In the teal of morning
Sun lamping up the sky,
we rub our cloud eyes, rub
the fossil night off and start
the dayburn. Turn on the radio,
same old talk of a planet cracked
and ribbed with fires and flood
and hate, tarred up with sludge,
which, really, could have been
glitter if only we had tried.
*
Sunfizzle
And the drip of daywater
slowing, slowing. Nearby,
burnt rubber from a car
speeding on its way to begin
something, to end something.
Shreds of the day in the sky
going violet with twilight.
The sulk of the sun, its
fizzle coming to a dead
stop, the walkaway of time.
*
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, Passages North, and many others. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and (The Theory of Flesh.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She lives in NYC.
Oh my goodness, that last line of the first poem … makes me want to try harder. Thank you for this.