Steve Barichko
in the time of quarantine
tell everyone you know you’ll be awake with them and thinking
of them while watching the pink moon but sleep soundly
through it and wake up before dawn to the haze
illuminated and the moon gone from anywhere
you can see and that’s when you go out into the contagion
lit up and slithering in the woods
every morning in the dark make a stack of pancakes
after two weeks you won’t spill anything and will crack
the eggs against the bowl in one strike
just when you’re really getting good you’ll see a missed text
an old love asking if you’d seen the pink moon
but make and eat your pancakes
no one is going anywhere
as you flip a lightswitch or pull on your fingers
ask is it real this is how you begin to take control
of your dream life and during the third nightmare
where you willingly enter a boobytrapped house
to rescue that old love from that missed text
you pull on your fingers before opening the door is it real
the light in the second floor bedroom goes out
you sit up in bed
your son finds a nest of baby garter snakes
at the pond’s edge picks them up in two fistfuls
and squeezes and you have to pry them out
bugeyed and bleeding and your son
crying you carry him home down the street
move a caterpillar off the asphalt to a laurel leaf cry
when you get home you don’t eat dinner
you talk to your grandfather’s picture in your bedroom
you look at your wedding album
that married coworker the heat from her chest
surprises you after the trench coat scarf and tortoise shell
glasses come off and she lifts her sweater to you
in the back seat of her car we are all deep down
carnal and adolescent forever
her hands behind her back unclasping you look
for a lightswitch
garlic mustard garden violet creeping
charlie wild columbine your grandmother always said
never have two strange days in a row so the roses must go
and the peonies and marigolds pretty as they are
you dig up the landscaping telling your wife about cast-asides
the beautiful dandelion and mountain mint with hummingbirds
so besotted you can stroke their heads
while they hover in it
the out and back trail is steep traprock
a glacial erratic with a prickly pear cactus at the base
wildflowers no one sees outside of these mountains
eight miles of hiking so hard there isn’t anyone
at the end of the trail is a deer leg broken at the knee
hooked over a tree limb and suddenly you
worry about the sun setting
of them while watching the pink moon but sleep soundly
through it and wake up before dawn to the haze
illuminated and the moon gone from anywhere
you can see and that’s when you go out into the contagion
lit up and slithering in the woods
every morning in the dark make a stack of pancakes
after two weeks you won’t spill anything and will crack
the eggs against the bowl in one strike
just when you’re really getting good you’ll see a missed text
an old love asking if you’d seen the pink moon
but make and eat your pancakes
no one is going anywhere
as you flip a lightswitch or pull on your fingers
ask is it real this is how you begin to take control
of your dream life and during the third nightmare
where you willingly enter a boobytrapped house
to rescue that old love from that missed text
you pull on your fingers before opening the door is it real
the light in the second floor bedroom goes out
you sit up in bed
your son finds a nest of baby garter snakes
at the pond’s edge picks them up in two fistfuls
and squeezes and you have to pry them out
bugeyed and bleeding and your son
crying you carry him home down the street
move a caterpillar off the asphalt to a laurel leaf cry
when you get home you don’t eat dinner
you talk to your grandfather’s picture in your bedroom
you look at your wedding album
that married coworker the heat from her chest
surprises you after the trench coat scarf and tortoise shell
glasses come off and she lifts her sweater to you
in the back seat of her car we are all deep down
carnal and adolescent forever
her hands behind her back unclasping you look
for a lightswitch
garlic mustard garden violet creeping
charlie wild columbine your grandmother always said
never have two strange days in a row so the roses must go
and the peonies and marigolds pretty as they are
you dig up the landscaping telling your wife about cast-asides
the beautiful dandelion and mountain mint with hummingbirds
so besotted you can stroke their heads
while they hover in it
the out and back trail is steep traprock
a glacial erratic with a prickly pear cactus at the base
wildflowers no one sees outside of these mountains
eight miles of hiking so hard there isn’t anyone
at the end of the trail is a deer leg broken at the knee
hooked over a tree limb and suddenly you
worry about the sun setting
Biography
"Steve Barichko" is a pattern the universe is currently maintaining that will one day either be flipped off like a light switch or recycled like a crashing wave back into the ocean, only to crash again as another wave in another time and place. His work has most recently appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press and High Shelf Press. He is working on a forthcoming chapbook. He can be found on Instagram and Twitter @stevebarichko.
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