I am spending my way out
of a recession. The road chokes
on delivery vans.
I used to be Just Looking Round,
I used to be How Much, and
Have You Got It In Beige.
Now I devour whole stores—
high speed spin; giant size; chunky gold;
de luxe springing. Things.
I drag them around me into a stockade.
It is dark inside; but my credit cards
are incandescent.
— Connie Bensley
The plastic statue of the Virgin
On top of a bedroom dresser
With a blackened mirror
From a bad-dream grooming salon.
Two pebbles from the grave of a rock star,
A small, grinning windup monkey,
A bronze Egyptian coin
And a red movie-ticket stub.
A splotch of sunlight on the framed
Communion photograph of a boy
With the eyes of someone
Who will drown in a lake real soon.
An altar dignifying the god of chance.
What is beautiful, it cautions,
Is found accidentally and not sought after.
What is beautiful is easily lost.
— Charles Simic
Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,
aren’t us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.
Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.
— X.J. Kennedy
