Two Poems

1. Against All Odds

On any other Wednesday, you wouldn’t be the girl in the cereal aisle at the discount grocery store ten minutes before closing listening to “Against All Odds” on repeat through noise cancelling headphones cause we’ve shared the laughter and you don’t even like Phil Collins and you’d never be the person squinting through damp eyelashes at the fibre content on a box of all-bran lip reading the stock boy’s directions to a young mother there’s nothing left here to remind me just the memory of the fingertips of your glove soggy from wiping re-wiping under your nose so many reasons why the Toasted O’s cost 14 cents less per unit than Cheerios except when the family pack is on sale but you can’t carry it home along with a carton of milk a bag of apples two pomegranates and a tub of yogurt without straining your arm by the time you reach the pawn shop

2. Wild Horses

couldn’t drag me away matter-of-fact my hand in your pocket scarf over my face thinking you must be quoting the Sundays version and not the original since we heard it making dinner from the living room TV last night on the credits of that one episode where she finally gets the guy to dance and then he leaves. It’s just that I don’t have much time right now writing out Spanish flashcards and adding cartoon birds to the margins of a book but soon it’ll be just poems, not a real book or anything, just nouns on a page and then call it a day:

plum

centipede

desklamp

muskrat

tea kettle

trousers