Down and Out with Lady Luck in a Casino Last chip She is both faithful And unfaithful Until proven otherwise. Which risk do you take? Trust her and be wrong, Or doubt her and lose something real? In the end, the gamble, Winning—Keeping, Is about what happens if you lose... What loss can you bear; Everything, Or everything? In My Backyard When a frog realises there’s a world outside the well, it instantly separates itself from the crowd. The crowd only starts looking at it wei

lava everything spins in the squid ink  having meant a caress      swimming now downward with blinded eyes  once I slowed a loved one’s ascent toward air      once I tripped another who scraped her knees      these were breaches      with a long pole from two decades out  I might call them cruelties      and continue shrinking  from apologies  that present themselves for inspection as landslides  resentful of consequence      held tight through a titan’s eon—       lava split

how does it look, from a distance as i flail at this nuisance of mosquitos from my car to the clinic, as they wave me on at the front desk to the jungle room you see, they know me here but this ain’t graceland there’s pictures of monkeys and macaws a plastic palm tree, canned-in 80s pop anthems in spite of, not having the time of my life still i shuffle across vinyl tile, inspecting cabinets plenty of bandages, rubber gloves peeping the rubbish bin when dirty dancing fades to