641.793.8122*

Days get sticky like

bees drunk on honey like

the sky stains like            one big blueberry pie that sags with juice in its middle.

The radio silence that used to consume us is now just a

cheap AC unit that hums to keep us company. And

nights gather like

dust on the

books I should be reading                    (why am I not reading?)

and the vases I should be drawing        (why am I not drawing?)

and the jars of tomatoes I should be cooking

I walk on the sidewalk dodging peeling

cherry skins that fell last month and

have since been abandoned with

chalk on the pavement and

everyone is Indoors but guess what [guess what] I still walk

through the sprinklers to avoid

Parked vans.

And

I’m not sure if it’s May or

August or

god forbid another Tuesday afternoon but I

lay here sweating in my

twin-sized bed,

calling numbers the museum gave me so I would not be

alone [so I would not

grow smaller and

         smaller inside my bedroom walls]. At

2:29 a.m. I watch passing headlights scrape against my ceiling and

remember that Somewhere in the world people are coming home to one another and

I tell myself I should be

grateful.

*Dial-A-Poem is a public poetry service established by the late poet and artist John Giorno in 1968. Today, you can still call the number and listen to poems by Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, John Cage, and more.