Fundamentals of English: 2nd Hour

Crickets
Sing in the walls and behind the books.
They have gone through the set
Of encyclopedias, made a nest
In #23 Pumps to Russellville
And eaten their way through
The rest of the set.
They have learned so much
They can’t stop singing about it.
They want us to know about
Poland and how glaciers
melt and the population
Of Leningrad and the parts
Of a chrysanthemum.
All of their knowledge sounds
Like an irritating noise to us,
But to the lone cricket
In the corner of the room,
It is the song of wisdom

Poem of the Day: Tenuous

The way of this life is a tenuous one.
My son flirts with joy at a cherry popsicle
in the afternoon and that evening
must stand his ground in the backyard, when
he tells his new friend Stuart,
I am not a baby. You think I'm a baby.
The way of this life is a tenuous one.

Montie Jean Poem 1: Microwave

She didn’t want the damn thing. She TOLD Jack
and Leigh, I got no use for that damn thing.
They set it up on the table she kept
potted plants and grocery sacks on, and she
ignored it for two weeks before warming
up some dinner rolls. She pushed start; her heart
fluttered at the sound of the glass cracking.
It’s that twisty-tie, Jack said on the phone.
She has a drawer full of them and ketchup
packets, rubber bands, odd buttons, pencils,
coupons, decks of cards, scissors, dominoes,
her husband’s upper plate with exposed wires,
silver and pink, flat, unused for nine years,
firmly stuck to a package of mustard.