Untitled Prose Poem for dVerse Poets Pub

In my prime, I had a whole grove of houseplants, and kept a cat. Now I am petless and plantless and I let the spiders cobweb the corners. I used to eat rice and tofu, seafood soups and ginseng chicken. Look how this past eight years of eating American weighs upon me. I take on pounds like a tree growing rings, by about a pound a month it seems.

At thirty, I rode my motorcycle to the airport and caught a jet to Venice. Mid-forties now, I am a lone cow in a long, narrow pasture – with shelter at one end, and food at the other. Locked into a subsistence wage by conditions and circumstances beyond my control, I move sedately from one comfortable chair to another, in which to hunch over these keys.