Prune Juice : Journal of Senryu & Kyoka

Sanford Goldstein
“will you
please button your lip!”
her father says-his
daughter takes out
her sewing kit and starts searching
listing
all my published poems
for the year,
discover they add up to
a me I didn’t paste together
each time
he meets his aging uncle,
the old man says,
life is three-fourths joy
life is four-thirds pain
told
he would be dizzy
until he dies,
“How long is that?”
the patient asks
giving up
on humor for a week
by avoiding poems,
I drink two tall glasses
of prune juice with buttermilk