I should probably show more restraint and publish each poem to stand out on its own but this is all new and exciting and I simply couldn’t decide between these two short poems. I love short poems, and I mean really short, because they are typically the most poignant for me, they stay with me for a long time.

This first one was a line in a journal entry a few years ago and I happened to read it recently (not a practice I usually enjoy–reading my journal entries) and I couldn’t stop repeating it in my head. I simply grabbed it from its prose surroundings and shaped it into separate lines:

Why can’t you hear me
when I nod my head yes
in the dark?

The second poem was written recently and I will leave it to your own interpretation:

Your absence
is the only
present thing
about you.

–the violet zoo