Sonny Rainshine Poems

That year you were airborne.
Like a sheet of loose-leaf paper
you ascended, tumbled, dipped—
intricate as an origami dove,
...

Who are you?
Are you a homebody?
Are you a nobody,
like Emily Dickinson professed to be?
...

Frozen tears, frozen tears,
diamonds, tear-dropp pearls.

Tears aflame, tears aflame,
...

A man and a woman are playing dominos.
The tiles look pretty, all in rows.

The woman wears second-hand clothes,
...

She always washes the linens on Mondays.
Glancing out the back door
she regards the billowing sheets
and hears the distinct Snap! they make
...

I want to jump over the wall,
but there is no wall to jump over,
said the boy to his mother.
...

As to the fate of the universe,
some who claim to know maintain
that it is expanding, not contracting,
and is simple to explain.
...

She asked me not to speak to her in colors,
or compare her to the passing of the seasons.
She told me not to talk of Grecian ruins
or classic rhymes and lofty reasons.
...

After the sonnet ends it begins.
The final word glistens suspended on a string
like an industrious spider on strands slender as pins,
like a trapeze artist’s precarious swing.
...

Marlene, a famous grammarian, spent her final years
if-ing and because-ing and whether-ing,
neither-ing and nor-ing: trying to connect
the intricate clauses of her past.
...