The Snack

Like you I too
want to stop time
but must attend
to this being
alive business.
This bitter earth.
It rains too much,
it rains not enough.
I eddy in lard.
My soul swims out
to meet my corpse.
And so to bed —
can I say that
before a snack?
On the cracker
an oyster looks up
with the air of one
suddenly awake.

Wet Yellow Paint

When father died
his ghost used mouthwash.
If everyone were a poet,
what a sad sad world
that would be. Everything
would be covered in wet
yellow paint. It makes me
want to change the subject.
Eleven potted plants
were alive all summer.
Now they are dying
in their big round pots
and their abnormally
joyous hearts are confused.
So short a life,
goddammit.

Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including The Book (Wave Books, 2023), Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is also the recipient of numerous honours, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she served as the state’s poet laureate from 2019–2024.