a little black dot that marks
the end. That's my lot. A speck
no bigger than the head of
a pin. There is no way for me

to win. I build a nest on strings
of words that stood before. My life  
is nothing but a bore. I am not
read. And I sit low. People pass

me as they go. And if there's
a question do I get hooked?
Like a wire hanger in a closet
full of clothes or the curl of

a cat's tail above my nose. And if
they make a point they throw me
a line in the shape of a joint! Some
men throw another dot above

my rounded head: So, there’s two
of us, not one instead. My twin is not
fine company. She's just a copy of me. Men
pause; I jump on top bearing my claws.

like a dream,
but chases me around
like a speeding car down
the boulevard.  It dropped

like a burnt souffle'. But
I wake to it every day, smoky
and grey. It's finished like
a line somebody crossed. I was

tossed in the air like
a coin. Landed on heads.  Cut like
threads after stitching. It was
bewitching! It stopped

like a broken clock. Only kept
time twice a day. But in the rhyme,
it sliced my lines.  Expired
like curdled milk from sitting

too long on the shelf. It closed like
a slamming door in my face. I banged
on the wood till my knuckles turned
red. But I haven't in years put it to bed.

like a piece of old silk cloth
bought at the fabric store. And
stitched me into a pair of pants
a moth ate holes in and

danced. Sliced me like a loaf
of bread. Throwing away
the crust and ends. Sandwiching
me with a ****** between a rock

and a hard place with boyish
lust. He shaved me. And I grew
back as new stubble, short and
hard, till I scratch everything

that touches my skin. He axed
me like a maple tree. And I
fell hard, covering his whole
front yard. Then he took my limbs

and shredded them into his
woodchipper. I was broken into
a thousand pieces. My release is
spreading them as mulch in my garden.

like the seasons
from the full bloom of lilac spring
till his room was billowy grey clouds
snowing in shrouds. He was

a ripe banana left in the noonday
sun, turning from bright yellow
to pitch tar, my Freud smoking
cigar. A caterpillar

morphs into a butterfly. But I
died in his cocoon in late
June. Like a blood orange sunset
at night, down went my light. I was

a silhouette hung on his wall. He
dressed from green to red like colors
in the fall. And then stood bare like
the trees. Empty branches

scratching the windowpane
through the howls. The lakes are
sheets of ice that I don't walk
on. The moon will change by dawn.

off some sea-beaten shore,
riding crestfallen waves
propelling a long wooden
oar. His back is slumped right

here in his rollerblade chair. But
his body is limp as his stringy
grey hair. And when I talk it's
like talking to air. His cheeks,

sunken valleys, pale as the noon
day moon. His face wrinkled and
dried like a prune. His lips hard, and
closed tight as a clam. His belly

is soft as strawberry jam. And
to think I was his doxy back in
the day, when I was young and had
moxie, and his legs were a sleigh.

like a watercolor in a wooden
frame standing in the rain. Reds
bled with the blues to create
a purple hue. She wore it as

a brass weathervane high
in a cornflower sky blowing in
the wind, spinning in every direction
till the **** broke off

like a piece of poptart. She
wore it like a river running into
the valley. There was erosion from
all her emotion. She slapped

it on like thunder clouds
clapping out loud. Lightning
striking down a cherry tree. Swimming
in shards of jubilee.

of orange butterflies
that lies hidden in the depths
of her dress. They cannot flap
their wings. They hang loose

as strings, unraveling. They built
a nest in her breast. She has a
pocket of tears that she airs in
the dark morning before the sun

rises. Before she paints her
eyes in black she puts them back in,
like pencils in a tin. She has
a pocket of smiles she takes out

once in a while so folks do not
ask. It's part of her mask. She has
a pocket of dreams no one has seen
stitched in her favorite color of red

that she wears every night to
bed. It's only a pocket, and a pocket
is small. She scrawls out her dreams on
a napkin. Folds the paper to look at later.