Norman Minnick

APPROACHING FIFTY

According to the fortune teller

I was not supposed to be alive

this glorious year.

Now all bets are off.

So what if I tiptoe out to the mailbox

in my underwear? So what

if I let my eyebrows grow untrimmed?

The Cubs won the World Series.

And those shoes

dangling from the power line,

so what if they’re not mine?

I didn’t kill anyone. But

no one needs to know that.

NORMAN MINNICK’s collections of poetry 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). His poetry and essays have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, World Literature Today, The Georgia Review, Poetry International, and The Columbia Review. For more information, visit www.buzzminnick.com.