Category: Poetry
-
Billy Collins doesn’t
have a Twitter account soyou’ll have to follow him
more craftily. Notin his footsteps, but
slightly to the right orfarly to the left, or
with binoculars as heserpentines through an alpine
pass, hoping you never findthe map he left crumpled
beneath the coffee grounds. -
In 1980 the Yomiuri Giants
signed outfielder Gary Thomasson
for 1.2 million dollarswhich he used to birth
a metaphor by sitting
on the bench, hitlessly wavinghis bat and spinning,
they said, like
a Giant Human Fan.And so ‘Thomasson’ came to
represent a contradictory remnant
within our built environment.Once usefully functional,
now functionally useless,
yet conspicuously maintained.A doorknob in a wall;
a bridge connecting two halves of air;
a spiral staircase, leadingI don’t know how much God
spent building me, and I could
probably figure the maintenancefrom gas bills and groceries
and Netflix subscriptions but
I know the cost to save meso I so often pray that I am
more than a doorless balcony and
that he would, once, tell mewhere my stairs
-
His single sheet
of lined paper
was aligned with his
single pencil
which rested atop
his single table which
wobbled next to mine.And though his hands
were folded, waiting,
and though his eyes
were fixed, unwavering,
into space, I thinkI was more expectant.
-
i meant to write this yesterday
as space and time allowed
but my son came down in his baseball cap
and asked to watch a showwe’re trapped inside this iso home
together and alone
passing time adjacently
as he just gets more grownso while my craft is withering
and needs attentive care
i’m not about to let this chance
pass by meunaware