by Sue Burke

–

“I think you should do it.”

Verity Swoboda looked around for the person talking to her. She heard a deep male voice, right at her elbow, speaking softly and intimately. But she was alone.

“I know you would excel.” At her elbow was a four-foot-high jade plant. Verity looked at it and smiled so wide the corners of her mouth touched the curly brown hair hanging against her cheeks. The plant was talking, and she was delighted. “I can tell you’ve thought this through carefully,” it said.

Most people would worry if a bush spoke to them — unless it was burning, perhaps. Verity believed all life flowed with an energy so universal that anyone deeply in tune with the cosmic process could hear it and understand. She had come to the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory in Milwaukee, where she lived, to voyage beneath its three greenhouse-like domes, to commune with the plants and to see if they could offer her advice on an important career decision.

This place held special vitality, she felt sure. After decades of nurturing plants from around the world, the space within the smooth curves of the Domes vibrated with the wisdom of sunlight and soil. Here, she thought, she could find a mentoring wholeness.

In the Arid Dome, wandering through the only desert in Milwaukee, she found the plants indeed had something to say.

“It would make you happy — and of course it would be good financially, although that’s not the main thing,” said the desert’s spokesplant.

She had been wondering if she should start her own poetry business. She believed Milwaukee might need a poet for hire to spread the magic of verse around the town. Sometimes, in her current job as a medical secretary, she secretly wrote poems for especially ill patients. They got well, and Verity felt certain the focused mental energy from the poems helped them. She wanted to write poetry full-time to spread its energy to more people — to become the city’s first commercial free-lance poet.

“It will be good,” said the jade with finality. Suffused with validation, Verity whispered “Thank you” to the bush.

Across the Arid Dome, near the oasis, a father talked with his daughter about her plans to change her college major from comparative mythology to games-theory economics. Although he spoke softly, his baritone voice rose to the top of the tall greenhouse. The dome, in a trick of acoustics, gathered the sound and aimed it at a certain spot — in this case occupied by a jade plant.

“I think your mother will approve, too,” the jade plant said. But Verity was already gone.

Within a week, she had opened a little storefront on Kinnickinnic Avenue in the revitalized old neighborhood of Bay View. She picked out a hundred-year-old brick building, spurning shiny new office buildings in the suburbs, so she could connect with the generations that had passed through Bay View before. She imagined Gibson Girls in flowing skirts, flappers with rouged cheeks, and men in zoot suits pausing on the stoop to see what was in the store now.

She turned the office into a space to enable poetry. She moved in a pair of velvet wingback armchairs, hung lace curtains, and set up bookcases to display chapbooks written by favorite fellow poets, and knickknacks of unicorns and crystals.

In the window she placed a wise-looking jade plant to watch the new and old passers-by on Kinnickinnic Avenue. The plant never talked — sometimes Verity stopped and listened to see if it would — yet it provided a comforting presence as she waited for customers.

She hung a sign reading “Rhyme Time — Poetry to Go. No Verse Too Terse” next to the plant in the window. Verity bought a fax machine, an ADSL line, some rhyming dictionaries, and a supply of top-quality cotton-bond paper. She was in business.

She spent her first few days composing advertising poems and placing them in local publications:

a snowflake will land

but will not melt with summer.

A jewel to keep

Rhyme Time — Poetry to Go. Personalized verse:

the perfect gift for any occasion. Call 555-6338

And she wrote:

when telephones ring

we know what we should say

as our first word

Rhyme Time — Poetry to Go. The right words, traditional or free verse,

for your business and personal needs. Call 555-6338

The advertising departments accepted the ads with raised eyebrows, but her checks cleared, so the ads ran.

Three days after the ads appeared, the phone jingled. “I saw your ad for, ah, poetry in the Business Journal,” said a man who seemed to be repressing laughter. “How much would it cost to get something for a buddy here in the office for his birthday?”

This was the moment Verity had been waiting for. She could make her poetry connect to a real-life request. She sized up the voice: This man channeled his emotions through humor. “Are you looking for something that would rib him a little bit?” she said. “Do you want something to make him and your co-workers laugh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “How did you guess that?”

“Poets can just sense these things,” Verity said sincerely. “Tell me about him. What sorts of things can you rib him about?” The caller had some ideas: thinning red hair, the photos of his children that he plastered all over his cubicle, his ability to fix the copy machine. This would be easy. “How about a limerick? I can send it to you by this afternoon.”

It was a deal. She had it written in a half-hour:

When the copier’s down, we know who to call.

When we want to see children, we look at his wall.

The question we share

Is concerning his hair —

Will he answer to “Red” even after the fall?

The customer loved it, and the check arrived before the end of the week. Verity posted a framed copy of her first check near her desk. She was on her way to success.

At first her ads generated more calls from newspaper and television reporters than from paying customers. She charmed them by turning out little triolets and rondelets for them off the top of her head.

We’ll bring you news.

You want to know the top events?

We’ll bring you news.

We hope that we’re the one you choose.

We’ll work for you with diligence

And follow every consequence.

We’ll bring you news!

Work trickled in, then poured in. Verity found herself searching for rhymes with “viaduct,” composing odes to Highway 100, and expressing the ineffable flavor of Milwaukee Brewer stadium brats drenched in red sauce. Advertising agencies signed her up as a consultant. A courier arrived one day with a purchase order for her to write something celebrating an amber all-malt beer, bearing a chilled six-pack to help her muse along. Best men, their palms wet as they pondered their wedding dinner duties, asked for clever toasts. Personals advertisers gazed wistfully at her — men’s eyes caressing her bare left ring finger — and sought words that would bring them the partner of their dreams.

Her poems clicked. The notes of praise that accompanied the checks made Verity feel like the world’s luckiest entrepreneur. Repeat customers began settling into her peach-pink velvet armchairs to request more poems. Even some of those reporters who had interviewed her came back to buy. Every day brought someone new.

Ronald Michalowicz came to her office wearing a perfectly-tailored blue pinstripe suit, every hair in place, his tie of the precise pattern and width to fit the cutting edge of fashion.

“I’m looking for something to celebrate taking over a business rival,” he said. He held his hands in a steeple and rubbed his fingers against his lips. His nails were manicured. His cufflink gems sparkled.

“It was an unfriendly buy-out,” he said without expression as Verity probed for poetic material. “Up until the last moment, my partner and I weren’t sure we had enough votes on the board. But now, yes, Frickle’s Pickles controls Mac’s Snacks” — he smiled thinly — “and of course that has to be celebrated with rhyme.”

Verity noticed Mr. Michalowicz’s steady eyes never leaving her. Her thoughts wandered a moment to escape his stare before she remembered her duty to her customer. “Oh. Perhaps a sonnet, something with dignity,” she said.

“Dignity, yes definitely,” he said. “We also want to stress the wisdom of the board members who realized that my partner, Mr. Schraufenhardt, and I would make Mac’s Snacks a bigger, better business. Their decision was key. Most of all, we need this — sonnet, you suggest — before Thursday morning.”

In response to her questions, he told her how pickles and snacks could complement each other in the competitive market for discretionary eating. Her poet’s sense told her he loved making money, not making pickles — and perhaps that was all he loved. That annoyed her.

Still, the customer is always right. She had a paean to profits on his desk by the next day.

Other customers came. A trio of husky young men arrived one fall day, their weight making the floor creak and their shoulders barely fitting within the chair backs. “We need, I guess, something we want to all say together, the whole team, for winning the state football championship,” said one teammate, his head shaved nearly bald.

“Tell me about your victory,” Verity said.

They laughed and nudged each other. “We haven’t won yet,” the young man said. “But we’re going to win the WIAA Division One final. I mean, we’ve got them scouted. They’re weak, just weak, man, at downfield coverage, and I’ve got the receivers, I can just lob the ball first down to first down. All we have to do is run our patterns. We can just stick with the play book and march right up the field, and we’ll blow them out in the first quarter.”

Verity didn’t quite understand what he had said, but she understood what he wanted. “You need a cheer or a chant to celebrate your win.”

He smiled and looked at his teammates, who smiled and nodded at him. “Sure, a cheer, something to let them know what just hit them.”

With a little bit of help from them on some technical jargon, she wrote a suitable victory chant for the Washington High School football team — and its purple and gold school colors — while they waited. They told her when to watch for news of the game, and she promised she would.

It was, apparently, big stuff. The 10 o’clock television newscast opened with a shot of burly, sweaty young men jumping around on a football field chanting:

“Purple to pass and gold to goal,

We took the ball and kept control.

We have the arm, we have the aim.

We put the other team to shame…”

The sports reporter, live from Madison, declared that Milwaukee’s Purgolders had again taken the state championship.

“We came, we won,

We’re Washington!”

The teammates screamed and butted their helmeted heads into each other.

Verity felt fulfilled. These football players weren’t the first team to come to her before a game asking for a victory poem. Poem in hand, they always won. Sometimes parade organizers wanted poems to praise the perfect weather for their step-off, and the weather always dawned fair for them. Store owners wanted crowds for their sales. Arguing mates wanted to renew their passion. They always got what they wanted. They came back and told her. Poetry was powerful.

Smiling, she fell asleep in her bathrobe on the sofa. Life could not get better.

That Monday morning, newspaper under her arm and briefcase in one hand, she slipped her key into her office door. Her sign in the window, “2-for-1 Haiku Sale” glowed in the rosy light. She felt the key push the bolt open. With an almost inaudible click, it slipped into place.

At that same moment, she heard a foot tread on the door stoop behind her. How flattering to have a customer come so early, she thought. She turned, smiling, but her smile faded inwardly when she saw Mr. Michalowicz again.

“I came early because I don’t have much time,” he said as he followed her into her office. He sat in an armchair without taking his coat off.

“A good friend — a business friend — suffered a terrible fire last night,” he said. “His factory was destroyed, all his stock, some of his trucking fleet. All that cooking oil for frying potato chips burned so hot that firefighters couldn’t save anything. I feel so bad for him. He’s worked exceedingly hard to make his company a success. He’ll never recover from this blow. I’d like to send him appropriate condolences.”

“An elegy,” Verity suggested. Mr. Michalowicz stared at her just as he had the last time, smooth-faced, although his voice dripped with sorrow.

“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps … that was a sonnet, I think, you wrote last time? That is such a dignified form. Could you do that again?”

Of course she could, and promptly, of course, so Mr. Michalowicz’s friend could receive it while the fire weighed heaviest on his heart. She emailed it before noon.

Over lunch, she finally had time to look at the morning newspaper. She found no mention of a food processing plant fire. She called a television reporter who was a regular customer. He promised to check with the assignment desk. In about an hour he called back to say there were no factory fires of any kind in the last few days.

No factories burned during the entire ensuing week. Customers came in as before, seeking announcements, remembrances, jokes and ads. One man wanted a verse to persuade a very balky beauty to marry him. He called back two days later to say she said yes.

She thought about that as she waited at a Friday fish fry for her parents. She felt connected to people’s lives, like a link to the universal life force flowing around them. Perhaps she had misunderstood Mr. Michalowicz and missed the news about the fire. She wondered if her poem had eased that poor business friend’s heart.

She sipped an amber beer she once wrote about. Yes, she thought, it did taste like “the glow of a full season of sunshine.” Her smile returned.

Her parents arrived finally. “Traffic was all snarled up,” her father said. “Smoke across the freeway caused a bunch of accidents.”

“Smoke?”

“A factory is on fire,” her mother said. “Block’s Potato Chips, they said on the radio. Five alarms, was that, dear?”

Verity didn’t hear what her father answered. She tried to act normal during dinner, but she kept wondering about the fire. Her mother noticed. “Your job must be so hard. I imagine sitting and thinking must tire you out by the end of the week.”

By Sunday, she felt worse. If a poem could make a marriage, could it start a fire? Could the universal energy of life be used for destruction? She couldn’t sleep. Her food had no flavor, music had no tune, and as a poet, she knew what that meant. Maybe a walk — yes, a nice walk in the nurturing Domes would reconnect her.

Her eyes revived slowly to the bright flowers in the Show Dome. The nectar in the air made breathing a feast. The Tropical Dome full of warbling birds centered her mind. Soon she was standing in the Arid Dome next to that jade plant again.

She felt ready to ask it a question and felt ready for its answer. She deeply feared she could hurt people. What should she do?

“Once you know about it, you can do something,” the plant advised in the raspy voice of an old man. Verity nodded and left, never noticing the old codgers near the oasis talking about garden pests.

On Monday, as the afternoon wore on, she sat at her desk, resolute. She had reviewed her records, going over every poem. As far as she could tell, her poetry had been misused only that once. She could make sure it didn’t happen again.

The door opened. Verity looked up. Michalowicz, of all people, walked in, and she saw him grin briefly as he closed the door behind him.

Verity put on her best professional face. When Michalowicz turned back, he looked sad. “It’s so good to have a place like this to come to in times of sorrow,” he said as he walked up and sat in an armchair. “My partner died.” He steepled his hands again and stared at Verity. “Quite suddenly, just keeled over of a heart attack this weekend.”

“Of course, you’d like a sonnet for that.” Verity realized her voice sounded as smooth as Michalowicz’s.

He didn’t seem to notice. “Of course,” he replied. He went on to describe what a fine man Mr. Schraufenhardt had been, what a loyal partner, how fair to employees and how innovative in his thinking. “He leaves a big hole in our operations,” Michalowicz said, his eyes actually getting wet. “I’m sorry to see him go.”

He sighed. “I must come back to you after this tragedy has passed and repay you for all you’ve done.”

“Oh, you really don’t have to. I’m just doing my job.” His offer made her feel chilled. She struggled to maintain a serene face. He mustn’t know she knew what he meant. She wanted to run far, far away from that man.

“I have no choice,” he said. “I need to show you how important you’ve been.” He rose to leave. “I can’t tell you what this means to me. I really do owe you an obligation,” he said as he walked out the door.

Verity sat for a few moments, free now to let the fear well up through her body. With trembling, deep breaths, she tried to replace the fear with positive energy, feeling the oxygen returning warmth to her hands and face.

After many minutes, composed again, she wondered if Schraufenhardt really was dead. She knew how to test it. She picked up the phone and called Frickle’s Pickles. She maneuvered through the voice mail to find a live person. In her best secretarial voice, tightly controlled, she said, “I need to address a letter to Mr. Schraufenhardt. Could you spell his name and give me his exact title?”

Without hesitation, the woman on the other end of the line did.

Verity thanked her, hung up, and exhaled. Schraufenhardt was alive. But Verity could kill him — or Michalowicz could trick her into killing him. The police would never believe in death by poetry.

She thought about not writing the poem, but that would only make Michalowicz angry. He might come to “repay” her sooner. Then she considered that Michalowicz might not even be reading what she sent him, at least not very closely. If she worded the poem right, she could kill Michalowicz instead of Schraufenhardt. She pondered that idea. She imagined Michalowicz slumping from his chair — probably a beautiful chair behind a mahogany desk, stained now by death.

No, murder would be wrong whomever she killed. Still, someone like Michalowicz must be vulnerable in other ways. If he wanted Schraufenhardt gone, perhaps Schraufenhardt could do something about Michalowicz.

She began writing. Schraufenhardt could leave, but “leaving” might mean several things. Instead of leaving this life, he could leave Michalowicz, severing their partnership. Michalowicz would be sad and alone, maybe in bankruptcy court or something. Schraufenhardt could handle the details.

In her accomplished hands, that turnabout was expressed elegantly in a sonnet and still wasn’t obvious to a cursory reader. Verity stuffed ambiguity into the quatrains and doom for Michalowicz into the final couplet:

Though lesser men will have their day, they fall,

And Schraufenhardt will last beyond them all.

She sent it to Michalowicz and waited. She scanned the obituaries day after day. No Schraufenhardt appeared, and no news about Michalowicz — and no payment for the poem. Something was up. After a week and a half, she called Frickle’s Pickles again. “I need to address a letter to Mr. Michalowicz. Could you tell me the spelling of his name and his exact title?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. He’s no longer with us,” said the woman. “The police arrested him two days ago.” Her voice dropped conspiratorially. “Mr. Michalowicz had been cooking the books for a long time and our company president finally found out. You wouldn’t be one of the creditors Mr. Michalowicz hasn’t paid, are you? I can put you through to our president, Mr. Schraufenhardt. We really want to straighten things out.”

Verity thanked her and said no. She set down the phone and began laughing out loud with relief and triumph. She had saved Schraufenhardt and defeated Michalowicz. She had saved herself. With poetry. She stood up and waltzed around the office, stopping to applaud the jade plant in her window. “We did it!”

Two days later, she stood in front of the Dome’s jade plant, again with a question. Did she have the wisdom to use poetry properly? She had learned she bore a special duty.

This time, the jade said nothing. But Verity could feel the life force of the universe flowing through the plants and bringing her into harmony with the city around her. Yes, Milwaukee truly needed poetry — responsible poetry.

–

Copyright © 1995 by Sue Burke

Originally published in Czarnina Kid and Other Weird Tales, MGC Publications, 1995, Milwaukee.