Published on: 9/21/2011
"the old PC"

You're like a lost memory, the way you
light up when you feel like it
yet shut down when the image

right there, almost have it

is most in need - an old professor's name or
the title of that magazine that first paid for
our words.

Now you are blank. Your set of eyes are
a dark window,
your face is motionless.

I coax you. I caress your keys
so gently that a passerby
would think me mad.

It's as though you are a person.
It's as though I can hypnotize you,
convince you
to remember.

Published on: 9/21/2011
Loss

As a child teeth were
no loss; I would
place them beneath my
air conditioned pillow, reach out
the next morning and touch
crisp dollar bills.

Even blood,
speckled with the gravel of violent afternoons
was gently mopped up
doused, covered,
a cartoon band-aid.

Yet, today I mourn them
along with everything else:
the seconds spent stuck in traffic,
named animals inside the ground,
toys I gave up after growing breasts -

Life is a pocket filled with holes -
like an idle object
you've fallen out.

Published on: 9/21/2011
Dryer

The night I first feared losing you
a neighbor was using our dryer.
The kitchen filled with the
scent of softener sheets, the
cheap kind you can get
for just two dollars
and over the roar of the machine I talked
about you, said the way
i felt was indescribable, like
comparing a side of beef to a kiwifruit.

The second time, I sat in a church alone.
Holy water everywhere, behind my ears even.
(I'd given it up, but wanted to try anything.)
It was Easter season, yet I sang the whole hymnal
and my voice bounced off
the empty sanctuary like love
bounces off the human heart
and lands
so we are left with nothing
except for the pure, the Godly.