doing sit-ups on the painted floor.

It’ll be someone else walking a mile and a half

to the store called Magpie, buying

a gift for whichever friend’s baby, rattle

or small shirt with a transit map.

The name is meant to conjure up a gorgeous, inky

creature culling treasures to bring

back, but if you really get close

to a magpie’s nest, you see it’s all trash.

Tea

Tea

I can’t get away from it.

Felted-up reenactors shoving a great fake crate of it

into the Harbor and jeering.

After the tour group leaves, they fish it

back out and towel it off,

unbutton their waistcoats to smoke.

At the nearby counter-service place, there are two

jars next to the register, and dropping bills

into one or the other is how

we affirm our commitments—why should we ever

pay decently, unless it occurs

in this fever of rivalry that passes for fun?

What are our choices and might I suggest

LESS IS MORE against MORE IS MORE?

Or IT COULD HAPPEN ANYTIME against IT HAPPENS

ALL THE TIME? Or how about THIS VIOLENCE

FOREVER UNDOES A PERSON

against THAT CONTENTION CAN ONLY

BE ROOTED IN THE RETROGRADE

VIEW THAT A WOMAN IS EITHER INTACT OR SHE’S

NOT? I always thought I’d made

peace with THIS PLANET, and yet here I am

shoving all my cash in the jar

marked ANYPLACE ELSE. There isn’t enough

money in the world.

Have at It

Have at It

When you work here for ten years, you get

a blanket. The blanket has their name on it,

not yours. I am conducting an anecdotal

survey of longtime employees, and I have yet

to find one person who uses the thing

to keep warm. M reported placing it

between her children and the dirt

before they all sat down to a meal outside.

S recounted how she’d wrestled it out

of a half-stuck bureau drawer to wrap

her beagle’s body after he died.

She’d buried the dog herself, in her bloomless

little side yard, and registered

embarrassment when the meter reader

caught her there, intoning over the body

with a hymnal. But why should she be

embarrassed? It certainly can’t be beneath us

to bless our animal dead, when all

our scientists do all day is endeavor to prove

that great apes mourn, that elephants

mourn, that houseflies mourn, that when

a fiddle-leaf ficus succumbs, another ficus

keens in its earthenware. We would like to

confirm that everyone is recognized in death.

Unseen as we are in this life, it’s all we have.

Tomatoes Ten Ways

Tomatoes Ten Ways

On a lampless arc of interstate, playing

I DON’T SPY, the nighttime game

where you say what you don’t see and wait

for someone else to also fail to see it—

are we there yet? I just want to get

back now, back to my kitchen, back