I'm not bothered by how important you say you are,
and even if my eyes moved (as those of some of my more expensive breathren do)
instead of just my up-stretched hand rocking to and fro,
I would not choose to watch you dipping small bits of expertly cut fish
that you haltingly pretend to pronounce.

The lady who put me on my shelf
as if it watch over fumbling chopstickery
explains that I bring good luck, but when
dinner is over and she goes home I know that much like you, her luck comes
from a flat screen television upon the wall

I have not come to consume today
let time pass all tongues unchewed,
put memory out of the room today
forgetfulness no longer rude.

there is nothing left to consume today
these fanciful flights run anew,
no sticking magnetic boom today
words don't stop on their way through.

I have no intent to consume today
no stopwatch ticks hungrily past,
and as I drive through rain's sun-stopping gloom today
I realize I'm consuming gas.

I went to a poetry workshop today. Good stuff. Here's the first of three poems I wrote in class, and I'm sure more will come soon.

It was all green when we arrived,
a musty green transformed by dust
into the kind of green we wanted to forget,
instead filling the house with a late eighties beige, and
hand-stained cherry wood,
and the Pfaltzgraff blue of the yellow kitchen
my mother always dreamed of.