A List

A teenager’s tattered bra, polka dot on the inside, pink on the out.

Also, her underwear

because she leaves it on the floor, and says, it’s a long walk

to the washer, out her room, down two flights, and into

the Chinese lantern orange laundry room.

Blue crocs, pock-marked, invaluable to the part-time gardener.

Used often in place of running shoes for young boy’s football games

despite mother’s protestations about twisted ankles.

Indestructible, plastic, yet still palatable.

Golden fringe torn away from the ten-year-old Oriental rug,

First purchased for the new house, kept feet warm when answering the front door,

faded by summer sun and cool winter light.

Once a place to play and rest for toddlers,

Now His instead.

Heliobores, planted only last fall

because the nurseryman in the paper said so.

One of three plants took a hit. Tattered leaves litter the patio tile.

Deer-resistant is not the same as dog-resistant.

.

Spaghetti strands, not yet cooked, that never made it to the boiling pot

crunch underfoot. He springs on the fragments of dried wheat.

It is pasta and he is

named after an Italian, how bad can it be?

Feces of geese, green goo smeared across his tan-white face,

which also sports a look of delirium.

Though scrubbed clean, toxic green residue still forms a ring -

a moustache around his mouth.

Little losses,

bites of life.