On my street, the trees
don’t know their names.
Paper boys are paper girls,
who invisibly arrive and vanish at dawn.
Our house, the one
the color of milk,
is surrounded by blue, shivering roses.
The shouting windows
are sealed, but un-curtained,
so the neighbors can peer
into the living room, where no one lives,
as my mom parades around nude, again,
to prove to the sofa and chairs from Sears
she’s not dead yet, Mister,
not by a goddamned long shot.
Appeared in Right Hand Pointing, No. 60. February, 2013.
