April 17
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	lisa zimmerman
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	MID LIFE
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	Cinderella never believed that happy ending crap. The prince sold stocks and voted Republican. He wouldn't let her work outside the home. She kept waking up into the same day. As for Jack, a man can only live with his mother for so long. The old woman was forgetting things-- where she left her sequined purse, her sunglasses, the Cornish game hens she'd just basted. Some days she didn't recognize her son, called him Hansel and told him to fill the birdfeeder out back with breadcrumbs. Jack took long walks, cruised the mall, the park, grocery stores. The story has him meeting her in the checkout line. She was buying green apples and mousetraps; he had a five-pound bag of sunflower seeds. Jack was drawn to her disappointment, to the fatal way she signed her check. There were smudges between her fingers. His heart felt like an engine-- all clatter and fizz and thump and burn. After sex it was hard to say whose ashes were on the sheet.
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	about the poem
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	A few years ago, my friend Jack Martin and I exchanged ten poetry prompts and gave each other a week to get the poems written. It was a wild week. I gave him this little exercise, where he had to use two different fairy tale characters in a poem. I realized I'd better do the prompt myself to see if it was any fun. It was.
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	about the poet
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	Lisa Zimmerman grew up in a military family, graduating from SHAPE American High School in Belgium. She received her BA in English and History from Colorado State University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, The Atlanta Review, The Colorado Review, and many other publications and anthologies. She has published two chapbooks, including Traveling Among the Animals (Pudding House, 2002), and a full-length book, How the Garden Looks from Here (Snake Nation Press, 2005), which won the 2004 Violet Reed Hass Poetry Award. She has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her new book, The Light at the Edge of Everything, is coming out soon from Anhinga Press. Lisa will be reading in Fort Collins, Colorado, this Friday, April 18th, with Veronica Patterson, from Loveland, and the poet laureate of Colorado, Mary Crow. See calendar for details!
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	Lisa Zimmerman's website			more Colorado poets
	Colorado poems calendar			about the CPA
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