Anne Panning: What Happes When You Play Bananagrams

Flash Nonfiction by Anne Panning
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PLAY BANANAGRAMS AND WORDS PILE UP AND YOU SHUFFLE THE DECK OF YOUR LIFE

Carrot
One summer we tried to grow carrots in our little garden. When harvested, they looked like bloated snake tongues with blonde hair.

Hill
There are so few hills in my town. I only notice this on my bicycle. Glaciers have scoured the pocks down to endless plates. I hardly ever use my brakes.

Doctor
Once, panicked, we brought our infant son to the pediatrician. His left eye bleared red and we feared blindness. The doctor said, “Oh, look! It’s just an eyelash in his eye.” With a wet Q-tip, she removed it.

Lilac
My husband’s favorite lilac bush blooms every spring outside our kitchen window. The smell is so Avon perfume, we can’t bouquet them in the house. Which makes us both sad.

Dog
My dog, Martha, is part poodle and not very smart. When the groomer ties holiday ribbons around her neck and sends her home smelling like oatmeal soap, our whole family applauds.

Eye
My right eye is 20/200. My left eye is 20/400. My brother is legally blind in one eye. When I look at him, his face is a soft brown circle.

Egg
This morning my husband was frying two eggs for breakfast when I got up. They burbled and popped. When he flipped them, the yolks broke and oozed and he said, “Shit,” and I said, “Good morning.”

Anne Panning has published a memoir, Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss, as well as a novel, Butter, and two short story collections: The Price of Eggs and Super America, which won The Flannery O’Connor Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her short publications include Brevity (6x), Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, New Letters, The Florida Review, Passages North, Black Warrior Review, The Greensboro Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, The Kenyon Review, Hippocampus, and River Teeth. She is currently working on a memoir about her late father. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport.