Tom Daley
Petit Bourgeois Despair
The shame mongers
are splitting hairs
with the arsonists.
We are left
to the integrity
of our attics.
Every day is a beach day
in the budget of baby oil.
Skim me. I’m as loose
as a spoon cooking horse.
Ecstasy makes hay
like a woman who moans
with a vacuum cleaner’s
prerogatives. Tears often
mistake themselves
for kisses.
To thaw is to turn from an itch
to a scrape.
Piety is the wrong poppy.
Tom Daley is the author of House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poetry Ireland Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Hacks: Ten Years on Grub Street (Random House, 2007); Poets for Haiti (Yileen Press, 2010); The Body Electric (CreateSpace, 2013); and Luminous Echoes (Into the Void, 2017). He leads writing workshops in the Boston area and online for poets and writers working in creative prose.
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