Dear rubbery fingers, I’ve twiddled
the dishes & scrubbed
the rest of the mission entirely. Back
to the cutting board.


I was born bored. I yelped & yawned.
Day after day dawned & sank. I hid
my agenda deep in the dumpster chute
where a snagged patchwork catnip
toy dangled & sprang.


I keep the right hand
in the right glove. It remembers
depressing a lever to lower slice
and slice in the toaster slots. The left
hand wrangles its own
glove inside-out & itself therein
over & rightside out again.


All comes to an end. Surely
something we did sparkles! I do
remember liking some morning love
best when it sizzled & stuck out its tongue.

***

Martha Zweig’s latest collection, Get Lost, winner of the 2014 Rousseau Prize for Literature, is out from Dream Horse Press. Previous collections include: Monkey Lightning, Tupelo Press 2010; Vinegar Bone (1999) and What Kind (2003), both from Wesleyan University Press, and Powers, 1976, chapbook from the Vermont Arts Council. She has received a Whiting Award, Hopwood Awards and Pushcart nominations, and her work has appeared widely, recently in POETRY, THE YALE REVIEW and DENVER QUARTERLY. Her essay “Gnarly” appears in the recent anthology Vermont Poets and Their Craft, eds. Tamra Higgins and Neil Shepard, Sundog Poetry / Green Writers Press.