Read More: A Short Interview with Micki Blenkush
Clean
Let it go long enough
and you learn to see past
some of the mess. All those years
dusting door frames, wiping webs
from backs of bookshelves
amounted to nothing
but fleeting virtue. Anyone can work
with rags and water. What about
some real transformation? Forgive yourself
often enough and you start to forget
the way clean once felt.
All the way all at once clean
with counters gleaming,
when even a small stack of papers
suggested untended corners
so was quickly shuffled away.
Once my closets held only the things
I needed. Now dried beans age
in my cupboard, wait
for the promise of soup.
Through unwashed windows
I watch June’s tide of maple seeds
spin to the ground, hands empty
at my side.
The Art of Knowing When to Laugh
In the last year of my aunt’s life I’d visit
the nursing home, light her cigarettes,
hold them to her mouth. As the cancer
encroached upon the smooth function of her brain, […]
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How to Avoid Inconvenience on a Given Weekday
Walk around the child who stops
in your path to blow her smoky […]
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