January House Literary Journal

by Barbara Daniels

          “Leap, and the net will appear.”  
                                             John Burroughs

You’re in the grill basket. You’re fried.
But rumor has it that certain kinds 
of tinfoil hats can protect you. 

Sleep is a wall you slip down 
to join phantasmas and eclipses. 
But sleep can order your thoughts, 

teach you to be calm. Arm yourself 
with a garden hose and a small 
brush. When a Cooper’s hawk dives 

for you, flee. Look up, and it’s gone. 
True, you’re a fritter, but some mistakes 
are no bigger than houses, and some 

are as small as the wrong pair of shoes. 
For spiritual fears, a sacred tree stands 
in your neighborhood. Take two 

of its stump shoots for prayer sticks. 
You have your notebook, your sweater. 
Dreamlights from the city shine through 

the banks of clouds. Try walking the suburbs, 
searching the curbs for treasure. Read the signs—
nicks in a window frame, birds on a trellis, 

rustling vines, the tipping roof of a battered 
building, and a spray-painted double black dot, 
a colon: it means that you can go on.

Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas. Her other books and chapbooks include Rose Fever, Moon Kitchen, Black Sails, and Quinn & Marie. Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free State Review, Ghost City, Permafrost, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

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