24

I have a worn red boil on the inside of my left thumb.
I will pull the bulky blue bags from the back yard
to the front.
They will tug at my thumb, splitting
what healing has happened
and what I would like to continue.

23

The boughs of the cradling prairie
of grape leaves and lentils
They are the stones held in our hands
still wet from the babble of the river.
The swoop I admire.
I cannot capture it in my hands,
like the pebbles.

22

It's strange.
But sometimes the air between here
and there snaps and crackles and
those highways that the floating
little balls
use need repair.
Sticky tar and crackled concrete.
No more trucks.

21

I feel like I'm being pulled into eddies
on a wide river with brown shoals.
My boat is small, has a white sail,
and will suffice.

20

Everyone is an idiot
in at least one field.

19

There is a moment after
where I can see the paisley green corner couch
in the white lamp living room light
and everything is real-er than this.
Except for you.

18

We are all matchsticks
(but more like dominoes)
lined up one by one,
splintered tinder till we fall.

The poem ends with a closed sentiment.
The real world, though, that keeps going.

17

Thursdays are lazy.
I eat breakfast and write.
I have probability to do later,
but now I am hungry,
and the sun through the window is warm.

Cinquain from Grammar class

Deriding,

succinctly,
in debate class,
feeding my fragile ego.
Sweaty palms on the podium:
I listen intently to the faults of your speech.

16

The swaying of cornfields
is all atop my mind,
and the slow moss of a sunny graveyard
caked with green lawn and
shoddy, sodden remains of flowers.

15

These have all been late posts.
I don't know why my regularity is less so.
Nothing in particular has changed.
Sheafs of wheat.
No!

14

For four weeks in Costa Rica
I knew this girl.
And once we walked along a forest path.
She said,
sometimes,
we walk along with someone for a short while
and then never again.
A snake snuck across the path in front of us.
We watched its circle calmly.
I considered it good luck.

13

Being tired
makes me want to rake everyone across the coals
for any damned reason.
And I feel justified.
It isn't just the brief swell of anger,
but the sustained hum of depression.

12

This is the wastebasket of poetry,
thin wire and framed by the clutter of torn
paper shrapnel.
It is full only because I might want one day
to retrieve something.
That is why I fill it with these scraps.