The Cure

This backbend is the future
tight wire of dreams
warm like dance
step, tip-toe

*
your toenail could tear it,
from some other room
a cough, a prayer
renounces

*
your breath
goes to my brain
your back is turned.
(But arched closer to me.)

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A Reminder

Little Red Riding Hood visits the office to say it's the weekend and I should take a break.

(So I played the part of the mother, the grandmother, and the wolf-grandmother.)

Little Red Riding Hood wants to replace her comforter with the fuzzy scrap of red blanket she found while we unpacked. It's too small, I say. Perhaps you could use it under your comforter?

She says: Well, that wouldn't work for me.

Not so little...


_

The team that got me to work yesterday...

(One of them did not want me to leave.)

Scout

In order to further test my sanity, we're considering on a waitlist for a puppy.  S/he will be named "Scout." (More n. than v. That is to say, more To Kill a Mockingbird than scouting.)

We're already playacting all the silly stuff that Scout will do and panting down the phone pretending to be Scout. No prizes for guessing who the silly beings truly are.

Zadie Smith reverberates in my brain:

It should be noted that an equally dangerous joy, for many people, is the dog or the cat, relationships with animals being in some sense intensified by guaranteed finitude. You hope to leave this world before your child. You are quite certain your dog will leave before you do. Joy is such a human madness.

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Tender Obsession

(Tame Impala: Feels Like We Only Go Backwards)
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Fullness

The day begins
hard, snow-palsied
I contain multitudes
on a to-do list

I get to the office
crank the door
and call my mother
talking to myself

Like the oceans
At 8:30
Regretfulness.
Full of regret.

_

Eulogy

Conscience of the streets
assembled newsheets
stacked against sky

this morning's miracle
blazing tree, burning bush
a touch of frost, a trick of sun.

Before that I stand at the table
some things in my hand
somehow in Chicago

the children call me to them
give me hugs, cheer me up
I apologize to Shirley Chambers

Sorry. So sorry. Sorry.

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