Awful is as awful does,
but I
can only aspire to
do fewer awful things
every day
for at least a month.
Goodness is tiring,
how it sets expectations
I can’t meet,
just like a report card.
Kings abdicate for
less than this, and
magistrates rule
neither for them nor
obdurately against.
Perhaps I can be
quite good,
really kind
someday, develop
that inner resolve,
utter discipline,
valor, and
will. You
X-ray my chest,
you look in my heart,
zip it closed again.

We never saw the ships at night when we stood
on the shore awaiting them, the return of
all the men we loved, all the men we didn’t
love anymore, but

felt we owed something, a feigned concern at least,
in exchange for promises made before the
voyage that was more important than what we
felt or hoped or dreamed.

The sun came up, and we went back to our homes,
the sailors still unaccounted for, the ships
quite probably lost with all aboard. We have
learned, in these eight months,

other occupations than entertaining
gentlemen who then must go, heeding some call
greater than our own, with barely a goodbye.
I am a baker

now; I must tend to my bread, the dough that yields
under my hands, is transformed by my caress.
Bread becomes me as I eat, it never leaves
by death or by sea.

If I had a dime for every nickel I’ve spent—
forget it. I never was any good at math.
Each dime is a drop of water, and I dream
of it sliding cool and thin down my throat.
But then I’d be weighted down, even more
than I am now, even less able to achieve
lift-off of any kind, even more earthbound.
If I had enough dimes, though, I could buy
a space station and a launcher to get there.
Or I could pour them all into a dime room,
swim and dive in them like Scrooge McDuck.
I bet that’s sublime, too. And changing.

A narrow shaft is seen
at your feet—too cool
for corn at noon.

A whiplash in the sun;
it was gone. I feel for
a transport but

never
a tighter breathing
and

An erasure from Emily Dickinson’s “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass.”