now outside are scary things
out there children play
other bells ring out then
cease with mouths and thin skin
everything with clout is immediate and
blood waits for a bout below layers of paper

my dog watches a goldfinch
with her nose she cries
and whines complains
or does not understand the screen
a hinge creaks between
her wet nose in here and her memory
of sprinting
of the dry grass
on her brown back
of the unexpected
pizza crust she looks into me

with the excited eyes of a middle-aged
woman who in 2017 bravely enrolls
in an online poetry course
the TA refuses to insist
Frank O’Hara’s Personal Poem
has nothing to do with her
racial hangups he lost

his sobriety and everything
is unshakably out of control.