Ice - Pierre

Ice
by Mark Anderson

I once fell through the ice
in the marshy pond behind the house.

We - Mike and I - both fell in and I
remember scrambling myself out and looking

back to see Mike scrambling, too.
I didn't go back to help him. I ran home.

My mom - who was on the phone -
told me to undress and take a shower.

Mike called me later, so I went over to his house
to watch Clash of the Titans.

Pierre
by Michael Herman

He looked up from his notes.

“Is there a more French name than Pierre?”

“Marianne.”

“No, a French male name.”

“Napoleon.”

“No, that was one specific guy who was French. If anything it sounds like that one Italian ice cream.”

“Neapolitan.”

“Yes.”

“I guess I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean a name which could only be a French guy’s name like Pierre or Jacque or something like that.”

“Well, there are guys who aren’t French named Pierre and Jacque.”

“Fuck off. Like who?”

“There’s a guy named Pierre Garcon who plays wide receiver for the Colts. And Jacque Vaughn played point guard at Kansas and in the NBA.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “Are they from Louisiana or something?”

“I don’t know really. I guess I don’t know that much about either of them.”

We went silent for a while. He went back to prepping his notes and I went back to looking out the window instead of prepping mine.

“I thought about your question,” I said thus breaking the silence.

“The one about the French name?”

“Yes, that one. I thought of the most French name I could think of.

“Okay, what is it?”

“Guy.”

“Gi?”

“Yeah, Guy. Like Guy de Maupassant.”

“Gie Day Maw-Paw-Saw?”

“Yeah, he was a French writer at the turn of the Twentieth Century. He used to eat in the restaurant at the base of the Eiffel Tower because he hated looking at it.”

I knew this is where I started sounding pedantic and condescending. Being a know-it-all is a trait which earns you praise as a child and scorn as an adult.

“It’s spelled G-U-Y but pronounced G-ee. Guy.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“I think since it looks like a word in English but is a name pronounced a different way in French that makes it distinctly a French name. There‘s no English equivalent either.”

“Hmm.”

It was his stupid question and he wasn’t even paying attention.

“Do you not agree with me?”

“Nope,” he said returning to his notes. “I still think it’s Pierre.”

“You still think it’s Pierre?”

“Yup, I still think it’s Pierre.”

We resumed our silence.