Today's poem is by Merrill Oliver Douglas

You Get Used to It
       

The way you get used to the woman in uniform
rummaging your bag; the way you adjust
to roses with no scent, tomatoes like bloated
pool floats; the way its feels normal to stuff
desire in one pocket, compassion in the other;
the way you applaud smoggy sunsets and love
how fast your blood pumps when you snark
at jerks on Facebook; how cursing at robocalls
makes sense; how public shootings blur
with the more intimate asphyxiations; the way
you've stopped hearing the chirp, chirp, chirp
of the future in its wire cage — poor, fluffed thing
with its millet spray and a cuttlefish bone
to gnaw, how it can't stop plucking its feathers.

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Copyright © 2024 Merrill Oliver Douglas All rights reserved
from Persephone Heads For the Gate
Silverfish Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission