by Chris Janke
Millet spills and looks like broken glass
on the kitchen floor.
The moths burrow down.
Mice sleep in the poison ivy,
and I bring you a capital H,
for hide me in the closet,
for oh, how the air feels like cement again,
for all the moments I almost told you
how I really feel, but was distracted
by the thought of a swimmer in a riptide.
Everything is gone, or going,
like houses sold at auction with their attics full.
The weeds are turning gold.
Porcupines are making love.
I’ve come to give you this:
my basket of brown grass and pebbles.
Chris Janke is a poet, artist, entrepreneur, and business consultant. Now working closely with banks and lenders to help small food businesses, he has a background in art and business and likes to help with both. His art includes sculptural poems that reflect on the connection between a word and the world, his first book of poems, Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain, won the Fence Modern Poets Series award and was called a “must read” by the Bloomsbury Review. He co-owns a local pub, The Rendezvous in Turners Falls; also in that town, he hosted a yearly lost-and-found fashion show for a decade. Slope Editions, the non-profit press he has run since 2002, publishes between 1 to 3 titles of innovative poetry each year.