress style too casual to belong to a professor.

But when I read his article, "Marilyn Coffey: Not behaving like she should," I learned something about myself, about my writing, that I hadn't understood.

James wrote that I was known for my "ability to reconcile casual, everyday language with contextually strange words."

That jerked me. I knew that I'd developed a style that rested on casual language, and I knew I made frequent flurries into my thesaurus to find just the right word for what I wanted to say. But I'd never before thought of these words as "contextually strange." 

What an illuminating concept!

Thanks, Prof.  

To read what else James Walmsley wrote, go to

http://omahamagazine.com/2015/05/marilyn-coffey/