Nine

Ugh. Midterms. I should be doing them instead of posting this.


Cash Out and Get Out

Because sometimes I can hear the creek, but mostly I hear the freeway
Because my small and private pleasure are being marketed to focus groups
(and they aren’t testing well)-

I am cancelling the electricity, I am letting the dog run feral.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I’m not saving you.
You know this, the poet rescues nothing

All poets feed on forests. We grow bloated
on the exact light of midmorning, the sensation of preemptive grief,
love’s tangled footpaths through the heart.

If you want much of anything, cut the oaks down,
cut your mother and St. Sebastian and the house down.
Mulch it into the pen and paper that will give you permission to say this:

i’ve always felt like that treasured childhood memory
could’ve used a little extra poignancy, a touch
of extra melancholy. let me add some.

Verse eat, verse lies.
For every Grecian vase, a grandmother,
for every Howl, a child