Jen McClanaghan

Not for a single day
I don’t

think of you.

If it’s cloud or shampoo,
if rain

washes us away.

Even bleach can fail,
even water, at times,

deceives us.

One neighbor mows
squares inside
squares.

If like a barn dance.

On the other side of us,
when every bed sinks

with breathing,
the click of a hundred

LEDs,
a beat dropped from meteor

or moon—
a party bus unzipping all

its chrome balloons.

And who can’t say
you wouldn’t love this.

And who can’t say
you weren’t here.

Jen McClanaghan’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, and New England Review. She is the author of the poetry collection, River Legs.