They gave us too many fortune cookies
Twenty or more
What are two people
supposed to do
with twenty fortune cookies?
Three of them
were
different
Not normal
Not like the others
Not really fortune cookies
at all
One appeared to be
only two-thirds
of a cookie
folded in the wrong place
as if the dough
had fallen
halfway out of the mold
in the machine
at the fortune cookie factory
Another had the folded
paper fortune
sticking out one end
like an impertinent tounge
ready to deliver
a raspberry
a paper bronx cheer
rather than prognostication
And the last
the poor devil
the poor, sad little ****
was simply crushed
and broken
crumbled
and useless
Not even a cookie anymore
and no fortune inside at all
I took up these three lost charms
these empty, broken spells
and I cast them
into the trash
because that is where
the broken things go