Here we go with this week’s selection!

5183.
faint music from the house next door
I think about you a lot
Friday night pistachio ice cream and pinochle

5184.
he sits on the bench strumming his guitar
living in this new age has made him
blues about everything

5185.
anyone in the building can tell you
the rows of lamplit windows on a snowy winter night
make this old place look almost like a home

 
5186.
a well-connected ghost like you
with a whole paint-chart of white ectoplasms
to choose from
and you pick the shade called “Cotton Sheets”?

5187.
smokestack
doing the backstroke
downstream from the factory
after the tornado

5188.
at work
he was universally thought of as
a perfect taupe on a scale of taupe to taupe

5189.
because I am so lonely
I remember you
even though it was all so long ago

5190.
now we’re divorced –
the lunar surface of our marriage
pocked by that one meterorite too many

 
5191.
she arrived home and immediately set to
polishing up the mood of her husband
into something chile pepper piquant

5192.
I guess, huh,
my lips sort of killed the mood
when they said no to your marriage proposal?

5193.
Consider the rigid décor demands
of greige the tyrant
who enforces drab as a way of life

5194.
the chain reactions of winter rhythms
might pull us down for a while
but the melody is clear if we will hear it.

5195.
a bakery box. a pair of pink iced cookies.
a chain of events that will culminate in a wedding
begins today.

 
5196.
the music is louder
everyone is loosening up
the festive throughput pulses. Let’s dance!

5197.
a calculating operator
collecting unpleasant invitations
and turning them to her advantage

5198.
The oven gives in
decides not to burn the casserole
given the stakes surrounding tonight’s dinner