We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
floating through impressionist water lilies.


The blended blue and green strokes are slowly being caked
in gooey psychedelic yellow and pink ooze,


before Lucy starts to dance a waltz on their petals.
The yellow and green cellophane water lily flowers


sway, rippling the water with bright, crystal lines of white.
Our yellow submarine drifts under a bridge


past tall rockinghorse people.
I wave and politely refuse their offerings of marshmallow pies.


They look too similar to Alice B. Toklas' brownies.


Instead, I walk over to Monet and ask if he's thought about
painting Rouen Cathedral lately.


I love water lilies, but cathedrals have always been more my thing.
He says he painted those yesterday.


He shows me one, and as I stare in awe,
I say that, in the future, where I'm from,
his paintings are definitely here to stay.


I've never seen anything like them in all my life.
I know I'll never lose affection for impressionism.


Then, Monet is sucked up into a whirlpool of
solid-colored cubes and squares and signed urinals.


I wave goodbye as the yellow submarine floats me
towards a wall of paint splotches and lines.


A smoking pipe sticks out of the ground,
but somehow I know that it's not really a pipe.
Maybe that's because it's in a sea of melting clocks.


There's a little boy frozen in black-and-white space holding a hand grenade
on a flat, solid wall of green grass.


I wave, and his face contorts in anger.
Marilyn smiles as I pass the Cambell's soup factory.


Honestly, her lipstick and eyeliner scare me.
I miss Monet and his umbrella lady.


The marmalade skies morph in front of my eyes--
they're no longer a rich orange color,


but instead they're white, and the word SKY
is simply written across them in 48pt. Times New Roman font.


One of my fellow submarine passengers--
I hadn't noticed him before--
explains that we're supposed to use our imaginations
and to picture the sky the way we personally relate to it.


I don't quite buy it.
I really miss Monet now.


But in an instant, a lady starts to float away from our yellow submarine.
"I relate better to life from a cruise ship," she says.
And off she goes.


Then, one by one, everyone floats away.
One guy's on a dolphin,


someone else has a warship, and suddenly
the Cambell's soup factory explodes as a torpedo hits it.


Some other guy rides off on a water horse,
my best friend goes off with some Italian guy on a speed boat.


I look around--
there's only one guy left on the yellow submarine.


We shrug and smile at each other,
turning the wheel back towards our favorite impressionist water lilies.


As we drift back towards marmalade skies, I wonder
about the other forty-two lonely passengers.


Maybe they're all with multi-colored Marilyn
or stuck eating tomato soup for life.


They'll find their own ways, I guess.
After all, wasn't that why they left?

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Ideas for Sale

The other day,
I found a booth of ''Ideas for Sale''
at a flea market.

I bought a dozen for twenty bucks.
They were new, too.
I never buy second-hand ideas
because second-hand ideas always smell,
and they always have stains.

I thought it was a pretty good deal--
only twenty bucks for twelve ideas--
You know ideas these days,
they're rare, so they usually have to be expensive.

Actually, I started wondering if they were really refurbished ideas.
Maybe they're refurbished
and there's really some defect
or they don't work at all.
If it turns out
that my new ideas are broken,
I'll take them back to the idea stand and get a refund.

Either way,
I bought a dozen ideas for twenty bucks the other day.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Snow White's Cujo

"Get out," you say.
You smother me with your cold green eyes
and point to the door and my suitcase.

"Leave now."  Your voice bites.
It crouches behind your tongue
and leaps out in a wave of shouting.

Your lipstick is bright red,
the color of Snow White's apple.
For a moment, you remind me of Cujo.

You snarl.
Your wet fur rises on end.
You crouch to attack.

You inch forward.
The blood drips off your fur
and onto the kitchen floor.

"I'm leaving."
It's not as if I care to stay here.
I never liked animals much anyways.


 © 2015   Abby Danfora

Some Guy in the Park

There's some guy in the park.
The pigeons throw bread at him sometimes,
but then he poops on their feet
and they flap him away with their wings.

Sometimes, when he's really hungry,
he'll follow unsuspecting pigeons around
and shout until they give him food.
He's a real creeper.

Still, he's not nearly as bad as the lady in my kitchen.
She's been there for years.
I don't set traps anymore, though.
I've learned to leave her alone ever since she bit me.

Every evening,
I find her crawling on the dirty dishes.
Mornings, I come downstairs
and find teethmarks in the bread I use for toast.

I've been thinking,
maybe I should take her to the park
to meet the weird pigeon-chaser guy.
Maybe they'll hit it off.

At least it would get her out of my bread.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

My Bucket List

Some people make a bucket list
when they turn fifty or fifty-five.
I myself have a lot of buckets stored away
in various places,
and here is a list of them,
even though I'm only eighteen.

I have a wooden bucket--
it has worm holes,
smells like earthy rotten wood.
Grandma gave it to me years ago.
I think I used it once to carry crisp green apples back from an orchard in Charlottesville
and then left it in the backyard and forgot it was there.

I also have a rusty tin bucket.
It's rusted.  It's covered in yellow rust.
I use it to throw at the neighbor's fat hoodlum cat.
It cut my hand once and I got stitches and a jagged scar shaped like Belgium.

There's another bucket, a pail,
a baby bucket,
sitting on the windowsill,
growing some carnations--red ones,
just like the ones in the film Jean de Florette.

You haven't seen Jean de Florette?
Go watch it, and next time you see me,
we'll have something to talk about
other than how awful your week was.

My favorite bucket
is an ivory bucket.
It's not rusty or rotten, and
it's never been used, never will be--Paul brought it back from India
and I keep it on a shelf with my Italian flag and German martini glass

I also have a bucket
that's a family heirloom.
Willy Wonka would say
"it smells like old people."
I imagine it also smells like cat, though--
my cat sleeps in it all day,
except when she's eating or chasing her tail.
I guess that means my heirloom bucket smells like old cat.
Delish

I have one last bucket--
it's buried in Canterbury.
Nevermind, that's Becket.
Thomas Becket.
Stupid typo.
My real last bucket I gave to
a handsome boy who took me
on my first date,
and he sent it back empty with some break-up note crumpled in the bottom,
riddled with spelling errors.
I told myself he was too illiterate anyways.

I had polished it, filled it with chocolate,
his birthday was right after Lent ended,
and he'd gone off with some other girl
who smoked green cigarettes
and wore lipstick rouge
and drank pink ladies
and danced a perpetual two-step whenever she walked
(while I clambered around in pointe shoes,
twisting ankles and breaking toes),
he'd gone off with her--
he even gave her some of my chocolate for her birthday.

It's my bathroom waste bucket.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora

To Do List

Starred items are most urgent--more *'s = more urgent

finish 3 biogenetics assignments*

make blog post**

work on optional group project for envi sci*

eradicate worldwide terrorism threat

fix guitar string***

send photo for NCSSM yearbook*

draw/paint something***

finish History dispute*

take biogenetics final exam

send NCSSM graduation invitations*

find job**

find roomate***

write thank you cards*

message dance teacher about lessons*

watch AHS and SN***

clean Subaru*

buy new bathing suit**

find cure for cancer*

search Elance

make dinner reservations*

book flight for AADP*

bake cookies for party**

sell junk*

make PayPal account*

fix earbuds**

enter My Coke Rewards codes

clean inbox***

set up cell phone*

get new pointe shoes**

clean

     cat's room*****

     front room

     office*

     halls

     bathroom

     kitchen*

     room**

fill out immunization form for AADP*

read and review books**

return awful Netflix DVD that's been on the table for months********

earn Swagbucks

fix laptop*

sell photography on stock photo site**

review French**********

check email

find/return NCSSM textbooks*

Checkout 51

do laundry**

make last will and testament*****

drive on interstate**

get organized

Made in China

© 2015 Abby Danfora photography

"What were you thinking?" she asked. "Why did you do it?  What could you possibly have been thinking?"

She towered over me in her utilitarian, mass-produced chair, which was probably made in China over a decade ago.

"What would your parents say?  Your father?  What will he do when--"

I thought about the concert I was going to with my best friend later this afternoon.  We'd get our photographs signed after the show, maybe talk to the singers, go get fat on pizza and junk after.  We'd come home at 2 a.m., sleep 'til noon the next day, go out and shoot some hoops maybe.

"Are you even listening?"

I looked up.

"I wasn't thinking," I said.  "I'm sorry."

She looked intensely at me, pursed her lips and sighed.  Her eyes met her folded hands in her lap.

After a moment, she got up and pushed her utilitarian chair back under her desk.

She waved an arm down the empty school hall.

"Stay out of trouble," she said.  "Go on, get outta here."

I turned and escaped past the dark empty classrooms and into the fresh sun.

 © 2015   Abby Danfora