like a new notebook or a good clean wind,

summer songs can’t make a dream
exist if it doesn’t want, and

happy poems should not be
items on to-do lists.

he winked at me in fall sunlight
from under his fedora.

[insert standard plot-twist-slash-
voicechange
here]

even happy poems should
have a little mystery.

or a kiss.

i am, after all, not
an iceberg. but i have been

too long among novelists
& nighttime heartache, and

this isn’t a true story.
is it?

definitely a kiss.
on a streetcorner.

[someone dies here]
just
here.