Growing up
She loved staplers
They kept things together
Nothing was ever lost

  Then one day
  Mommy & Daddy
  Became unstapled

Now she favors scissors
They cut things apart
So many things lost
Starting with her

I have always been
absentminded
and semi-organized,
a mistress of the incessant
and cluttered,
a keeper of legends
and a maker of myths

I scrawl my lists
on the back of bill-stuffed envelopes,
chuck pill sleeves and prescriptions
into the china drawer,
systematically rotate
unstapled papers
so I know the order of stories

There are impressions
on my chopping block
from the times I've abused vegetables
while pretending to sever
the heads' of my enemies
or cut their carrot fingers
clean in half

I do my thinking in the bath,
lay flat in the womb of water
and watch my ideas
get ****** down the drain

It's insane to save
'the good ones'
for rainy days;
if there's anything I've learned,
it's that those who make
blanket statements
have nothing else to say.

drills shrilly nosed into plywood

as storefronts were shuttered along

the walkway.

hazy tapwater sunlight diluted the

dogwood tree planted at center.

as a patch of pigeons were thrown

above it, whose wings became black

sticks across its white blooms.

frantically searching for the old man that

would normally feed them.

up ahead that brolic, mustachioed Puerto Rican

street vendor has been unstapled from the

sidewalk--his unheard cadences hustling the

numbers off watches.