A practical list of the thing I have not, will not, or cannot fix

the chisel gap wedged between my front teeth my left windshield wiper, my screen protector, my screen, the four tiles beneath my sink: heinrich, stooley, waldorf, and moe, the second and third light bulbs, my thrift store painting, my bungee cord, my longsword’s crossguard, my dice bag, my website, my tax relief, my scalp and the scalp after, my didgeridoo, my mayan souvenir, my providence, my blender, my tomahawk head, the USB port, my deep noon, my bird voice, my lanyard noose, the first belt loop, my threaded spool, my dry vocal cords, my nose, my right loath sclera, my locking thumb, my hoax, my courageous double, my afterthought, my mouse colonies, my mice, the lamp whose shatter hangs cordial like half-lit guillotine, my dues, my don’ts, my do not disturbs, my disturbances, my ice-maker, my speaking terms, my formal terms of surrender, my colon, my first stain, my singularity, my sortie, that sudden stoppage of null, my old ways, my weight, my front right burner, my bad day, my time sink, my grant proposal, dinner (C) James Cole, 2021

On the Move

Bursts of hail and heavy downpours,

resolute, gray, and dismal rain.

Shaggy pine trees overshadow guard rails.

I stumble on the road to nowhere

jammed with angry, hungry folks

seeking shelter from sheer boredom,

humming uplifting folk songs,

shoplifting a bit of happiness 

from the shelves of the rural stores.

Silver lettering reads LOVE

on the roof of a tumbledown house.

My world trembles around me,

I page through the fluffy ball of memories,

I invested too much in the writing to stop now.

Lonely and forsaken, 

I move from the floor to the sofa

swallowing salted sorrow,

typing the phone number,

a collection of digits.

It’s assigned a new area code since I lived there,

but those seven numbers, 

they are still the same,

exactly the same.

Such pain every time

to touch the buttons, 

listen to a pregnant pause,

hit the nail in the coffin of love,

destroying the sandcastle 

populated with crocodiles and cactuses

with the authority of a weathered writer.

Hitting the nail on my head,

deleting the dead seven numbers.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2018

AT&T Push-button telephone
from Wikipedia