Somedays

by Billy Collins

Some days I put the people in their places at the table, bend their legs at the knees, if they come with that feature, and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs. All afternoon they face one another, the man in the brown suit, the woman in the blue dress, perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved. But other days, I am the one who is lifted up by the ribs, then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse to sit with the others at the long table. Very funny, but how would you like it if you never knew from one day to the next if you were going to spend it striding around like a vivid god, your shoulders in the clouds, or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper, staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

Dialect of a Skirt

The young girl wanted a new voice. After all, people got new things every day. A new hip, a new nose, a new set of suspenders. She adored the consonants that landed like wooden shoes. She loved the type of L-sounds that made a mouth drool from the back of the tongue to the front. She practiced her new voice into seashells, tin cans, caves. She gave her first performance quietly, into the ear of her sleeping dog. She could tell by his snorting that his dreams were of fat tree trunks and black, truffle-filled soil. Later, she drove to the local gas station and used her new voice to ask for a pack of cigarettes. She wasn't wearing a bra, but the attendant didn't notice. He was too busy listening to the way sound seemed to drip out of her mouth as she said the word, Camel. by Erica Miriam Fabri

Grief

Grief

Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.

Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor’s floor.

I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.

Stephen Dobyns

Balances

in life
one is always
balancing

like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers

or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)

3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth

our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street

and lately i’ve begun wondering
if you're trying to tell me something

we used to talk all night
and do things alone together

and i’ve begun

(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you

—Nikki  Giovanni

Communication

She purposely did not wear panties

stood above his head to pretend-adjust

the lights above the bed.

He looked up

and wondered if he'd remembered

to turn out the lights at his house,

knowing from her smile

that he would sleep and wake

beside her again.

Hymn

Outside the window,

hymns filled the church's halls,

flowed onto the sidewalks,

into the streets.

A boy lifted his head to follow the sound

to the church window then stared at the window beside it

the one with daffodils brightly drooping against the pane.

Inside

she is sitting in yesterday's petticoat

legs raw from running

from her heart being pressed to the rotating blade of his smile

she'd sworn off 2 seasons ago.

In the winter,

as thick blood rose to the skin's surface and froze,

she thought,

This is all right. This, it's really not so bad.

'Cept now, it is summer so

it begins to thaw, as the cut reopens, the past still thick and brooding

oozing onto the hard wooden floors.

2 Cents

I ate too much

drank too much

paid too much

stayed too long

waited too long

took too long

so I thought this time,

for you,

I might try to do it right.