STRAY DOGS
I want to take you home.
You are ugly. I am not ugly
but I am very very broken.
We need each other, if only
to escape dying alone.
THREE ROOMS AND ONE HALL
My daughter toddles through
the apartment singing a language
only she understands. She takes
the cats’ bell-in-a-ball and shakes it.
Like Gertrude Stein, she knows
that rhythm matters. And the song
goes with her everywhere.