The Skeleton Remembers Showing One of Their Poems to a Coworker at CPT Corporation

I showed Jill Field a very dark sestina
containing slab-shaped tablets like white windows—
wayside marks—

a banquet of stone set for the asshole I’d found myself to be;

the stars’ nearness; willow roots in my eyes.
I'm lying here.

The Skeleton Declines to Read Certain Poems

Those poems have a lot of edible
meat on their bones.
But I ain't no cannibal.

The Skeleton's Perspective on Permanence

When I was alive, permanence had a queer
meaning. My eye-blink future
looked like eternity.

The Skeleton Disavows Kinship with Donald Trump

Burgeoning mass of septic protoplasm.
Or cartilaginous like a shark.
Not a true bone in his body.

The Skeleton Peeps Into the Closet

I opened the closet door, and there they hung,
the silly skeletons,
pretending to be suits and dresses.

The Skeleton Meditates on the Lords of the Forest

Trees are skeletons,
as can be seen
when their leaves depart in fall.

The trees remain skeletons
when, one year,
their leaves do not return.

"Skeletons pointing at my poems"

Thanks to Mark Fleury, “You Are What’s Real.”

Yup, I worked with a lot of skeletons before I retired.
I was dangling from a cubicle wall myself.
I hardly ever showed them my poems.