In My Spare Time
I attach fins to roses. I set them off to swim but they usually sink. Soon I’ll have created a
continent of plant matter. It will be mine. I will let everyone live on it, then it will be
ours. I want an ours, an us. The roses keep drowning. They are a part of the us too, the
part that always seems to be there, holding up everything else without a breath.
The Table
acts like a tree but he’s not
one. The table is a table.
The table only thinks he is a tree.
When it’s cold the table invites squirrels over for cocoa.
I think the table keeps the squirrels
inside of him. I think the table does not like being alone.
The table is perhaps a tree, undercover indoors.
It all means nothing except that life is living where it can’t
go on. The squirrels have been dead for a long time.
The tree encourages them to dance
with his branches. The tree feels less a tree
without his squirrels. The tree is becoming a table. By morning,
I’ve chopped him up and thrown him to the woods. Inside,
I get on my hands and knees to hear a squirrel chattering in my ribcage.
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Evan Williams is a Chicago-based writer. His work is in DIAGRAM, Pleiades, Joyland and other spots. He wrote the chapbook Claustrophobia, Surprise! (HAD Chaps), and co-founded the prose poetry journal Obliterat.