In one of the labyrinthine chambers of the library a few avid readers, mostly geriatrics in floral patterned shirts and a few youngsters with black bags beneath their eyes and chomped on pens in their hands, gathered around the large oak tables to listen to literary magazine editors read poetry from their summer issues, titled things like Blue Mornings or Cosmopolitan Nationalism or Vagina Monograms.

            “This is one of the most gorgeous pieces of writing. Present company excluded, she is the most brilliant poet,” the editor said in a pseudo-British accent. She adjusted the square frames riding the tip of her nose a mere centimeter and pushed a wad of clinging phlegm to the front of her tongue, pressing the oyster of mucus against the back of her teeth until there was complete silence in the room.

                       “Stuff from the Dusty Corner,” she began.

           I once plagiarized a poem that said—

           If I pieced together a triangle

           Out of the letter ‘R’

           Then is that something you want?

           How about a fruitcake made out of

           Seaweed Salad?

           The Ocean Fish can be as Redundant

           As Goodbye—

           But my teacher just wrote “Well done.”

            “Thank you,” she ended.

            The octogenarians clapped. The hipsters snapped. One woman dropped her pamphlet.

            The editor returned to her seat and up to the podium marched another titan of the literary circle.

                       Spontaneous poetry is like a 

           Firecracker in your pants, 

           Lit, as a prank for your friends,

           Who will visit you in the 

           Emergency room on the first floor, 

           But more confusing, cancerous—

           Coitus interruptus.

            “Thank you.”

            More applause.

            So I decided to piece together a three-sided figure made of the eighteenth letter and lit sparks around the firecracker shoved down my pants until I quickly got:

                       Gefilte fish swam upstream through the

           Gelatinous valley and past the shadows cast by carrot and 

           Celery hills when it was

           Speared by the trident of the shining knight, 

           Sheine keit, Grandma corrected.

           Laying Gefilte fish onto the Fleishech Plateau, shining knight,

           Sheine Keit

           Okay sheine keit raised his trident, but suddenly the horse, 

           Radish, with its spiky, wild, dripping mane, galloped in and 

           Trampled Gefilte fish.

            The girl next to me who was dressed like a librarian (but was definitely not a librarian because she was too beautiful that it would have been bordering cliché fantasy, though not for me because all the librarians I knew were very wrinkly) glanced at my paper and asked “What,” but paused to clear her throat, “are you writing?”

            “Yes.”

            “No, I meant what are you writing?”

           “Oh. Poetry?”

            “May I read it?”

            I slid the page across the table. She read of Sheine Keit spearing Gefilte Fish and made a face, one similar to that of a person who eats gefilte fish for the first time and expects it to taste much like fish or for the spackling of horseradish to taste much like radish.

            “Interesting?” 

           The next editor read from a thematic issue: You Can Bring a Horse to Water.

Noah Lederman is completing a narrative nonfiction book, My Grandparents’ Holocaust. View his blog at www.mygrandparentsholocaust.blogspot.com. He work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Cape Cod Times, Eastern Surf Magazine, Teachers Network: Professional Teachers Handbook, as well as other publications.