Mary Stone Dockery

PORTRAIT OF A COUPLE WITH AN OVERDRAWN CHECKING ACCOUNT

One more rainless day, a corn husk
            flutters into the lawn, cracks beneath
your boots. We've enjoyed these
            sidewalks as if they were long arms
carrying us from one place to another,
            and even though we never travel far
we know it's necessary movement.
            I've finished packing bags of give-away
clothes, wait in the front room
            with a cigarette and the yearning
for something else to burn the tongue.
            Without money, we've learned
how to find faces in shapes on the tile,
            in the patterns on the bathroom wall.
How to make macaroni and cheese
            a main course dish, how to gamble
our last few quarters on claw machines.
            How to nap just to rid ourselves
of another day. How to put something off
            for days, like the old coats in the closet
or too many unused containers of coriander.
            How to re-use words like sorry
and can't. How to want.

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of Mythology of Touch. Aching Buttons, a chapbook, was recently released by Dancing Girl Press, and another chapbook, Blink Finch, is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press. Her poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in many fine journals, including Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, Arts & Letters, South Dakota Review, and others. She currently lives, writes, and teaches in St. Joseph, MO.