I thought I had a can of pineapple
but it’s only apricots
in the cabinet, apricots in syrup. Still,
what wealth. So far from my fellow citizens
eating in the dark, petitioning the monster
for water. So far and so safe
that an appetite for pineapple
can rise up in me this oddly warm
October morning like a trout in a lake,
like a trout the color of days‐old bruises, jaw
aglint with a spiral witness of hooks:
All we all want
is to live.