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He intermittently reads The New York Times
idling in an overstuffed chair
Starbucks' recent attempt to cozy-up the place
So a person can pretend he's in his own living room
with a loving family on a Sunday morning
Today's family is another man
A stranger sitting in an adjacent chair
more than pleased to play the part
The reader says he's an attorney
between wives for the third time
All that alimony his new family member replies
Yeah well, the attorney knows the loopholes
The family one wishes he knew more ways
to get around his live-in mother-in-law
Besides spending weekend mornings in coffee shops
His truck driving job solving the weekday dilemma
The attorney reads some personal ads out loud
Says he wouldn't hesitate to fly anywhere
in the world to bring back the right woman
But he'd leave her mother there
The truck driver admits he's never traveled out of the U. S.
Like Bush before he was president
Then wonders whether the dollar he put in the counter
donation box will wade its way through Southeast Asian
government graft to tsunami victims
The attorney was planning a trip to Thailand
but will probably postpone with all that mess over there
He mutters something about a tee-off time
Takes his last gulp of coffee from his grande cup
And returns The Times to the sales rack on his way out
The contract requires
fur-lined handcuffs
and flavored condoms
for the lead singer in London
The four female string players
in anti-sexist mode
order vibrators for Milan
On arrival at their hotel room
one purple penis shape
protrudes from a basket holding fruit
bottled water and biscotti
Consequent arbitrations
place the piece of plastic onstage
in the percussion section
Where its middle C purrs
can be proportioned
in equal measures
In the last year Ellaraine been a poetry resident at Centrum in Port Townsend, WA, received her eleventh Pushcart Prize nomination, the 2008 Writecorner Press Poetry Prize, the 2008 Skysaje Poetry Prize, the 2007 Elizabeth R. Curry Prize and finalist status for the 2007 Joy Harjo Poetry Award and the Creekwalker Poetry Prize. Recently released publications are Mod Gods and Luggage Straps, a poetry/art broadside from BrickBat Revue and her fifth chapbook, Blue Ribbons at the County Fair, a collection of first-place contest winning poems from PWJ Publishing.