guest-edited by Danielle Evans

Arriving home too tired to settle
my house into proper repose, I stumble

into slumber leaving bulbs to emanate
all night—a burning within the nest.

Set then unattended, the senile
dishwasher churns into the new day.

At some odd hour, I wake—maybe four.
Shallow sleep bleached by fluorescence.

The air tinny with the rumpus of water’s
steady pelt against a mixing bowl.

This house’s restlessness is my own.
The wood, the copper, the brick

all remember what they once were:
pine tree, palisades, shale. My god,

how did I come to preside over this
shrine to diminution? What life

do I abandon when I rise as a worker
and toil for this privilege of living alone?

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Contributor Notes

Kyle G. Dargan is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently LOGORRHEA DEMENTIA (UGA,2010). His debut, THE LISTENING (UGA 2004), won the 2003 Cave Canem Prize, and his second, BOUQUET OF HUNGERS (UGA 2007), was awarded the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in poetry. Dargan’s poems and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as Callaloo, Denver Quarterly, Jubilat, The Newark Star-Ledger, Ploughshares, TheRoot.com, and Shenandoah. While a Yusef Komunyakaa fellow at Indiana University, he served as poetry editor for Indiana Review. He is the founding editor of Post No Ills magazine and was most recently the managing editor of Callaloo.