every day is Sunday
slow drip of honey
time the gait of a beetle
on floors from felled oak
from trees never given a chance
like my children now
with their carapace of home
with their boredom
all my son wanted
was a lover to date
to eat pizza with
but he’s locked in like a cat
we know now what it’s like
to be an indoor cat
while the finches sing
while in Indonesia
they slap the 20-foot cage
make the birds do 500 laps
to build stamina
for birdsong competitions
and I remember on Bali
the men swinging cocks by the legs
chewing beetle nut
throwing the roosters in the circle
for the cock fights
a flurry of feathers
of fear
while the women in courtyards
fed the gods
water, rice, and flower petals
and now I witness
cockfights every day on the news
and I was a step away
from falling then
and now I’m not even
on my feet
and now we’re all looking
for remote jobs
and the computer
is an eye
is staring us down
and the computer
cannot record my song
like an ear
and sometimes now
I’m so lonely
I can see
how old the willow
in our front yard has become
its split trunk, its lean
but we don’t cut it down
because age graces our world
and it is so hard
to be old these days
is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado, and lives with her two children, husband, and pets. Her books include Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010); two full-length collections from Word Tech Editions, Rust (2016) and Coming Up for Air (2018); and the forthcoming full-length Occupied: Vienna Is a Broken Man (Pinyon Publishing, 2020). She is an instructor of English at Front Range Community College and works as a writing coach, editor, tutor, and ghostwriter. In her free time, she swims miles in pools and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.
Author’s website: www.kikadorsey.com
