ant5

Everything Comes But The Bus

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the countenance of the little girl muted distant televisions

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a purple evening in the window she folds her underwear

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snagged on the rock the water going out with the tide

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on the edge of the paper an ant the smell of rain without the rain

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diving into the shudder of darkness maybe this time

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lunacy a lost poem about an acetylene torch

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doppelganger spring a drawer of sex toys and failed medicines

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willow leaves drag against my scalp I can’t see her eyes

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morning thick and humid they forgot to turn off the streetlights

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ducks break the surface in the dark blurry crescent moons

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she’s in the shower an airplane crosses the darkness in the trees

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wind stirs the wind chimes on the porch there’s a fire

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clapping my hands I kill a mosquito find it was a moth

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the drip down the back of her thigh a mourning dove calls

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the brown dusk held by algae blooms an egret’s feather

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he washes his feet in the lake the cormorants their wings

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sheets soaked her hand draws away from my breath

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brief warm spell over thumping the outside of the pane the flies

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putting on my glasses gnats hover above my face

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weeks later her sweet voice it’s just a machine

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visible only in the shaft of light a fly her crumpled clothes

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the full moon low a dead tree its seed cones

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the dark shape of a spider wrapping a moth it starts raining

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the smell of garbage cans she asks me to keep her ring anyway

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imagining her with someone else behind the blinds the moon

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my cold foot steps on her bra still warm

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rain louder than thoughts everything comes but the bus

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still sick the tree shadows as real as the trees

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dressing afterwards her voice hardens

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winter again in my coat pocket a strand of her hair

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selected by Hiroaki Sato for A Guide to Haiku for the 21^st Century (Gendai Haiku Kyokai 1997)

Tagged: A Guide To Haiku For The 21st Century, Chris Gordon, Gendai Haiku Kyokai, Haiku, Hiroaki Sato