A
day
without
is a day
without is all but
a day with is but blossoming.

I will quote Wikipedia to explain the Fib, and you may find them posted now and again, when the need arises.

Fib (poetry) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Fib is a rare, extremely modern form of Western poetry bearing similarities to haiku, but based on the Fibonacci sequence. The classic fib is a six line, 20 syllable poem with a syllable count by line of 1/1/2/3/5/8. The only restriction on a Fib is that the syllable count follow the Fibonacci sequence. An example of a classic fib:

One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.

That’s it. Write your own fib today.

For more fibbish nonsense, visit the original: gottabook.

Pretend, for as long as you
have to, that today was
not just the hottest day
of the year, but also the
hottest day in the history
of the planet. How hot
do you imagine it would
have to be?
Easy to find
out, I suppose, but just

for the time being, for
the remainder of the time
you’re pretending it’s the
hottest day, also pretend
that Google has no
answers for you. Pretend
that instead of going to
your hot office where your
hot computer is generating

ungodly British Thermal Units
pretend that there is no
easy way to find out. Pretend
that to find out you would
have to visit the library
and look the answer up on
microfiche. Further that
once you found the answer,
you couldn’t make a copy

of the page, but had
to write it down longhand,
and appropriately document
your source. Pretend
the library was not air
conditioned. Neither your
house.
Are you with me?
If so, then here we are

together, in the hottest place
on earth, during the hottest
time on earth, in a room
with a pillow and air
blowing on our feet.
Here we are together – 
for the first time if
not the last.

Because together we’ve
made it bearable by
having shared it.
Officially the hottest
day or not – we do not
double-check at the library,
of course – it is the
hottest day either

of us can remember – 
which makes it so.
The National Weather Service
does not need this
information. There is no such
place anyhow.
And now, having played
my little game, I wish

you would join me again
some time. Perhaps
tomorrow. The forecast
by the back of my arm
is for record highs. And
later on… a twister.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 — This marvelous poem by the California poet Marsha Truman Cooper perfectly captures the world of ironing, complete with its intimacy. At the end, doing a job to perfection, pressing the perfect edge, establishes a reassuring order to an otherwise mundane and slightly tawdry world.

Ironing After Midnight

Your mother called it
“doing the pressing,”
and you know now
how right she was.
There is something urgent here.
Not even the hiss
under each button
or the yellow business
ground in at the neck
can make one instant
of this work seem unimportant.
You’ve been taught
to turn the pocket corners
and pick out the dark lint
that collects there.
You’re tempted to leave it,
but the old lessons
go deeper than habits.
Everyone else is asleep.
The odor of sweat rises
when you do
under the armpits,
the owner’s particular smell
you can never quite wash out.
You’ll stay up.
You’ll have your way,
the final stroke
and sharpness
down the long sleeves,
a truly permanent edge.

Reprinted from “River Styx,” No. 32, 1990, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is “Substantial Holdings,” Pudding House Publications, 2002. Poem copyright (c) 1990 by Marsha Truman Cooper. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

I don’t feel as if
I know enough about
the company to endorse
the product, but I
know enough about
the expanse of paper
to say it allows just
enough space for
a poem – not a novel,
or even notes for a
novel, but a poem,
entirely. A short
story. If I still
wrote those I would
tell you. I might
answer in the affirmative.
I might answer that
though it would take
a great number of them
that yes, a person could
write a short story here.
And I imagine that
if William Carlos
Williams were still
alive and still
practicing – both
poetry and medicine – 
he would write about
plums on the blueberry
Pepcid pad.
Pepcid, by the
way, is generically
known as Famotidine,
which is not a word that
belongs in a poem. Which
is why I will never be
a poet and why
I should save this word
for plum season, for
blueberry season, for
a season other than this
one. Some time in the
future. When generic
and Pepcid and
Famotidine can
be fluidly claimed
iambic with a
straight face – without
trace of a smile
without irony – without
counter-indications
or stickiness, a note
fallen, forgotten.

Camille is a wet-dog woman. She smells
like puddles of oil. She sits under
a tree heaving pine cones at passing cars.
‘Camille Loves No One,’ is carved into the tree.
Beneath it is carved, ‘Camille loves many.’

She steals a law book from the library – 
Missouri Reports – and hides it
under her bed like pornography.
Humor is not lost on her, but she seldom laughs.
It embarrasses her that her body
could become so out of control that it would buckle.

Her shallow eyes reflect only the darkest
shades of light. She is a secret man
, a private pervert. Her lower back
aches and she feels as if she could walk.

A man has his two-armed grasp on her.
He is tall and wide and carries himself
like a serious freakshow. It is his
process she loves – his guts and odor. Camille writes
his name mantra-like on notebook paper.
He calms her like coffee so she can sleep.
He watches her closely.

He idolizes Camille – creating She-whom-he-
Wishes-to-be – to hold himself within himself.
He searches for her into – her hidden front door,
a hole through which he might jimmy the lock.
He finds his name written on notebook paper – like
a grocery list – and wonders if he will always
fit her, or even

if he does now.

Choose a garden.
Wear gloves.
Decide which are the flowers
and which are the weeds. Do
not worry about your decision.
You may change your mind later.
Use a hoe. A spade. A rake. A shovel.
Pull from the tops. Pull
from the bottoms. Pull
up roots. Uproot. Sit
in the dirt. Remove your gloves.
Put your hands into the dirt. Sift
the dirt through your fingers.
Weed. This is weed. This
is flower. Dig.

Nothing.
Not a thing.
Not a poem not a story not a
sound
not a taste or a bug
an insect
on your neck crawling
up toward your
ear.
An insect. Not
an insect.
Nothing.
But there. Just having
called it nothing
having called it
“not an insect,”
it becomes.
Becomes.

Some days
you are just too tired
to write poetry
to write about death
and your dog.
Some days just
waking and moving
and sweating
are enough and
on these days
you
should write poetry
should write about death
and your dog.

I’ve just remembered recently
that my stepfather – before he
died, before he was sick in
bed never moving and before he died,
before his cancer and
before he was sick in bed unmoving and before
he died – liked to carry
a money clip of exactly
one thousand dollars
and at the end of the day
replace what he had spent
with new money from the day’s
earnings, from sold tobacco or beer
or gasoline, and he’d fold the cash
tightly into the front
pocket of his jeans (quite surprising
how small one thousand dollars amounts to
some days) and carry it with him (quite
unnecessarily, I always thought, though he
seemed to think the money essential to
who he was).
    I suppose this helped him
feel secure – helped him
feel important or more
like a “store owner.”
It helped him feel like a businessman.
A real asset to his
community. A hero. A wealthy
human being. Someone worthy of
respect.
    If he were alive today, if he
hadn’t shrunk
into the body of death,
then you could tell him he
was all of these, with
or without the money clip – 
with or without the thousand
dollars – with or without
a sense of security, a sense
of himself beyond the
clip.
    I could never tell him.
A stepson could tell him,
but not this
one. So convinced was I that he
did – did indeed – 
need the clip of money that
I never saw him. I never asked
for his advice before it was
offered. I never listened to what
was very well and always indeed
offered, and I never voluntarily
touched him, or he me, until his
person was so close to the surface
of his skin that he could no longer
count out change, could no longer
strong enough to put anything into
or take anything out.

    And this is no metaphor.
It pisses me off that you might think it is.
Because this is the way things were. No sense
listening to the bells. No sense listening to
the wind through the bells. No sense listening to
the atmospheric pressure driving the wind through
the bells. Just listen for a moment, will you?
The bells are just bells. The money clip
just a money clip. The man much more than he
thought he was. More than we
thought of him. And less too.
    We, you and I, are not smart enough
to know ourselves, or others
smart enough to know others.
It should be enough to know
ourselves. To know others.
It should be enough that
this hand reaches out
and you feel it.