it's all cinderella

imagine, if you will, what these blended titles may be.
pick one from each list....

PROTAGONIST

• a stressed-out lawyer

• a busy fashion executive

• a determined bride-to-be

• a workaholic hollywood publicist

• a driven marketing executive

• a successful but overworked business woman

ACTION

• warily welcomes a stranger into her home

• ends up hitchhiking to her wedding

• meets a life coach and is granted 12 wishes

• is knocked unconscious in a car accident

• is visited by the ghost of her former client

• wishes to see what her life would be like if....

HAPPY ENDING

notice i didn't say 'happy endings.' they all, of course, end the same way. a good man will always be more satisfying than a life lived in the business world. nowadays, some women do hold on to their careers, but only once they have reinstated the man where he was meant to be.

her work will then be denigrated, the guy rescues her from some dastardly foe, she thanks (her lucky star, elf, santa, whatever), and they ride off into the future, with bells ringing.

these are all, as you've probably guessed, taken from plots of christmas movies (frequently on lifetime or the hallmark channel). but i ask you: how often must women be sacrificed upon the logs of christmas?

and so as to not come across as an miscreant fool, i will admit that sometimes the protagonist is a man (like nicholas cage or ebeneezer scrooge -- except for that time susan lucci played scrooge). but, i believe, my point is still well-taken. the warmth of christmas mainly serves to remind us that jesus has preferred roles for all of us, and if you choose to rebel against these values, they just may come and make a movie about you.

don't tell me it isn't happening

NEW

The long path sap sludges up
through an iris, is it new

each spring? And what would
an iris care for novelty?

Urgent in tatters, it wants
to wrest what routine it can

from the ceaseless shifts
of weather, from the scrounge

it feeds on to grow beautiful
and bigger: last week the space

about to be rumpled
by iris petals was only air

through which a rabbit leapt,
a volley of heartbeats hardly
contained by fur, and then the clay-
colored spaniel in pursuit

and the effortless air
rejoining itself whole.

William Matthews

these are the sixteen kinds of irises that grow in my garden.
the ones with their names attached DID NOT BLOOM this year.
profuse iris, with, at most, one bloom.

i called the local experts,
and they said that they're hearing this from a lot of people;
i said that in 20 years this has never happened,
and they said that they're hearing about things
that haven't happened in as long as 100 years.