P.H. Fischer

There is no number one

key on this 1940s Smith Corona typewriter.

The antique dealer, a middle-aged hipster with wayfarer glasses and a bowtie, tells me it’s there, kind of. Type a lowercase L, he says. See, same thing!

I point out that there’s no exclamation mark either. Bingo, he says. Smitty saved a few more cents, and why not? Nothing wrong with an apostrophe, backspace, and a period.

Perhaps it wasn’t just economics, I suggest. Maybe folks back then were more subtle, less exclamatory?

More communal too, he says. And humble; none of this looking out for number one jazz.

It’s a marvelous machine. A grey steel body with art deco stripes, four rows of green keys, and a chrome carriage return that’s cool to the touch. Typing? Buttery smooth.

I picture myself writing on it. Perhaps a double scotch on the rocks at my side, and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on the record player (if she hadn’t taken it). It’d be a healthy dose of nostalgia. Good for the soul. I’m stuck on the price, though.

Tell you what, he says, I’ll take a buck off for each of them two “missing” keys. Yes, he uses air quotes. I chuckle, bite a corner of lip, and nod to his deal.

As I make for the door, feeling the heft of the typewriter case in my hand, I turn with a smirk. Any emoji keys on this thing?

He laughs out loud. Try the less than key followed by a number 3.

the dab
of white out 
slow to dry

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About the Author

P. H. Fischer writes in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish people. He conceives much of his poetry while out on long walks exploring the beautiful environs of the Pacific Northwest. Grateful for publication in a growing number of journals, he holds membership with Haiku Canada, the Haiku Society of America, and enjoys workshopping his writing with the Vancouver Haiku Group, and Haiku Northwest.