The Orange
Lisa Newkirk
Smack; Smack; Smack;
went the orange
(left over from unfinished lunch)
her left hand became the baseball glove
and
her incredibly adept right hand grabbed the orange
and threw it back again
and again
and smack, smack, smack,
it went
into the left hand.
this continued while she was supposed to be working,
writing on
the office's typewriter
(a typewriter! could you believe?
what happened to a chicken in every pot,
and a computer in every office?)
smack, smack, smack.
Then she played a new game:
tossing the orange high up into the air
but not so high as to knock loos the styrofoam ceiling panels above
(the orange was dizzy to be so high)
it's ascent curved from an arc to a boomerang loop straight down
to outstretched hands;
the secretary across the way was, if she looked up,
in full view of this scene,
since the door was always open (company policy)
but the secretary never saw the happy orange
flying, flying, flying.
Once it hit the desk and rolled off onto the floor
(the right hand was not always so adept)
then she had to retrieve it;
after a few minutes of embarassed silence
and a silent lecture on what she was there to really do,
the orange sat,
as best as an orange could sit
on the flat surface of a desk.
Then she wrote.
She picked up the orange to get a paper beneath it,
because she needed it for typing.
She moved the orange,
because it was in the way of the big, pink eraser.
Then she started rolling the orange around on the desk,
slowly at first,
sbsentmindedly...
then really, really fast,
as fast as she could between both hands.
hen she juggled it between a box of paper clips
and a bottle of white-out -
the orange was generally having a good time.
And then she decided to eat it.
