Here are a few recent poems. They’ve been waiting around for a finishing touch. One of them was fine as it was, I decided – and the other two were missing lines that decided to show up today.
Tanka 288
What a luscious dress!
Fluff pink as a flamingo
It’s cotton candy
swirled in the carnival lights.
Pink as envy. Pink as spite.
1/27/22
Haiku 962
a mean raw blue sky
whispers as I go along
eyes tight to the ground
1/27/22
Cut Off
i.
man’s voice
booms out from next door
vibrates through the wall
Of course we listen.
ii.
So I called the paramedics
The city guys came
Nice people. And they arrived
really fast. Yeah! Right there
on the street. Well,
I knew I wasn’t breathing
iii.
We wait but
iv.
there is nothing more.
1/14/22
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
“Cut Off” so sad and somber. That last line just got me.
Thank you. I overheard a conversation that I took elements from it for this poem, at the doctor’s office. In real life, the story went on to make another point, but I was taken by the not breathing part and it seemed to suggest a whole other thing to me, so I wrote it this way. I don’t know why this stuck with me, but it did.
The first poem makes me think of my sisters. The final poem makes me think back on all of the insights into other people’s lives we gleaned by growing up in a house with incredibly thin walls. Privacy was really just an illusion.
I have noticed that in doctors’ offices (where I heard the conversation that started me on this poem) that despite all the talk of patient privacy and so on, you can clearly hear other visits going on in the next exam room. Very interesting, some of them, too!