Three Short Poems of No Import Whatsoever

 GHOSTS

I pick up the heavy receiver before the phone rings

and place my hand over the mouthpiece when a voice calls from the living room, 

Who is it? 

A ghost, I respond.

Listening in wonder through intermittent static, I gently whisper:

What do you want me to do?

An insistent, tender reply, with clarity: I just want to fuck you.

But when will he reach out to touch my cheek?

*****

GRIEF

Don’t mind me,

The pouting mute slumped against the wall–

Ever the interloper.

I did see the dead baby, wordlessly passed between mother/father, hastily swaddled in a cheerful yellow flannel borrowed from a beloved euthanized pet

I’m invisible here, too: a nobody.

Don’t look,

Don’t touch!

I didn’t recognize him anyway,

but for my mother,

holding out his gold wedding band in a long white envelope.

*****

INTERCEPTION

Can I please enjoy one cigarette, please?

My daughter bursts through the back door, sprinting toward me with the ferocity of a diminutive public health inspector,

Her hypervigilance rivaling only the dog’s

And of course, my own: every neuron singing, at attention

In anticipation of impending overwhelming distress.