K’s Cloud
a gray day by the breakfast lilies
your ninnies’ nest dog-eared
the bed you dug to bury
dirty money panes away
ferning into low clouds
spider grass spidering
invisible Veronica Lake
H drove you to hosp
K’s fat fingers clasp the big Z
tap the early 1970s
palsy stained paperback
There was drinking in the carriage
There was a house joint
Now not a leaf turns
But there is a cloud
Chip Livingston is the author of the novel Owls Don’t Have to Mean Death; a collection of essays and short stories, Naming Ceremony; and two poetry collections, Crow-Blue, Crow-Black and Museum of False Starts. Chip teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.