Jim Zola, The Gingerbread Boy Turns 40

The Gingerbread Boy Turns 40
Jim Zola

Last night’s love carries me
back across the river.
I hurry the kids for school,
replace missing gumdrops,
straighten crooked faces.
Fox grumbles that our life
has grown stale.
Sometimes I hear
the farmer’s wife. Tempting.
Sweetness is no longer an issue.
In dreams I run as fast as I can.

Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for Deaf children, as a toy designer for Fisher-Price, and currently as a children’s librarian. Published in many journals through the years, his publications include a chapbook, The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press), and a full-length poetry collection, What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.

Image Credit: Gingerbread People, Enchanted Forest, Route 40, Ellicott City, Maryland, John, Margolies, photographer, 1977.  Source: Library of Congress