“As easily as I once could peep-Tom

from sidewalks’ blind remove, inherited

despair had become, finally, too tall 

an impediment. Domestic ennui

pulled up its chair, pooled with fears of feeling 

precisely the wrong way, relit the need 

to say something when I’d nothing to say.” 

Now these vested dreamtimes: Plush crib-mates bend 

ears to dampen cheek and chin. This long night 

might be it, friend. As in a dream we meet 

on familiar ground; myself, buried

in your comic infidelities, and

you, probing for the earthworm’s other end’s

secret tunnel beneath this roused quicksand.