“Dart Away” by Jamie Spenser

boy, those mice were    fast 
a single beat of time 
from when they got seen     
to when they ran to the hole 
in the tree where the rest 
of the poem was 

that was the week I didn’t eat 
but I packed and I packed 

brown is a nice color 

a full cardboard box was hard 
enough to sit on     almost
everything went home 3rd class 
and took months 
to arrive    in pieces

it’s poetry: not a thing 
    that is written 
it’s a perpetual divorce    
    but only on paper

you have to be looking at a poem 
to tell if it is a one    or
it might tell you it’s one
by saying hyacinths

I am left explaining 
that not seeing  
the mice 	dart away 
is the good part --
a poem written on the back
of music paper

Jamie Spenser‘s poetry has been published in New York Quarterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Disappointed Housewife. His outpourings about TV commercial production and the art-rock band Devo have appeared in Perfect Sound Forever. He doodles kitchen appliances and takes cat pictures that have been featured by Huffington Post and the San Francisco Examiner.

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