Warm billowing swill of night, I hold you back, I pull you tight.
This will not do. It’s not all right. I hate the rhyming
pangs of night. The frankfurters shrivel in their pink skins.
The pot, boiling over, sizzles dry and when you call
petroleum quaffs grey green coffee eyes.
Black door with snow, I’d rather leave you open
but Dot once said of Death (misquote) you’re not simple
and neither am I. I refuse
to believe (but reserve the right for later) O
damn it, I will not cry. How come blue lightning strung
with Buddha’s tears swarms in kernels, lime Sturm und Drang
the second time, a second call, another round of rind? He’d better
fast track those handyman jobs and paint the downspout green,
or I’ll be stuck with it, my mother says. And then, there’s the other,
a shadow on her lung, a ball of liver, two more hairy balls
sprouting in her brain, and my father with his tarmac tincture,
nothing lost, nothing gained. Nothing is still something
absence says, and then the phone flaps dead, not
for want of coins or payment plans or my father’s steely
Bring on the drugs, I’m not complaining. Tensile
the drill of satellites ahead, herding dis-comfortable sheep.
Night with its brush of mushroom accordions.
Stars stuck on with lipstick, finger paint and sleep.

Shari Kocher

Shari Kocher is the author of The Non-Sequitur of Snow (2015).