Furniture Crime
by Tammy Armstrong
Ten years to the left
you scan my rooms for armoires, sofas, chesterfields:
words seeded into irreverence.
It wasn't deliberation, subscriptions to suburbia surviving
it was a snowplow of progression
too many years without your shadow over the double sinks
washing down the dregs of a cold coffee
tinkering with a back alley thought
beyond the Laundromat and Chinese grocery.
It was never a crave for manicured lawns
(I
leave the forsythia petals where they fall
never rake the edges clean.)
In my dreams there is still room where we can smoke,
a floor mattress, crimp of sun
through bed sheet curtains,
your lips still bruised from the wine.
The neighbors wake slow there
no one drags out
mohawks of lawn sprinklers from sheds
to tick a guard rail of seconds off.
We burrow into dewy air
thankful someone has forgotten
how to pay mortgages
that we are astral shots beneath renovated roofs
a slow decent of languages
into Saturday morning nothing.
Tammy Armstrong
has an Eastern jones.
