The Word Project

You say you have your sights set 
on a Wood Duck, incandescent in flight, 

jigging like a lure through the thermals. 
You jet before dawn, a jarred firefly, 

batting the lid with your wings, muting 
your taillight in canvas cargoes. You say 

you will return before I wake and I roll 
to your down pillow, warm and gaunt as 

a burlap sack of flour spilling into our bed. 
I curl into hypnogogia, knock about 

in lucid dreams until I am plucked clean 
from the plumage of half-bruised sleep.

from “Decoy” by Erin Ganaway

the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can’t use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens. 

from “16-bit Intel 8088 chip” by Charles Bukowski

The green shell of his backpack makes him lean
into wave after wave of responsibility,
and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,

Paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,
breaks the surf. He’s got his baseball cap on

backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

“Student,” by Ted Kooser.  

you fit into me 
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

from “You Fit into Me” by Margaret Atwood