She’s Waiting

Dunbar’s Paradox

Spins through its paces,

Sticking to rhythm,

Rhyme pattern, and theme,

Death, then, no longer

But life. Slightly strange,

But predictable

Until the last line

Promising to take

You Down where the Dream

Woman dwells. Hold on.

Who’s this Dream Woman?

She’s not Death. She’s not

The first-person voice

Of the Paradox.

And she’s not explained.

She’s the Dream Woman

Who lives below graves

In some underworld.

Hmm. Ereshkigal?

Persephone? No.

Your mind shuffles through

Whatever folklore

And mythology

Have settled in it,

So many dead leaves.

Oh. Wilkie Collins?

His haunting woman

Who comes to life?

Dunbar could have had

Collins in mind, but

This Dream Woman won’t

Likely to come to life.

Well, you could research,

But why? You have this

Perfect declension,

Rhymed anticlimax

In a minor key.

Leave Dream Woman be.

Question in an Empty Room

What should the lonesome say
To the world desiring
Human stories, human

Interactions, of which
The lonesome have fewer
And fewer of their own?

Merciful Feel Good

Is there mercy? Can there be?
There are acts of clemency,
Public displays of mercy

By those temporarily
Empowered to grant such things,
But of the mercy of gods

Or of natural forces
There’s only the word in prayer.
Yes, we know. Sometimes it feels

Like a mercy, a song bird,
A lull in panic and pain—
And the researchers agree

That nurturing gratitude
For such merciful moments
Might as well be medicine.

But human society
Doesn’t structure the cosmos.
The bird sings for bird reasons.

The clouds recycle water
In the self-consuming sun,
And the body, more ancient

In most respects than human,
Will continue to produce
Hand-me-down panics and pains.

Someday there won’t be mercy
Of even the social kind—
This species, its strategies,

Are no more eternal than
Other species’ strategies.
Some days, still, life will feel fine.

Slim

She used to drink like a man
Who can’t stop checking his watch.
When will this show be over?

She used to joke that she was
Rasputin, unkillable
Despite popping mixed toxins.

She used to say her only
Addiction was her husband,
At least until she left him.

She used to be smooth and thin
As a sleek, anxious whippet,
A live wire right to wits end,

A stomach perforation,
Alone in her apartment.

This Other One

Every moment is
Instantaneously
Irrevocable,
Irrecoverable
At its creation.

Most you don’t notice,
But the boring moments,
The uneventful ones,
Are as permanent
As the swerve and crash,

And your attention lags
Your own experience
So that anything
You’ve ever noticed
Was already sealed

In permanent past,
Including your own
Actions, however past.
Novelty
Within continuity

Is what it feels like,
And it’s all so fluid
But it’s done, already
Done, and this is done,
And then this other one.