when the sun shines
i can finish my cheese sandwich
step outside in my heavy coat
gather up fat brown sparrows
and pitch them across the street
throwing them hard at the neighbor’s spiny yucca
soft feathers ruffling as the sparrows zip through the air
i tally up the points
so many for bull’s-eyes
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
i’m reading about kosovo
its unmiks and kayfors
its pee-ohs and various constitutions
and i truly want to care about all this
—i am an educated, liberal man—
but i dreamed last night of a girl i had sex with
twenty-five years ago
(i will spare you the details i will not spare myself
or maybe i’m just being selfish)
then there was the girl i saw yesterday walking slowly away from me
she had a tattooed hip showing above the low waistband
of her pull-me-down pants
sex fractures my fragile concentration
leaving me just another of the world’s lost causes
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“An object has energy from its sheer existence.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphasis in original)