Anna Howard Shaw Day

Not even that all of this is all fake,
Anna Howard Shaw Day is a real thing.

If perhaps a polyglot collapsed. A
chest choked up with phlogiston,

once pink bronchioles all
barnacled with oily green-black miasmata.


So, February has not changed place
with any other month —dates

having an indifference, but seeming to
came up fast. Like emancipated youth

living the pastoral life, taking to
teetotaling to see if it had any benefit.

What was a winter wore thin. For good. Yet
each time seemed to. Snatch of invisible

breath there. Ice showing lassitude.
Ample mud where paths of connivence

would cross the depression that
a sidewalk made in dirt. As if life were not

a series of untenable decisions, and
we participants only.


Even if you are an altruistic glutton for
owed favors, no surfeit will stop March

coming. The warm threadbare
domicile of your hoard is hurtling forward!

Vindicated, yes,
but dirtied by handwork.