The mongrel lays stow in drowse
In her wooden colorless doghouse,
With five half-blooded pups;
Tussling softly and loose-limbed,
Ringroundabout at her breast -
The rain has surged at last,
This world is now grey yet beautiful,
This drizzle of cloudburst
Gushes and rushes like a nosebleed -
The unapproachable splendor
of the empyrean coming undone
(Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronn-
konnbronntonnerronntuonnt­hunnt-
rovarrhounawnskawntoohoo-
hoordenenthurnuk)
Oh what a chocolate-box day
For five-tuplet pups , black as coal,
White as a swan and brown as oak
to be tussling softly in.


- Jamie F. Nugent

In my hopeless fantasies,
we’d run into each other
on the street somewhere
with a bar in walking distance, maybe,
but I can’t. Really, I can’t.
It’s nothing against you,
really it’s not.
I’d love to find you one day
sitting across from me
on the late train home
or inside my box of
sugar-free cereal that will
help my heart or whatever.
They say a watched *** never boils
and I’m not sure I’ve taken my eyes off you.
It’s not fair to you. Really, it’s not.
Maybe you’ll get this when we meet
in however many years
when the puddles are too small
to drown in. And maybe you
learned how to swim.
Can you teach me?
Can you tell me where you’ve been?
Who you’ve loved?
Tell me the stories you never were able to.
I’ll know them by heart, better than my own.
Tell them without a microphone.
Without an earpiece.
Without your audience listening.
An empty theater clinging to your life,
a raft they never were sent.
A new memory to crave.
A chaser to a burning shot.
The shot itself.
Are you a performer or a teacher?
Standing in front of a tuplet crowd,
the audience whispering answers to questions
that the back of the room
hasn’t even reached yet.
Those chapters were ripped from their books.