Poems for Persons of Interest

Desk Job I cleaned my desk today, removed the stacks of newsletters, receipts, and doctor’s bills. With rag in hand, I made a few attacks on dried-up evidence of coffee spills.    I shelved the books—they’d sprouted up again   in leaning towers inked with potencies on deckled gills, like mushrooms after rain. I opened wide the curtains so the breeze   could run its vigor through the room, and sweep away the stagnant air, and clear my mind, where sins lie in their jumbled, grubby heap— some known, confessed, and some not yet defined.   I scrubbed the wooden window sills, the grime, the carcasses of flies who met their end short of the inaccessible sublime. Why must we beat our heads like them, why spend                                        our days in fruitless wrangling with ...

Monday feel the words deflate the tyre of your whirring wheel to take you by the hand and lead you to the page, leave the desire for death in your head, and become the ink’s curling Monday path that spells the poem you are supposed to live.

Editr Hello! I’m Editr. I’m here to help you with your works. Your client bought me from my makers. Check out all my perks! I format, code and reference. And I raise queries too! So now, you’ll see, there aren’t so many works for you to do.   It might be that my formatting is shifty here and there. My coding is suboptimal. That’s simple to repair. I often miss a reference or make an incorrect link. My queries are erratic. You can edit them, in pink.   Let’s run my spelling check. Wow, what a list. There’s thousands here! Yes, I’ve selected all the words. Is anything unclear? Just let me know my errors and I’ll do my best to learn. The better I become, the less there’ll be for you to earn.

Hymn to Labour All days are Fridays for the ones who love Their work; all nights are nourishing the mind With dreams or carven waking active hours, Divining things far off and beautiful, Points on the mountain range where you would be, Statues in every obelisk, and in Your hand the architect of your heart's desire. The law of life is labour, but also love, And so all pour themselves into their work, Writers and painters and concrete finishers Will mar the corners of the works they know Can never last forever... with initials. They find their immortality in the moment, In giving their whole presence thoughtlessly. We are so loth to give to anyone Our time for free till we've enough to share, Enough for every need under the sun, Since fellow service seems no need like air, Like meals and sleep, and yet a person may Be so deficient in joy they pass away From most unnatural cause: a lack of play. Leisure is sweet, but work is sweeter still If it is dignified and interesting, Which ...

Carla Galdo  is a poet and essayist from Virginia. She has written for  Humanum ,  Dappled Things ,  Well-Read Mom ,  Modern Age , and others.                No Vacancy So much depends upon the missing puzzle piece that I spied before the vacuum sucked it up into its cavernous gray gut. Did it jump ship like Jonah, leap from the table to dodge its fate, or did a child just nudge it down? I’ll never know— but as I skim the hardwood floors, this much I do— we want to snap that final bit snug with its mate, to seal the ragged perimeter, turn scattered swirls of blue and green from chaos to a patterned sense. We want to rest lacuna-free with our cardboard conundrums solved for just a day at least. I say so much depends on this one piece, for even in this broken world where so much lurks undone, we long for perfect things.