Collection 5: Poems

The brink over which we pour
Odd items we can’t find
Enough cubic inches to store
In house, in mind

Is come to by a clamber
Up steep unsteady heights
Of beds without a dreamer
And lamps that no hand lights.

Here lie discarded hopes
That hard facts had to rout:
Umbrellas—naked spokes
By wind jerked inside-out

Roof shingles bought on sale
That rotted on their roof,
Paintings eternally stale
That, hung, remained aloof

Roof shingles bought on sale
That rotted on their roof,
Paintings eternally stale
That, hung, remained aloof

Pink dolls with foreheads crushed,
Eyes petrified in sleep.

As we turn now to return
To our lightened living room,
The acrid smell of trash
Arises like perfume.

Maneuvering steep stairs
Of bedsprings to our car,
We stumble on homecanned pears
Grown poisonous in their jar

And nearly gash an ankle
Against a shard of glass.

Our emptiness may rankle,
But soon it too will pass.

The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won’t let go
Of a balled sock until there’s chicken to eat.