Death collecting souls for recycling

                                           by Kim Addonizio

from The Sonnets

#12

I hate clocks & mirrors I hate all roses

& trees especially trees even evergreens

are felled & strung with lights & ornaments

I hate ornaments & wind-up crèches

playing “Silent Night” with plastic cows breathing

over a plastic baby I hate babies please don't have one

it will ruin yr beautiful tits forever

you'll have to push a stroller a 40-pound shopping cart

before you like a plow 18 years you'll toil

what a waste paint something green

get a show somewhere with white walls

& people drinking wine I love wine I love

taking it in my mouth then kissing

it into yours having enough / & time

#22

my glass shall not persuade me I am sober

after three French 75s in the bar mirror

our hair messed up & the bartender

carded us both then look I death my days

but not yet this afternoon it's elsewhere

collecting souls for recycling mine's metallic

scrape the rust off it's still shiny

yours is egg cartons wrapping paper

birthdays weddings congratulations Christmas

mine is Deepest Sympathy Sorry For Your Loss

hearing the champagne hiss in the bottle

& gin to kill the apple maggot

when threatened it walks sideways & mimics a spider

lay down beside you & felt so much older.

#73

it's that time of year ice in the trees

snow like dirty light piled beside the trash bags

city gardens behind chain link fences

mired in white except for an occasional rat

everyone lately has cancer

Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead of an overdose

everyone's sad & fascinated

black night is falling in a song

I prefer the one about the glow-worm

illuminate yon woods primeval

come to my bed my aeronautical glimmer

draw a treble clef a few notes will swoop down

nothings lasts anyway

& we leave nothing behind

From The American Poetry Review, May/June 2015.