of piled packaged foodstuffs,
lends me a moment for

unpacking before
tumbling from the chair:

a butterfinger, a loaf
of bread, cans and cans

of coke and beans and
spam.
I waited in my car

for rain, calling
a fool from his cave to spill

his spoils onto the oily
pavement. I’ve taken

that path before.
Still I
choose paper, no frills, from

among unnatural
cohorts, the thin white

plastic grips cut too far
through my fingers.

I pack the easyopen pouch,
pushin-pullback box,

insertstraw carton, EZseal
bag and twistoff bottle into

brown dry skin to biodegrade
in someone else’s kitchen.

It isn’t becoming any more obvious, with the passing days and passing years, how the days will end, how the birds will stay aflight, how the dining-room tables remain a place for the collection of things unimportant or forgotten or simply tossed down upon entering, coming home, getting warm, the heat still on, the power still on, the children still tossing their hands up toward you, the animals about you, carrying one of your slippers, carrying hope. One more day passing. One thing tossed down. A thing tossed aside. A thing tossed and chased after and returned and returned and returned. How cold it is at night. How difficult to know. How glorious. The day ending. Night fallen and curled around itself, asleep on the floor. Another night is tossed to you. Underwhelming.

End
Week
End
Begin
Again
Now.

Imagining angels
and why, when they appear
, they almost universally proclaim
that there is nothing to fear.

There must be something more
to the angelic
than the white feathery wings
and the golden halo
and the rosy cheeks
, polished like supermarket apples.

Who would fear
the Christmas card image
of the angel’s appearance
, the iconic, inverted
, crystal martini glass?

Or perhaps it is not so much
how they first appear, but
when they begin to speak
we see only truth, only words
that cannot be broken
by humanity, cannot
be understood by you and me

except as something terrifying
, terrible, and without
escape.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 — While many of the poems we feature in this column are written in open forms, that’s not to say I don’t respect good writing done in traditional meter and rhyme. But a number of contemporary poets, knowing how a rigid attachment to form can take charge of the writing and drag the poet along behind, will choose, say, the traditional villanelle form, then relax its restraints through the use of broken rhythm and inexact rhymes. I’d guess that if I weren’t talking about it, you might not notice, reading this poem by Floyd Skloot, that you were reading a sonnet.

Silent Music

My wife wears headphones as she plays
Chopin etudes in the winter light.
Singing random notes, she sways
in and out of shadow while night
settles. The keys she presses make a soft
clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts,
golden cotton fabric ripples across
her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks.
This is the hidden melody I know
so well, her body finding harmony in
the give and take of motion, her lyric
grace of gesture measured against a slow
fall of darkness. Now stillness descends
to signal the end of her silent music.

Reprinted from “Prairie Schooner,” Volume 80, Number 2 (Summer, 2006) by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright (c) 2006 by the University of Nebraska Press. Floyd Skloot’s most recent book is “The End of Dreams,” 2006, Louisiana State University Press. 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.

Taffy and
Caramel cornball

Swinging around center.
Goo stick skin hot

Carnival pull back
Diesel smell.

Sitting at the bottom
Lick sweet fingers

Taste better white
Explosive corn mouth

Roof. Butter burnt
Ferris brings wheel

Back up good feel
Swing down sound of

Quarters hitting
Floor. Again to

Earth back wondering bean
Bags in a clown mouth

Honking pipes. Cold
Fireworks and sno cones

Shaved back on my heels
Ignite the sky kind of

Happy up on wheel
Ferris top and around.

Red Blood Cells
, i heard her say,
Come from eating
Too Many Carrots.

There is a great pool of words
from which to choose your words
though it sometimes seems the choosing
is best left to the dead, or the soon
to be dead, so as not to invoke
sentimentality. But you will do your best
, and scoop up handfuls
to eat, just eat, to taste and
swallow, to chew and devour.
It’s what you do. And if you never
vomit up what has been
consumed, all the better
for you and your children
, who would doubtless be left
the task of cleaning up what
you have cast out.

At the center of the
tissue roll
is an eyeglass

to extend my eye
toward spiders
on the bathroom wall.

I’ll be back
I promise
just ten
think of something
scrumptious
and in ten
I’ll check
on your flock
of stars
on your ceiling
in ten
you’ll sleep
I know you.

Good night.