Daily Neuroses

1. Rain Golfers

My eyes dart for the rain golfers
Possum braves crossing in barrows
Fresh hunters from an anxious tribe
Road to kill while I check my mirrors
They're whipping poor Will
Their war clubs held high
Swinging thunderbolts
Cracking my windshield

2. Dead Flowers Enough

Dead flowers enough in the back of my car
Once-yellow silk petals mud caked
Black and green stems, flecktarn
Mold streaks down the sides of your headstones

I stabbed new stems in a rocky cashew jar
An odorless gift for breathless noses
Half-buried in a mound between you two buzzards

Dead flowers enough in the back of my car
Aren't going anywhere for years.

3. Lost Bills

Bedlam and squalor, singular inertia 
Hair tangles piling in the corners
Sparrows beating against the ceiling 
The dust graying of every
Good thing that fell to the floor
Dust gray, breeding, fermenting

With a blue or black pen 
Or a carrier pigeon
Draw a grid and cross the squares
When you're done hunting them
The lost bills are somewhere
Steeping in the still

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Steffen Mitchell is a writer.