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Closing the Door on the Icebox of Zero Possibilities

O Deep Freezer of Self-Loathing!
O Angst-Giver of Great Proportions!
I slam your jars of Brewer's Yeast quivering in the door!

Fear of cardboard home
Skid Row future dogs me,
hooked like slabs of meat 
butchered by my own hand.
Everywhere I look
shopping carts appear
with their shuffling ghosts --

Am I to push and push and push?

When I was a girl
our Frigidaire was well stocked.
Sour milk and bulbous mushrooms
proliferated as if the unseen
Patron Saint of Family Dysfunction
said "Be Fruitful and Multiply."
I keep my refrigerator streamlined
now ­ just the essentials --
two bottles of champagne 
and a tube of Necco wafers.
Nothing that could turn ugly or grow hair.
Cryogenics notwithstanding, I say
"Release my miserly vision!"
the lowered gaze of diminished expectations.
Yes, when I see his shirt flung near a rosy lampshade
his tennis shoes scrunched under the couch
I think of ripe plums and tomatoes
fat as buddhas spilling from crispers,
the words of Hafiz and my own silly joy singing, 
"scent from my beloved's domain
carried on the wings of song ­
O bring my beloved to me!"

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