with my crooked-clumsy fingers: a waterfall of seed funnels from the bag down the garbage
disposal, misses the inside lip of the small bin I’ll move outdoors. If I pour it in the yard, spillage
will attract the squirrels, and where I come from, next you know they’ll be crawling
up your screen door, clawing in to guzzle a drink from the toilet.
Once I loved a man on whose pillow his pet squirrel used to sleep. We both broke his heart
with our thirst (someone forgot to put down the toilet lid), mine not enough to drown me,
but enough to steer me clear of open lids. By that I mean manholes.
This isn’t a bashing poem. Everything’s the tango of love/hate, if you live long enough—
by that I mean more than a day, by that I mean when two or more are gathered. I don’t know
where Jesus fits in. But that’s too smart an ending, by that I mean smart-assed. It’s true
I can’t ever get enough.
O’Fallon’s poems have been published in journals and anthologies such as RATTLE, MER, and Slipstream, along with three chapbooks, and, scheduled for release this fall, Variations on a Theme of Love. Listening for Tchaikovsky has been a finalist in several book contests. She is a clinical psychologist in Carlsbad, CA.
