Every Day Poems - A Poem A Day

Dinner with Rousseau by Cynthia Lewis-Jones

Fine dining in a clearing in the Jungle
Nude, but for my Peacock Choos
Sitting at the table

January afternoon after school

Grandmother sick at heart

I am loud,
Demanding attention.
I know when I am being charming

The rust iron wing of a train horn
pinballs down glass and steel canyons,

Light, please initiate me into your
occult philosophy. Tell me where
you come from when you penetrate
a dusty window in the morning and

Picture me waiting
in the nook by the window,
long skirt spread out, falling
red and wet-looking against

Breathless, the whole way
down, skimming
fuchsia, rag-ferns,

No taller than my knee
when you challenge
your first ocean.

There are so many names for things and new
things needing names that polyglots may have the fastest

Child at Tobacco Market by Charlotte Matthews Nights I go looking for the whippoorwill but she’s not to be found,

soar by Camille Thigpen and this is for ultramarine ink splatters on my wrist and jawbone; this is for clavicles

Ultimately we must learn to accept
our losses (as constellations eventually
accept their passing one

morning bedsheet weighs a ton on same-old
hard to face no matter the season with same
knee pinch neck grind jaw pop joint ache, but

I was snow starved all this time
Was eager for the fall to
Skirt in its random leaves and make way
For the white candy floss

I wish for one day
I could be someone else
To say what they say
To feel what they felt