On a Cross
By Michael Mark
I nail a bug to a cross and feel insignificant.
Since that works, I nail my house, with two empty
bedrooms to a cross. I’m drenched with disgrace.
One by one, I nail my days I didn’t do much with—
calendar pages flailing in the yard on crosses I carry
from the lumber yard. Sparks rub off the sidewalk,
singe my cuffs. Unremembered books, the SUV,
my disobeyed parents, until their fussing forces
me to take them down—put up some abused
shoes, a cross for each, but I deplete the Home
Depot’s supply of nails. They lock the automatic
doors, cast me aside, claim I’d passed some limit
I didn’t know existed. As soon as I apologize
to the store manager I can start my life over.
Michael Mark’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Grist, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Waxwing, and American Life in Poetry. He’s the author of two books of stories, Toba (Atheneum) and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). michaeljmark.com