SUBLIMINALS
*
Suddenly I’m thirsty.
Sun flaring off a glossy magazine
triggers a need for liquid light.
My shaky self emerges from the lawn chair
like a salvaged shipwreck,
dripping crumbs and coins.
The big blue cooler seems continents away.
**
If I owned binoculars
I would watch the seagulls flocking
in the ballpark, so far from any ocean yet
squalling like a school of fish had rounded
second base. Two lessons:
What you want is always there.
There is always where you are.
***
It’s getting hard
to comprehend the simplest homily.
Do good works and good will return
in orange autumn windfalls
fanning out across the weed lots.
I still lock my doors and windows
though I don’t believe in evil anymore.
****
People often act
as if they love you, protecting your head
from rain or incomplete ideas.
They remember that funny thing you said
and keep old Christmas cards you mailed
out of habit. When their houses flood
you buy them sponges.
*****
Maybe the problem
is defining love, extracting it from all that
frenzied context, from what makes us
make things happen for ourselves.
The nervous puppeteer inside me waits.
Call a doctor or a salesman, either one.
We’ll try to sit still.
Fred Muratori’s poems and short prose have appeared in Barrow Street, Poetry Northwest, Volt, New American Writing, Boston Review, Hotel Amerika, Hanging Loose, and other journals. He has published three poetry collections, the latest being A Civilization, issued by Dos Madres Press in 2014. He lives and works in Ithaca, NY.