Stephanie Clare Smith

            Sleep is my friend, I tell myself.

            I don’t believe myself. I need more friends.

            What I have is Joni Mitchell songs stuck

            in my head. I really don’t know love at all.

            I make shapes with my body

            under the covers as though I am falling

            from a plane in the sky – a fetus,

            a windmill, a steak knife. Which shape

            survives a long-distance drop?

            The Times said a fetus – survivors fall

            small. In the morning, I wake like a clock.

            A chopper’s overhead beating the air. But

            this is not Nam or Afghanistan. The radio reports cops

            up above. A man dumped a woman out

            of his truck onto the avenue that feeds

            the heart of the city. Or else she jumped to escape

            the not-Nam/Afghanistan war in that truck. He fled

            on foot when the chopper hovered over. All day

            he’s at large like a storm in the sky. All day

            she’s out cold in a hospital wing. I feel all

            small; how she jumped or was dumped

            in the shape of log

            that rolled across the road

            that feeds the heart of the city.