4 Very Short Poems

Written during Spring 2004.


Today in Public Works

One Baltimore street
smoothed so thin it cracked
with cumin-colored
and chocolate-covered
night-squandering rats.


You Were Missing in My Latest Dream

He collected bracelets, gold
mined from a tourist beach
where poems never belonged.
He hung them from the willow
with twine. I sharpened my comb
in search of permanent waves
to weed. These dangle from trees.


10,001 Days Before My Birth

It may have rained and ruined someone’s
best pillow, and made her cry again,
another little knife in a month
spent swallowing hard. She lit the stove
and pruned the kitchen garden. There may
have been a thumb-pianist with her
in the room, releasing note after
tin note. Someone may have photographs.
A cricket species may have gone extinct.


Window Sill

Cilantro spills from a blue china dog.
A pink plastic razor and shavings
of crayons curled into small scrolls,
melted into traffic light pools. Paint,
chipped, the kind you should never eat.
What do you see, from your perch
in the balsa tree? Only the golden glare.