Do NOT stick your broccoli
all up in my cheese sauce.
If you are going to push
my buttons, have the decency
to hold off until you’ve
gathered your ducks all
into one row,
swept your leaves all
into one pile,
de-toxify your habitual
tendencies toward addictive
obsessions by attending
a twelve-step meeting,
and tried my shoes on
for size just twenty-four hours.
See how you like it then.
Otherwise, chill.
The wind blows those leaves
all over tarnation later,
and I hear ducks have
short attention spans,
anyhow.

Tansy Julie Soaring Eagle Paschold is a poet and a scientist. They have been published in AKA’s Advocate, Fine Lines, Plainsongs, The Awakenings Review, Nebraska Writer’s Guild, The Raven’s Perch, Iconoclast, The Radical Teacher, medium.com, and won honorable mention in a chapbook contest at Writer’s Digest. https://medium.com/@jpaschold or https://jpaschold.blogspot.com/