Life would be barren without poetry

more so than gnawed wishbones
cold on a plate in the sink
next to an empty wine glass
(still purple)

Last night left room
for more than life can offer

My feet are here on old carpets:
all orange, blue, raging yellow patterns
(the coarse and unforgiving fiber)

I misalign meanings
while angles insult me,
tilting this house I call a home
while everyone I love sleeps

I stare at the circle
on my leg-
ringworm and a swollen tendon
on the same side

God stopped looking
when I needed him most
and the goldenrod is growing
so I know that fall is here

I am not Odysseus

“Just as this snake devoured
the sparrow and her children, eight of them,
their mother making nine, so we all fight
this war at Troy for nine years.  In the tenth,
we take the city with its spacious streets”
Copyright © | Year Posted 2026

Poem

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