Writings in the Raw

First-Rate First Grade

Julia Halprin Jackson November 19, 2007

First-Rate First Grade

Welcome to the Seaside Café

Try the macaroni

Necklaces spiced special today

Your maitre-d Tony

Will candlelight your card table

Tulips arranged as stars

Harmonize fairy tale fable

Of skyscrapers and cars

Today’s appetizers goldfish

Oscar Meyer wiener

Bologna catsup and relish

Watch out for Mabel-she’s meaner

Than an ungreased George Foreman grill

Sizzling fat through fractions

Monopoly dough on the till

Do we have your satisfaction?

Ignore Susie the sobbing chef

Step over the spilled juice

Hank serenades though he’s tone-deaf

Teacher towers like Zeus

Sit back, relax, put up your feet

Eat up before it’s cold

For service that cannot be beat

Just ask a six year old.

Julia Halprin Jackson

writer. editor. doodler. er.

I write.

I doodle.

I'm at work on my first book, a collection of linked short stories that follows a community of expatriates living on the southern coast of Spain.

I care about stuff. Like curing type 1 diabetes. And marriage equality. And rights for immigrants. And public radio. And espanol. And Frank O'Hara and Jennifer Egan and Federico Garcia Lorca and Tony Kushner. You know, cool stuff.

I make postcards that are also stories.

Sometimes I read stories and poems out loud.

Sometimes I go to conferences.

You can find my short stories, essays, poems and flash fictio in a variety of places in print and online. If you Google really hard, you might find the two short radio pieces I produced on a badass NPR affiliate in San Francisco.

This is where you can go to find out who I am.