let’s talk shit

            about the guy next door                                                                 

i write about dead pigeons.

they fall on my notebooks,

            collapse stricken onto my laptop,

refusing to dissipate until i write

                        their eulogy.

i called in an exterminator (the wrong

            person to do the job, but oh well)

            and he said it was just a problem in the area

i would like to move

            but the kids are happy and the husband is happy and we

            have a small terrier named skippy

-May 2005, to Beth, found tucked into an old poetry notebook