Shakers have a place for everything and everything in its place.
Also a way for everything and everything in its way– chairs
with ladder backs and woven seats to be hung on their hooks when not in use.
The way to sleep– on your back, flat. No curling, no tossing.
Sleep simply.
This also the way to sleep if you desire rapid interstellar travel.
Sleep with your arms crossed over your chest (think X, think King Tut
as a mummy) while flat on your back.
Sleep surrounded by babies tucked into boxes and baskets while they wait
for the laundry to be folded.

You wear those down to the nubs?

Glory to the diamond and the dirt mound.
I’m wearing my reflective suit in the desert. It’s so sunny out here.
It’s my first time seeing sand. It’s tiny rocks.
 
 

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Lesley Ann Wheeler is co-editor of Strange Cage, a poetry press, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her photo-essay “A Little Hell of its Own” Won Bone Bouquet’s 2013 Experimental Prose Contest. She teaches writing at the Kansas City Art Institute.