RICH FURMAN, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Colorado State University. His poetry has been published, or is soon to be published, in Hawai’i Review, Black Bear Review, Red Rock Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Penn Review, Old Red Kimono, Colere, Pearl, The Journal of Poetry Therapy, Poetry Motel, and well over 150 poems in nearly 100 literary journals. As of July 2003, he will be moving to Omaha to teach at the School of Social Work at University of Nebraska-Omaha.

                                                                   lucky


Your dad, Marvin, the cartoonist, killed himself. I think it was gas. Years before, he took us to the beach, played with us in the sand, gave us freedom when we wanted it and love when we needed it, and streaming kites and our bodies cutting into the waves. We dug for sand crabs with our rusting metal shovels, watched them race across the sand and disappear, leaving tiny air bubble traces. Marvin would stare at bubbles exploding through the muddy wake and tell us how lucky we were to be young, with lives as smooth as the worn bottles bits he dug from near the fading waves' foam. He held them in his palm, tossed them into the air, and smiled, so young and so lucky. He bought us lemonade from the stand where teens wore embarrassed red, blue and yellow polyester uniforms, matching hats. I remember years later, pulling off those idiot flags in the station wagon of another parent's car. After your father succumbed the towering swells of his sadness, your sister grew hundreds of pimples, and then went insane. I too grew pimples. So many I would stand before the mirror, and just squeeze my face, watch dull green coat the glass. I did not quite go insane, but for a year ran home each day and thought about Marvin. Wondered how close were our pains, as the mocking laugher of girls branded me clown face, pointing at the tan cream I used to cover the pimple and craters. Fortunately, they left within a year, replaced by muscles and width. But Marvin is still dead and your sister went insane and you have disappeared like the sand crabs I can no longer find.

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Copyright © 2003 Rich Furman