Semblance

 “’Paper pennies’,” I say to her, no reason,

“is only a little easier to pronounce

than ‘floating avocado skin’.”

“You love nonsense,” she says,

scrubbing a pan. “What’s that about?”

“Define nonsense.” I make faces

in the glass of the roman-numeraled clock,

say “Did you ever notice I have a tic?”

She dries the pan. “Nonsense,” she says,

“means no sense. None. Hey,

shouldn’t you be working?”

I say, “I labor here like a thought-leaf

floating up meaningfully toward its branch.”

She puts the pan where it belongs

in the cupboard, with the other pans.

Steven Ostrowski is a poet, fiction writer, painter and teacher. His work appears widely in literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the author of five published chapbooks--four of poems and one of stories. He and his son Ben are authors of a full-length collaboration called 'Penultimate Human Constellation,' published in 2018 by Tolsun Books. His chapbook, 'After the Tate Modern,' won the 2017 Atlantic Road Prize and is published in 2018 by Island Verse Editions. His artwork has appeared in a number of literary journals, including on the cover of the inaugural issue of Lily Poetry Review.