The evening sky is as expected
on a clement day with soft clouds
that I should spend less time
thinking about, if that’s what you
could call what’s happening
as I wait for sunset to bend down
and hug me to the sound of trumpets
but it stays out at eye’s reach, as ever,
where no poem can coerce or capture it
and maybe that’s why I trust them,
if that’s what you could call what
happens between me and these words.

There was a queen who was unlike
yet exactly the same as all the others.
Her dissatisfaction with this
was immensely gratifying to her
and kept her bouncing like a safe
from bedroom to bath and
kitchen and couch, high unto heaven
then down to hell, which she didn’t
believe in but was afraid to be
afraid of until one morning she
tried to remember what day it was
and realized, in torpor and with
a sly glee, that the name slid away
like the face of a lover hovering
on the edge of forgotten.