In the void of night,
the cat scans our house
like a boa,
slinking through hallways
in hunt of hot blood.
She always finds the dip of my back
most ideal,
curls her soft black spine
around mine and purrs us both
asleep. I am a wrinkled sheet
of office paper this morning,
pinned still by a small, warm weight.
I’ll let her hold me here
until her hunger
surrenders me to the stirring
day.

[2-14-11]

I write poetry on scrap paper at work
between scan and scan and
clean and bag
and scan.
Instead of eyeing the languid laps
of the shortest of three hands,
I use my own
to will each receipt
into a sloppy ticket out.
But it’s clock out,
not write out,
and the grocery genre belongs
to a bearded beat anyway.
I’m stuck resisting
trite but tempting
metaphors for the damage bin in back,
for the produce codes my fingers know,
for the product I now am:
peel painted yellow
and curled around the bottom
of a brown bag,
waiting for the paper
to carry me out.

[2-28-11]