Life is steep and deep, Little Debbie Ain’t like the cookies you used to bake Got a hole in your pocket from scratching The scab will soon fall into your mouth Don’t taste like the cookies you liked to bake There’s no icing between to glue them together The scab is about to fall out of your mouth Better tie it up and grace it with a big, bright bow Where’s the icing between to glue them together— That upper lip and the quivering chin Tie them and brace them with a big, bright bow Then get into your boat and row, row, row Your upper lip and that quivering chin Caused the hole in your pocket to mismatch Best to get in your boat and grow, grow, grow Life is steep and deep, Little Debbie ///// After graduating NYU, Joanie HF Zosike acted with The Living Theatre for 30 years. She received playwriting fellowships and grants from The Albee Foundation, Foundation for Jewish Culture, NYSCA/DCA, and a Sara Patton poetry stipend from The Writers Hotel in 2019. Her work appears in the DADA Journal Maintenant, Have a NYC Vol. 3, Light on the Walls of Life, Women in American Theatre; Ides—a Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, and the June 2023 edition of Arcade of the Scribes. Other writing appears in The New Guard, Silver Birch Press, Home Planet News, Jewish Forward, Syndic, and BANG!
Lightwood 