We pull it on each morning like long underwear.
Soaked in it, our Rice Krispies snap, crackle, and cry Woe!
It drives the plot in all good books; most bad ones, too.
It snickers in the wings, hoping we break a leg
so it can steal our show.
During the sweetest adagio,
the softest pianissimo, its baby screams;
it has a coughing fit in the front row.
I slide it on Love’s finger; she slides it on mine.
I lift her, and, disks rupturing, collapse
across the threshold of the house named after it.
Mister, you’re in a lot of
Please don’t go to any
If it’s not too much
It claws the screen door, yowling to come in.
It slides down from the ovaries to join
its wriggling counterpart, and make Big Trouble.
When the doorbell rings at 3 a.m, we know
car trouble, heart trouble, woman trouble, tax
trouble, back trouble, gang trouble, Professor
Trouble, Officer Trouble, The Right Troublesome
Judge Trouble, President Trouble, His Imperial
Troublesomeness, King of Trouble’s here.
Trouble’s in the mail. It’s on the phone.
It drops on just-washed cars, runs up the legs
of panty-hose, blows down trees, topples power poles.
It wants to see us in its office right away.
We breathe it in; we blow it out.
Even when we sleep, it pulls our covers off
so we’ll catch cold, and runs around our heads all night
waving a megaphone, directing our bad dreams.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
