Sweet sweet round and round
The big bush in the driveway
Circled in bikes with training wheels
A McDonald's take-out window
Dream big
A thicket dense and opaque
A pretend hamburger patty
tasted like nothing
And a plate of spaghetti was something to hide from
Under the kitchen table

Get Knotted

Habit forming and keeping it fresh and a new habit, then,
and who has time to really indulge a habit and learn how it
becomes them, crawls out of them and makes them habits too.

SCANNING

The story goes

they moved to a bad place

to start a good life

they told their loved ones

“there are no bad places” or 

“nothing new happens

in a good place”

they counted good things

and bad things

aiming for harmony

one day the lousy GE clock radio

scanned, then latched

to a fresh mellow

millimeter murmur

between the sports and

classic rock

A Taste

THey said they liked the taste of lobster–
the exotic salt of sea and sand under the shell.
And we were on vacation at the beach, after
all. Playing daily in the waves–coming back to the smell

of boiling, curdling, briny water
whistling in the pot,
with the tops of claws swiveling and reaching out once it got hotter,
like the noontime asphalt in the lane on our bare feet. Too hot.

"Can't have shellfish at all," said Paul
in Greenpoint, this Christmas holiday break.
"No lobster? That's a shame," Dad replied, then remembered the way they'd crawl
on the wooden floorboards before he plucked them up to make

dinner for his extended family. Playing executioner
because we said we liked the taste of lobster.