Still Life with Frasier Crane

The smells from someone’s kitchen

and the shine of a newspaper

appear on the heel of a shoe

and into my living room.

Applause: In December I bought nectarines

that tasted like wood,

and if I was a wife

I wouldn’t have done that.

Silence: This city rolls their socks into balls,

doesn’t care about elasticity.

I can’t complain about standards

when I don’t sue my landlord.

Applause: So many things unfold in a closet.

Why should I change my life?

Why should I accept knowing nothing?

My jacket has an impassive pocket,

where I left something important.

Pause: But the shoe will either have me or not,

just like that, and you could go forward.

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Jaimie Gusman lives and works in Seattle where she balances her time validating data, building artful things from collapsed filing cabinets and working on her first book of poems. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Margins Magazine, Permafrost and Diagram.