The Nun in the Wheelchair

She pushes the little lever forward and moves forward.
She pushes the little lever to the left and turns left.
She pushes the little lever to the right and turns right.
She pushes the little lever backward and moves backward.
She pushes the little lever back and forth
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
And suddenly she stiffens, stares heavenward, and shouts “Ecce venio!”

Beast

As I slept my father searched my scalp
…..for the number he was afraid to find.

Luckily, he tells me, the number he found
…..was nine hundred ninety-nine.

————

Being a child of the seventies, Norman Minnick has what some consider an irrational fear of being crushed by a falling anvil or grand piano, or running along and realizing that there is no ground beneath him. His poetry collections are To Taste the Water (winner of the First Series Award from Mid-List Press) and Folly (Wind Publications). He is the editor of Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century (White Pine Press) and Work Toward Knowing: Beginning with Blake (Kinchafoonee Creek Press).