Clockwork

Dawn Potter

And on her mind is all the waste

and the waiting, and the pain

of wanting someone to listen

to the pain she can’t talk about, like how her lover

is a drunk, and how she is afraid

of time and of her mind

circling its mud-wrenched, idiot track.

And meanwhile a neighbor expires

in a strange bed, little birds

flutter in the bony lilacs,

            her lover slides another blank-faced bottle

                        under the torn seat of his pickup.

Wind blunders among the empty branches,

            raking their frail tips against a livid sky.

                        Another hour lost, she thinks, but hours later,

in the medicated dark, her mind

and what’s on her mind keep ticking, ticking,

stupidly ticking on.

[first published in Sou'wester (fall 2011); forthcoming in Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014)]