Ceri Eagling Berse-Virtual 2018 February

February 2018

I grew up in Wales and have spent my adult life in various parts of the United States and in France. All these experiences influence my writing. A former teacher, I now live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband, and volunteer at the local elementary school. My poetry, which is a recent focus for me, has appeared in Antiphon and is forthcoming in Allegro Poetry, while my short stories and essays have been published elsewhere.

Comeuppance

Seduced by the lure of a chocolate bar in Paris,
in 1972, I pressed a franc from my scant
store of cash into a vending machine at the Gare St. Lazare.
My surrender spurned — no prize, no coin returned —
I watched from my train as a man with a practiced,
double-handed yank, bent my sullen tempter to his will:
two drawers plundered for the price of one.
I had avoided the eye of the pale Algerian girl
hunched on the sidewalk with her infant, palm cupped.
He, perhaps, had shown attention to a stranger's needs.
Was it karma, I mean, or just dumb luck?

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