Poetry
Drop my children off at another parent’s house
To free up time to drive aimlessly, listening to
FM radio, waiting for a song that I feel deeply
To make it fair, we’ll need to wearthe same number or articlesof clothing and decide whethersocks count as one or two and ifrings and watches count at all.
"Always stirfrom left to right,"my mother saidmoving the wooden spoonthrough the chocolate pudding.
After allGrandma stirredfrom left to right.
While Cardinal Swanson flareshis satin sleeves on high to let flythe word of God, the little bird,swift and sweet as a stolen kiss,having lost its way in, seekinga way out, tries flying
In the window, hung on fishing line, three prismed crystal globescatch and refract whatever rays dive down between apartment blocks:kaleidoscoping stars of rose, blue, saffron light dance crazily
Even one and one’s loneliness,the we of our cats or the we of
two horses in the autumn field,side to side, head to rump,
briefcases into the dinosaur, counterfactual jackals slavering centipedes in stone: that’s a fine spelunking! way to beak the ink face, gerrymander. to press always fibers between plate glass, a way to break snakeskin boots in!
Griselda waits. Child eater. Good wife.
The stories we are told as childrenleave mute tethers, limning the interiorof grey matter, the hollowed synapse.
clone keeps a diaryclone writes in codeclone taunts me
My best friend’s grandmothersurvived the holocaust.Lived in a tiny roomoff of the kitchenate like a birdyet wanted to be near food.Others in the houseslept in huge bedrooms
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