The sleeping one is erect and mumbles.
The room went Arctic overnight
and his foot peeks outside the covers.
You leave his warm slumber
five minutes before the new hour,
stomach growling, and possible
moon somewhere. There’s slight moisture
still. He’ll later say he saw you leave.
The day will happen soon enough-
peanut butter sandwich, dropped knife,
tote bag of graded papers.
Flossing in a colder room,
planning Jefferson myth-debunking,
washing hair—the man’s sleep stretches
without boundaries, rolled to middle,
as if it were his bed, thick lashes,
even beard, and no concern for pillow.
He doesn’t know it’s October and you are happy.
— Farrah Field
That everything’s inevitable.
That fate is whatever has already happened.
The brain, which is as elemental, as sane, as the rest of the processing universe is.
In this world, I am the surest thing.
Scrunched-up arms, folded legs, lovely destitute eyes.
Please insert your spare coins.
I am filling them up.
Please insert your spare vision, your vigor, your vim.
But yet, I am a vatic one.
As vatic as the Vatican.
In the temper and the tantrum, in the well-kept arboretum
I am waiting, like an animal,
For poetry.
— Katy Lederer
If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,
if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table
rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,
and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.
— Rachel Contreni Flynn
