Bored Games

Just as I tend to do with all my homework and trials, I took it

seriously. You didn't take the energy well. The map was hard

to navigate and to figure out and we about to give up countless

times before we realized, we made a mistake. After the game

was over, the X and O pieces fell to the floor and by the wind's

hand, were thrown over the gates and were sent by flight to

different corners of the world, where they would never again,

return to the box. You said that you wanted them back, but I

told you I didn't play with gamblers anymore.

Ramblings of an Optimist

A bounce from the room’s shaded wall, the window

lures me into her portrait frame with an auburn dress,

and a belly ready to give the birth of light in shafts

that tear the swamp into flavors of discarded textbooks

and Fruit of the Loom underwear. The artwork itself

runs across the glass, pressed of finger code: squirrels

hold on in complete trust to their phantom wings on

wire cables attached to poles, an instant getaway from

the privileged hawks that engulf their bodies into

gold streaks of armor, apprentices to the mighty phoenix.

Kittens play hooky from school, nestled and turned over

under the Mother Earth. Rats swiggle their way through

the clumps of matted lawn in-between armies of grass blades;

moist, they are pinned into the soil as I scream for help—

messages with the air of smoke inside cloudy bottles sent to

the fixed pool up above, trapped in its own crystal games.