like teenage thieves dressed in black ski mask chic. 
I conjure up an empty trash bag to plunder 
this house of abundance. 
I’ll ransack each room, starting 
with the kitchen, 
empty it of metaphors, gut it 
like a fish. 
I pry open 
the skylight with a rusty crowbar. 
Stars pour into this poem, 
lusty, doubt-filled. The radiator 
hums. The father 
snores. The daughter lies 
awake reading. The mother stares 
up at the ceiling. Only the cat notices. 
She blinks once, then disappears 
behind a bookcase. Dust lingers 
on each volume. I dump them 
into my bag, Cain’s Jawbone, Anna Karenina, 
and The Manly Art of Knitting 
now under my possession. 
I slide down each stanza, 
stealing similes, and exit 
out the front door, solid oak. 
But I’m not entirely bad. 
I’ll leave the structural quatrains
and internal rhymes. 
I won’t touch the volta that hides in the basement in plain sight, let it remain 
instead of rot for other future scavengers, searching for some kind of meaning.




                                                           “​​Name, phone, address: The writing on a child’s back is 
                                                                                  now a symbol of Ukrainian parents’ terror.” 
                                                                                                          - The New York Times