Do you slide it
Under your Danish plate at breakfast?
Do you tuck it at noon in a credit card
The color of eggplant parmagiana
In the paw of your leather billfold?
Is there any room at the end of the day
Any extra empty space inside
Your body That could be stuffed
With more memory of additional pain?
Look over there That starving old man
With the large blood-colored plastic spoon
Whispering to a can of alphabet soup
He will only pick out & eat the O’s The ones
That float to the red surface like megaphones
John McKernan lives mostly in West Virginia, where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is the selected poems Resurrection of the Dust.