This week’s Little Vines. Today is my granddaughter’s first birthday. None of the LV’s have anything to do with it, I just wanted to give her a little shout-out! Happy Birthday!

5069.
Recipe: Pluck them from the bargain bin
dozens if not hundreds. Make a paste
and apply it to your body.
If you don’t I will.

5070.
This snarled frayed granny knot
is an insult to your shoelaces
and to grannies

5071.
Moss polyps on a plate.
Talk about forensics at the dinner table.
Dad, Dad! Are you all right?
Sometimes everything just comes together, doesn’t it?

5072.
that searching restless woman
kissing
the pungent unkempt lout she married

5073.
the adventurer squelches through the mud
seeking a rendezvous with the latrine
he cannot find in the dark

5074.
the wrinkled drapes
sun-rotted
tore in my hand as I closed them
across the window of my late grandmother’s living room

5075.
Surely the bat will fly over the tower tonight
surely you will see him skimming the steeples
and hear the church bell tolling
for the lives of the insects he devours

5076.
you haul it across the beach
you plunge it into the saltwater waves
your tired old body

5077.
all these years later and still I hear
the exultant cry of radiation particles
liberated by the ray gun in my hand
as they head toward your sorry carcass

5078.
in an upstairs bedroom I lie on the bed
outside a bee crazed by the heat
flies into the window glass tap and tap and veer

5079.
a family trip
listless and exhausted each night
the car slumps in its parking space and weeps

5080.
I am only a small sacred concept right now –
Plain jealous of the actual deity –
But I have hopes. I have ambitions.

5081.
Failure and despair and more bad news
split up go separate ways none of the people involved
tell a reliable story. Kindergarteners at odds
on the playground.

5082.
he’s dating someone else now
she married a fellow from work
even the dog has moved on. Why can’t you?

5083.
more wrong she could not have been
the jeering moon revealed all to her:
she was not a firefly after all but instead
a flickering flashlight bulb

5084.
a paying job –
I couldn’t sleep for the hoping
that tomorrow I could call one my own

5085.
When she gets back from this latest jaunt
try to remember no matter what story she tells
the woman works for us.

5086.
what is this?
the one guy said
and his girlfriend said
nobody is ready for that

5087.
What a lovely necklace she is wearing
a three-mile stretch of pale stones
softened by waves. Our island.

5088.
Maybe it’s not exciting
but what I wouldn’t give to see right now
your thinning comb-over perched atop your smiling face

5089.
my neighbor wearing a blonde wig
the polyester hairdo perched on her head
gleaming in the fluorescent lights of the laundry room

5090.
I put a name to the face
pretty much choosing at random:
Prosopagnosia