Sleeping Our Way to the Middle
       

Since I unwittingly advertise shame
on a quotidian basis, I need a class
in Defensive Living. "It was just a slip.
Why would you belabor a slip?"
"The glue hardens inside the hero
when the lights are out."
(I am the hero & you are the slip here.)
A player is a fragile thing
in hot beds of feudal hostility,
my nobility insecure because I am a trust fund fetus
with an expired D.A.R. membership.
But at Platinum Angel status, my friend's been
"saving people with light" since 1999
& doesn't know light is quick & dead
to the quick & dead, though when "casting down,"
he means well, feels deeply. Anyhoo, everybody
speaks English to stop jumpers, no resentment.

Copyright © 2010 Jeni Olin All rights reserved
from Hold Tight: The Truck Darling Poems
Hanging Loose Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission