Bad Habits - Richard Shelton

how could I leave you behind

old friends

since I am going nowhere

here is good and there is evil

and again I fall like a drunk

between two stools

of all the things I have

I cherish most

what no one else would want

At the Restaurant - Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people

and a public place the wrong place

for what you're thinking--

stop this now.

Who do you think you are?

The duck à l'orange is spectacular,

the flan the best in town.

But there among your friends

is the unspoken, as ever,

chatter and gaiety its familiar song.

And there's your chronic emptiness

spiraling upward in search of words

you'll dare not say

without irony.

You should have stayed at home.

It's part of the social contract

to seem to be where your body is,

and you've been elsewhere like this,

for Christ's sake, countless times;

behave, feign.

Certainly you believe a part of decency

is to overlook, to let pass?

Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan's

black dress, Paul's promotion and raise.

Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.

Insufficient, the merely decent man.

Untitled - Chris Mc Geown

Mental illnesses

Are constellations

Of the mind–

Most people won’t

See them

Unless you point

Them out.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE - Richard Shelton

                                                      For Michael Hogan

on December nights

when the rain we needed months ago

is still far off and the wind

gropes through the desert

in search of any tree to hold it

those who live here all year round

listen to the irresistible

voice of loneliness

and want only to be left alone

local knowledge is to live in a place

and know the place

however barren

some kinds of damage

provide their own defense

and we who stay in the ruins

are secure against enemies and friends

if you should see one of us

in the distance as your caravan passes

and if he is ragged and gesturing

do not be mistaken

he is not gesturing for rescue

he is shouting go away

when the one you thought, finally, wouldn't, does, - Marty McConnell

where do you go? the hole in your hands

keeps getting bigger. first a pencil falls through.

then your teacup, then entire bodies

like light, like you’re made of nothing stronger

than tissue, than sugar heated and spread

to look like glass. not the real thing. not you.

your atoms sit so far apart, your lovers

walk right through. one might say, over

the top of you. but no need for that, when you

can bend around their many departures, the most

porous door. she came back. they always

come back. why not. you are not a creature

of consequences. one way to survive a fall

is to believe very strongly that you

do not have bones. another

is to watch the hole in your body grow

until you are nothing but hole, and who

doesn’t love a hole. you’re the great circle

they can write their lives inside, a flat

unused womb they can crawl into. in this

way, you are useful. this way, you can sleep

in the house that raised you.

AND THE SCARS WILL BE COVERED - Richard Shelton

responsibility fell at my feet

like a dead bird

and I left it for the collectors of feathers

now I am leaving these words on sand

for the water

and when everything is gone

a voice will say

that’s home

where two paths cross without speaking

where a lost shoe full of darkness

is curled up

under the roots of the snow

then I will point myself in the right direction

alone I hope

I was never much for company

and start off down an empty road

toward winter and a silence

which no one will ever repair