you've been sobbing for
years. Collect them in a paper
cup till they fill up the rivers
surrounding the mountains. Eagles

will drink from fountains
you weep. Water the grass and
your garden with them. Build up
a forest from a thin little stem. Collect

them all in a pool. So, on a hot
summer day the neighborhood kids
can swim and stay cool. Splash in the
puddles they make. Fill up the oceans and

lakes. Don't be so quick to dry them
off of your face. Wash your clothes. Make
a bowl of soup with the salty brine. Drink
them. They're cherry wine.

before age two,
before she walked or wore
her first pair of shoes. She
held down the fort when

daddy left home. He was
the type of man, that liked to
roam. She soldiered on through
her mother's drunken nights,

when dear old mom knocked
out her lights. Mopped up her
***** on the kitchen floor. Home
was a place she called

war. She didn’t have ribbons
and satin dresses. Her mouth,
filled with abscesses. She wore
thrift-shop clothes, moth-eaten

ones, with quarter-sized
holes. She dropped out of
school to get a job. Not a day
goes by that she doesn't

sob. But she holds her
head up high because she
has a new home made of
paper. She calls a poem.

like a ball of yarn
the cat pounced on and
swatted at. Every strike of
his paw I grew small

till I was not at all. I unwind
like a spool of fishing line cast
by a silhouette drinking *****,
smoking cigarettes. He spun

a web of lies like a spider
trapping the fly. I was unstrung
like a harp. He couldn't pluck me
with his fingers. The music

died. The wooden frame
all now in splinters. A rope will fray
when cut. I hung on till my edges
grew threadbare. Now I'm dust in the air.

gold was rust the day
this turned to dust. All
the bouncing dots
flatlined. Swans in the lake

turn swine. When did
the sunflowers drop their
heads? Their bright yellow
petals shed like cat hair

on the stripe upholstered
chair. When did the cornflower
sky sigh with the wind and turn
charcoal? How did the moon

break into pieces when once
whole? The sun's rays douses
its light? What cut the string
of the high-flying kite? Why

July, did you turn frost? Blades
in the yard from standing
now moss. The diamond ring
is glass. Inside of it, many cracks.

infesting my floors
and walls. Eating through
the cherry wood till there's a
hole where my house once

stood. He's a pathogen
invading my body with his,
injecting the poison in a shot
of release like a pent up

sneeze. He's smog, polluting
the air I breathe, blocking
my lungs till I wheeze. He's
a bacterial infection spreading

into my tissue. Knocking down
cells, making my brain swell. He's a
malignant tumor growing every day,
till I putrefy in a pool of his lies.

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.