Six Little Ones by Jeffrey Hermann

Notes for a Community College Commencement Speech

From a certain perspective everything looks like math but if you pay attention to the subtext it says to work on being charming and go into sales. Not cut out for sales I got a job redirecting people’s negative thoughts. I think the mind is sometimes a vaulted ceiling and sometimes a shallow pit. Everyone wants to be both a child and a great Oak tree. My father wanted me to be a simple country doctor; my mother, a tech giant. Everyone wants a billion dollars. In my line of work what seems to work is sharing mildly interesting anecdotes or asking personal but superficial questions. Bach had 13 kids and none of them played the piano. Jack-o'-lanterns used to be carved from turnips. What’s your favorite kind of mail to get? What’s the hardest part of the day for you? That’s when you should make a snack. You can try and try but you will never be happier than when you’re eating a snack. If your dog is there with you then that’s better. If you give your dog a little bite that, too, is even better. You can try and try but that’s the best you can do. But keep trying because you never know. 

What’s Happening in the World of Sports Today Is That the World’s Top Tennis Players are Beating Each Other Over the Head With Their Rackets Because of an Out-of-Bounds Call

One guy says it’s good and the other guy says it’s shit. I don’t argue on the internet anymore. I might not even believe in the internet anymore. How do I know if I exist? I’m sitting outside in a lawn chair, that’s how. Entrepreneurs invent something new every two hours. They don’t think it’s funny but everyone else does. I watch the news once a day, and what I miss, I miss. I’m studying a picture of our daughter standing on a drawbridge at night in the summer. She’s looking out at the water. She seems content and beautiful but minutes before it was taken she was crying. The picture invents an ache that lives inside me. It’s my favorite possession. I think every door is saying open a door and walk through but I think every bridge is saying you could be happy either way. I suppose the ability to take a punch is something you’re born with. Either you have it or you do not. No, wait. That’s wrong. Taking a punch is not something you are born with. Taking a punch is something you will need to learn.

Everyone Come Back

We never decided which color to paint the bathroom. If you want sky blue, raise your hand. If you think eggshell, take a step forward. If you want wallpaper I guess take a step back. The average person spends seven minutes and 19 seconds in the bathroom every day. Not counting extraordinary circumstances. In a public restroom people cut that time in half. If I had to choose I’d say California is the most dream-like state. Second is Kansas, of course. Having decided is probably the saddest thing you can do. All those lives shriveling to nothing behind you. The color no one wanted. The jobs you never trained for. You could have been a good surgeon or a bad surgeon. I never punched a guy I wanted to punch and I told myself I was better for it. The world was better for it. A violence that surely would have borne more violence was instead kept on a leash. Kept in my jacket pocket. We have fists but we also have hands. It’s always 50-50. 

Not that Kind of Funeral

I once donated five boxes of books to the library. The next day I couldn’t find the novel I’d been reading. The main character was about to take dramatic action. I went back to the library and found my book shelved under new arrivals. I brought it home and started from the first page like we were strangers. Turns out the hero fails every challenge. In the end she is worse off in most ways. Does not untangle the web of clues to her past. Does not find love. Someone steals her car and her mother dies unexpectedly. At the very end she is faced with a decision. I’ve been asking myself my whole life what’s worthwhile, what adds and what diminishes. I taste my own blood and wonder if that’s God. I wash the dishes and wonder if that’s God. The soft belly of my dog, is that God? When a Prince song comes on and I remember after having forgotten how beautiful his voice was, is that God? They’re interviewing a basketball player on the news who wins every game at the buzzer. He says he’s no hero. He thanks Jesus and his mother and his teammates. They show a clip. Time is running out. He is most alive as everything comes to an end.  

It’s Hard to Tell If You’re Doing It Right

I let my dog chase rabbits. I do it because it makes him happy. I think it reminds him of a distant past. A code in his mind. A true self. The rabbits are safe. I make sure. Though they must be frightened, I imagine. I try to do right in life. I care for helpless things. Delicate things. I would care for a wounded rabbit if I saw one. After chasing a rabbit my dog and I keep walking. Both of us scan the grass along the row of thick rose bushes. This Goddamn world. Everything is hungry. All the flowers and all the animals. The Sun and whatever will destroy the Sun. I’m wrong more than I’m right. That’s something I admit. There’s something I want that’s hiding in a small space I cannot reach. My breath is hot and smelling like iron.

The D Poem

Our daughter asks for help writing a poem for school. We tell her all the rules they gave her are wrong. Her poem gets a D. People say there’s a lot wrong with the D poem. But the D poem doesn’t pay attention to any of that. It gets up every day and faces the world. I’m a D, it says to itself. I’m a D poem. Not an easy thing to do in a world that believes mostly in As. A world that might lower itself to admire a B, maybe. Someone tells the D poem that it would have been an E poem except they don’t give out Es in poetry. In an infinite universe there’s no way to know if that’s true, we say. We tell the D poem it’s doing great. We love you, we say. On its birthday our daughter sends messages to the D poem. She says things like, “D is for dare, D is for dream!” She says, “D for donuts and Daytona Beach!” The D poem is in love with the world and it doesn’t matter if the world loves the D poem back. “D is for desire and demand to live in the sun!,” she writes. Nothing can stop the D poem now. 

Jeffrey Hermann's work has appeared in Okay Donkey, Passages North, Heavy Feather, Wigleaf, and other publications. His first full-length collection of prose poetry and flash fiction will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.