There’s a piano in the corner.
The keys look like Tommy’s teeth
once he began to appreciate meth
and Big Gulps. I’ll never see
tables in a window-banked room
looking onto a grassy field and not be
the girl worrying buttons
on her white shirt, waiting
in the cafeteria with his mother
to see him, after a year in juvie.
Here is always a little there, back
in Kentucky, which is why
I make my youngest take piano,
which is why I buy the Sunday Times
and seldom read it.
Why I spend so much time here,
in space: no piano.
in Kentucky, which is why
I make my youngest take piano,
which is why I buy the Sunday Times
and seldom read it.
Why I spend so much time here,
in space: no piano.
The green field—just a cat’s eye,
the lid of which opens, closes.
Or, if you are old enough,
the cat’s eye a marble, a shooter
projected by expert thumbs
across the wooden floor, to collide
with aggies and sunbursts
prized, collected, and kept
in a squat jar on a shelf,
next to something horrible—
a bird’s beak, a rabbit’s paw.
the lid of which opens, closes.
Or, if you are old enough,
the cat’s eye a marble, a shooter
projected by expert thumbs
across the wooden floor, to collide
with aggies and sunbursts
prized, collected, and kept
in a squat jar on a shelf,
next to something horrible—
a bird’s beak, a rabbit’s paw.
Read on . . .
“Downhill Triolets” by Natalie Diaz