Day 11

I stretched the prompt a little today–instead of using the phrase “the last” in my title, I just used the word last. I’ve never written a “13 Ways” poem before, and I used some of my tweets from last year as sections. I’m pretty sure I’ll be changing the first section at some point.

13 Ways of Looking at Last

The bottom paper in the stack
is always brilliant. Or an F.

*

A cactus may be able to survive
the desert, but it blossoms
in the tropics. In my back yard,
twenty feet high, red flowers.

*

Nine years I’ve had a passport
and never left the country.

*

Perhaps one day we will treat
cars like we do fur coats:
indefensible, immoral, rude.

*

Nothing saddens me quite like
a frondless palm tree.

*

My laptop will stay on
only long enough for me
to move it across the room
to another outlet.

*

Just one more bite

*

Can you hear the ice cream man,
see his van, listing starboard,
music box half a step off key?

*

The oddity of huddling under blankets,
a potential of snowflakes

*

Intrigue of housecats, a hammock,
bamboo rustle through jalousie windows

*

The Houston Astros have
not won a game this season.

*

This section intentionally
left blank

*

The feral cat we trapped and spayed
stares through the window at me
while I write.