Author: Paula Bonnell
Paula Bonnell’s poems have been published nationally and internationally. She is a PEN New England Discovery writer, the author of Airs & Voices and three other collections of poems, as well as essays and book reviews in The Christian Science Monitor and other major newspapers.
TRANSACTION
He handed me a small object the shape of a brick, but smaller. It could have been a box, I don’t know. It was heavy. I asked him, “Is the sadness in it?” “Is it closed?” “Will it leak?” He looked back at me, steadily, attentively. But he said nothing.
ETIQUETTE
Would it be more polite to return the loan of tulips before their life of bloom waned? or would it show an apter appreciation of the favor to enjoy them to the end? While I was debating this question and putting one or another of them into the compost, the pink-and-white tulip made certain yellow …