Every Beginning Wants a Good Place to Start

According to laws of ownership,
you’re homeless. According to virology
you’re hunted, sore-throated, snotty.
By psychology you’re understood
and spun out, an iced tire. In fashion
you’re an adopter, a crofter, a little black
smock of sleep.

Notice how roofs lift their houses into reason,
their stories into debt. How leather walks years
after the first bloody cut
and shoes say something faster about a man
than his wallet because you don’t
have to ask to see them.

Starting today, you’ll study the discipline
of what you don’t know
about what you don’t want. You want this
like the flu wants lungs. Today,
keep it simple when simple makes sense.
Don’t start with schoolbooks. Start
with breakfast.

Kate Lebo’s poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, Smartish Pace and other journals. She’s a poetry editor for Filter, a literary journal made entirely by hand, and she worked for Richard Hugo House for many years. In 2010 she was awarded a grant from 4Culture, a Soapstone residency and a Shotpouch Creek residency. For more about Kate’s zine, A Commonplace Book of Pie, and other tasty treats, visit Good Egg: goodeggseattle.blogspot.com.