Mike Finley Poems

I sleep on my hands every night.
As I pull the covers around me
and prepare to let go,
first on my right side,
...

When we are gone and the plates of the earth
have shrugged,
and the cupboards rattle and the rafters sift,
and the groaning household teeters on the brink
...

Rest your drowsy cheek,
My girl, quiet on my
Prickling arm. Dream
Your dream of lapping
...

Do we know what our gifts are before we give them?

Closer than we ever dreamed,
the way the members of this family
...

Three women at Perkins sit in front of me,
a mother and her daughters. The youngest,
in glasses, wears fuchsia lipstick and matching
fuchsia suit, with four silver buttons
...

The leaves blow across the old park,
the hickory and ginkgo,
linden and oak, next to the monument
of eternal light, for the fallen soldiers
...

Forty minutes I stand in the reception line.
Finally I reach the newly widowed man,
standing by Olive's open coffin,
and I will remember my next words forever.
...

was the name of her fish,
a little tetra I bought her
when she was three.
...

night time in the Mojave,
broken bottles lining the highway
are identified by moonlight
and the city spins below us
...

This spider knows the maxim of real estate.
She built her a web at the corner station,
over the sign flashing Quaker State:
'Location, location, location! '
...