There’s no use now in crying.
He’ll be wanting his dinner,
and there are a great many things
to see to, since you’ve been
lying-in and taken ill. Your sewing,
for example, or a new quilt, now that
you’ve gone and used the old one
to wrap the poor little dead thing.
It never stood a chance, you know:
Sometimes nature takes care of
such problems, carries out
God’s will. In time, it will seem
a kindness. To think of it, though —
using your wedding quilt like this,
which we all spent so many long hours
piecing. I call that selfish, and I
don’t mind saying so. Well. Be that
as it may. Dash some cold water
on your face now, and do
that which must be done.
Tag Archives: Poem-a-Day
The Jar: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 29
No one knows
how long that jar had been there
collecting pennies and
singing to itself.
No one saw it
get up and dance,
but it was obvious
that it danced
in the gray, dewy hours
when no one was awake,
not even the parking garage attendant
or the guy hosing off the sidewalk
outside the place that sold
lottery tickets and outmoded cell phones.
No one could remember
what the jar sang,
no one recalled its tune,
after it got up and left one morning,
taking with it all the pennies, songs, and dances
it could contain.
Instars: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 28
The balls of frass
are larger now,
a simple matter of
more leaves in,
more leaves out.
Filaments waggle,
feet undulate,
a puzzlement of
parts that won’t
be needed just
a few days from
now. Now is
almost constant
chewing, with
pauses to split
the skin, and
then to grab,
desperately,
another leaf.
So many view
metamorphosis
as a miracle—
how surprising,
then, that it
comes down to
this chewing,
this effort,
this poop.
Perfect: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 27
Looking back on it now,
I wonder if those fat rainbow shoelaces
were the best gift I ever received,
arriving as they did unbidden
from an Easter Bunny I didn’t even
believe in anymore. Bless my mother for
stockings and baskets for nonbelievers,
admission of magic after fairy time was done,
fat rainbow shoelaces for 10-year-old girls
in the ‘80s. Perfect. Just perfect.
Eyeball Hobnob: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 26
Blanket the beached bet,
you bedroom bandit.
Mimic my madcap dawn
of amazement, addiction.
Arouse gossip, green-eyed
and obscene. Swagger.
Grovel. Undress,
you varied moonbeam,
you lonely elbow of
flawed, gloomy
compromise. No more
savagery, remorseless
vaulting. Only tranquil
skim milk — an outbreak
of premeditated radiance.
On My Side of Sea: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 25
Across the sea,
where I have never been,
I hear there are ladies
much finer than I,
who dance in red dresses,
give kisses for money,
make bargains that I
never could make. I have
no velvet gown, nor lace,
and only my oven bargains
with me — will it burn
my loaf, my flesh, neither
or both today? But this
is its own kind of dance,
its own splendor, and I
want for nothing here
on my side of sea.
The Scene: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 24
Let’s spend a moment debating
how the apple fell into the sink
(far from the tree). Did it jump,
or was it pushed? Someone
knows something, and the apple
tells us nothing, just sits there,
all silent and apple-like as
another drip hits it, and another,
from the leaky faucet that
surely saw the whole thing but
chooses to remain stainless.
