Ange Mlinko Poems

Three mini ciabattini for breakfast
where demand for persnickety bread
is small, hence its expense, hence my steadfast
recalculation of my overhead,
...

I went to make kouign amann. It sounded Irish
and/or Maghrebi. But it's Breton, as I can swear
by the blue hydrangea like a cloudy iris
...

Here I am saying "The leaves are falling"
—one of those choruses
that vie with interminable verses
to mock hoarders.
Yeah, we get
...

The sky was laced with Irish cream mist, that mellow tan overhanging the hills, which were studded with deathmasks and baskets spilling flowers from both ends.
We scanned the haze for lightning.
...

The flight attendants
go
from kore to semaphore
...

In someone's distant algorithm
your mortgage was bundled to another's
—hedged—
and stamped a new "security."
...

I wake to light jackhammering, and news
follows: a plane
failed over the sea. All want to go home, but drastic curfews
obtain from a meridian.
...

If you'd seen
the Gaillardots' mullein in the Cedars of the Shouf;
if you'd seen the Aleppo dock, red with iron,
in Bcharre where the Adonis River's said to run as red
...

I


Should I take this time, while the children are in school,
to untrim the tree? Standing in the dish we let go dry,
...

Lobster in the bathtub. Christmas Eve.
Scrub the tub first. Hand off cleanser.
Rinse well. We don't want Comet
in our lobster.
...