Synkroniciti is excited to welcome poet and writer Jules Foshee of Texas with a delightful slice of life poem, “Half an Egg.” The ideal reader walks into a diner and subtle whimsy ensues.
“she orders a coffee and the cobbler since,/ as she explains to the waitress, “sweet starts”/ is the theme of today’s game of Strands,/ and when the universe speaks she likes to think/ she listens.”
Our ideal reader watches the world around her, people going about their daily rituals and habits. It’s all predictable until her order arrives.
“The waitress/ returns with her coffee and–whoops dear!– a Cobb/ salad: its sickly tomatoes, a Pollock of bacon bits,/ only half an egg.”
Paradoxically, it is this misunderstanding that makes her think fondly of her fellow human, the one who will enjoy the other half of the egg. Jules gives us a whimsical scene in a familiar locale that leans towards empathy and compassion, reminding us it is how we respond to the unexpected that shows our capacity and hope for kindness. The poem feels conversational and relaxed, but it is spiced with gentle alliteration and playful rhythm that complements the whimsy of its everyday imagery.
Read “Half an Egg” in Synkroniciti’s Expectations issue, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jules Foshee holds graduate degrees in Literature from The University of Texas at Austin and Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She is the founder of NarrativeRx, a medical humanities initiative fostering reflection and connection in healthcare. Her work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Literary Mama, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. She has been shortlisted for the Masters Review Best Emerging Writer Prize, and her poetry and lyric essay collection Oranges in the Night of Plenty is currently a finalist for the Moon City Poetry Award. She writes about mothers and daughters, stubborn ghosts, impossible gardens, inherited apocalypses, and things that grow where they shouldn’t.