The talebearer in the wasteland
pays attention to cake, its undercurrent,
the moonbeam sidewalk of batter.
The waterline (batterline) rises in the pan,
a storebought aluminum throwaway.
Cake before sunup: That’s the imperative;
even the coffeemaker understands.

Prompts: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (compound words) and NaPoWriMo (food).

Spanish Brocade, that old favorite of bees,
landing pad for monarch butterflies, who gather
their energy for the long flight to Mexico–
it’s hard work, becoming the souls of lost children.
Experienced gardeners still believe that marigolds
are tomatoes’ friends, protection from pestilence–
even if there was that book last year that called this
a myth. Tell me about a garden that grows without
them, those gold edges of myth like a bright thread
that makes the fabric of botany stronger. Tell me–
but I reserve the right not to pay any attention.

Prompts from NaPoWriMo (use the name of an heirloom seed variety) and Poetic Asides (experienced/inexperienced).

April is the cruelest month for moths
that, having spent all winter in a cocoon,
eclose too soon and find themselves
crawling, cold, on a busy sidewalk,
an impossible distance yet to go
before a real spring with no snow.
The dark-eyed moth that my son saw
this morning and that burrowed its
buff-colored bison head into my hand
is now named Napoleon, my son tells me.
Napoleon, who unfurled his proboscis,
tasted my palm for nectar, salt. Napoleon,
now in our dining room, in an enclosure
that was folded up, awaiting monarchs.

Prompts from NaPoWriMo (Which month is the cruelest?), Poetic Asides (distance), and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (nature).

1) I hear squawking when our back door is open.

2) They belong to one neighbor but live in another neighbor’s yard;
the run is in a whole other sub-yard, separate from the coop.

3) Roaming cats know where and what they are.

Prompts from Poetic Asides (Three ___) and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (55 words).

He said a thing once
about horses.
She can never remember
just what it was,
but she said
it looked like it might rain
and that she’d better
wash those dishes
that were on the back porch.

Prompts from Poetic Asides (a “he said/she said” conversation) and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (horses).

I was a fool to think it would come today,
the thing that sometimes does come
and lift me up into relevance, a sense of
purpose other than scrounging Easter candy
and walking my headache from one room
to another. On days when it is damp and cold,
it’s hard to rub those sticks together, spark
anything. A million divided attentions
subdivide my attention today. What will I
show, when it’s time to open our hands,
count the grains, seeds, coins, and sands?

Prompt from Poetic Asides and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (both suggested fools or foolishness).

Sorry, but I believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Sorry, but blueberries make me poop green. (Sorry I told you that.)
Sorry, but I can’t rise to your occasion, whatever is is.
Sorry, but my jeans have a hole in the crotch. (Sorry I said crotch.)
Sorry, but I am prone to various forms of collapse, usually ill timed.
Sorry, but I’ve probably never seen your favorite TV show.
Sorry, but I only watch Saturday Night Live, and I tend to fall asleep.
Sorry, but I don’t really cook, or drive, or own a bike.
Sorry for all the rides I bum and meals I eat but never repay.
Sorry for the times I’m a selfish, noncontributing gasbag.
Sorry, but sometimes you are, too.

When we first bought a chair, we knew we had made it.
When you have no chairs and then you have a chair,
you are worth your weight in chairs. Welcome to my home!,
you can say. Please feel free to sit in the chair.
I wish to purchase the chair you’re sitting in now–
if it’s for sale, that is. I’ll come to your house to pick it up
and we’ll stand outside for a while, talking about
that chair and other chairs as I kick the white quartz stones
that edge your driveway and you begin to regret this parting.

It was a lonely haunted game,
going with you where the crabs came in
and the music couldn’t be escaped. It was
Jimmy Buffett or Bachman-Turner Overdrive,
a cover band on the back deck where
palmetto bugs ducked between cracks
because they knew they were cockroaches.
That night, we knew everything about
choosing the least offensive margarita,
and as far as we knew, that would suffice.

You know
what I’m going to say
about a hit and run:
It’s better not to know
it’s coming, and then
not to depend much
on the stranger who,
after all, just ran you over.
If you are not dead or
irretrievably broken, it’s
better to pick the gravel
out of your teeth, spit
a couple of times,
carry on with anything
you have left, whatever
was not taken.