Today's poem is by Jenny Factor
She Said to Me
The difference between the lived life and the slept life
or choosing to bring home the periwinkle bra
The difference is a quality of attention. The difference
and the ants in your kitchen matter, you'll care
needs a trim, and your socks don't match.
centered attention like a Viking compass, a lode stone afloat
personally landless, othering othering
your lover's favorite story, unspells like a malaprop
Well, if that's the difference
Have we misplaced Death, or Laughter?
is not the chipped ivory picture frame hungor not hungon the wall,
instead of the white one
is always knowing where Death is. Misplace death,
that there are crumbs in your child's bed, her hair
The slept life dithers on in a kind of otherly-
in a bowl on a boat, bobbing directional yet directionless,
The slept life repels like North to North, retells like
you chose only because it rhymes.
between the slept life and the lived life, I asked her,
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Copyright © 2024 Jenny Factor All rights reserved
from Want, the Lake
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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